The Yorkshire Wildlife Park was built on land formerly occupied by the Brockholes Farm Visitor Centre and Riding School, and currently occupies about of the site. Cheryl and Neville Williams and business partner John Minion purchased the site in 2008 with funding from Lloyds TSB Commercial, private investment, and a Yorkshire Forward grant. The site was renovated over the 20082009 winter, and officially opened by Justin Fletcher, MBE on 4 April 2009. In February 2010, the park rescued 13 lions from a Romanian zoo and, after their quarantine period, released them into the newly built Lion Country enclosure. In 2011, the zoo opened Land of the Tigers, which contains two pools and a waterfall and was created next to a wetland reserve. Visitors view the tigers from a long raised walkway, with the tiger enclosure on one side of the walkway and the wetlands on the other. In March 2012, the park opened Leopard Heights, a £300,000 open-topped enclosure that lets visitors view the Amur leopards from an viewing tower or from ground level through a long glass wall. The enclosure is claimed to be the largest leopard enclosure in the world. In July 2014, the park opened a large enclosure for polar bears, named Project Polar, with the first bear being 500 kg male Victor; a second arrived in March 2015 called Pixel, who is Victor's grandson. On 15 April 2015, Yorkshire Wildlife Park announced that one of its Amur tigers had given birth to three cubs on 29 March 2015. The park's popularity surged soon after its opening, starting in 2009 with only 66,000 visitors; it hosted 323,000 in 2011.
Animals and exhibits
Lion Country
Lion Country was opened in May 2010 to house 13 African lions, which were acquired from Oradea Zoological Garden in Romania in February 2010. The lions had been kept in small enclosures and poor living conditions, and were in poor health as the Romanian zoo could not adequately care for them. Ten years on there are six lions in Lion Country: Simba, Maria, Carla, Crystal, Julie and Ares.
Lemur Woods
Lemur Woods is a walk-through enclosure with many trees, housing groups of ring-tailed and red-bellied lemurs. The lemurs can often be seen climbing high in the trees, or sunbathing on the ground. Twice a day, visitors can stand and watch the keepers feed the Lemurs. They get very close - within touching distance - and it's one of the popular areas of the park.
African Plains
African Plains is a large, savannah-like paddock displaying different African animals such as,ostriches, a mixture of Rothschild's Giraffe and Reticulated Giraffe, lechwe, and common eland. In the enclosure, they also have endangered Grevys Zebras which they are doing a lot of conservation with, as they are very rare. They also have a large, grassy paddock for critically endangered black rhinoceros, that have a large house at the back of the paddock as well as several mud wallows and piles of browse in the paddock, which has been made to look like the African savannah.
Land of the Tigers
Land of the Tigers houses three Amur tigers: three adults, named Sayan, Vladimir, and Tschuna. The enclosure features two pools and a waterfall, as well as a 150-metre walkway for visitors. The tigers can often be seen playing together or even climbing trees, which they seem to enjoy a lot.
Project Polar
Opened in August 2014, Project Polar houses four male polar bears named Victor, Pixel, Nissan and Nobby. These are the only polar bears in an English zoo. The largest enclosure is ten acres in size and features two pools, the largest of which is eight metres deep and contains 25.5 million gallons of water. This is one of the largest polar bear enclosures in the world.
Opened in Easter 2013, the Baboon Reserve houses a troop of Guinea baboons which came from Edinburgh Zoo.
Leopard Heights
Leopard Heights houses two leopards Amur leopards:, named Drake and Freya. The enclosure is 6000 square metres in size, features climbing frames up to ten metres tall, and cost £300,000 to build.
