Tilgate Nature Centre — Attraction in Crawley

It should be a really lovely place to visit, and parts of it are such as the goats, meerkats etc but some of the enclosures are painfully inadequate to provide a decent life experience for the animal enclosed.

The bird aviaries brought great concern and upset me. A barn owl stuck in a space smaller than my lounge. The same for the tawny owl next door. These are amazing creatures. They need to fly & live a full life of hunting their food. Not be a curiosity in a cage. Honestly it was heartbreaking to see such a beautiful creature reduced to this.

The egrets, kookaburras and other birds were in cramped conditions again with no stimulation that I could see. It’s upsetting to say the least.

The lizard was in a large television screen style sized box.

Honestly I thought we’d moved on from using animals as education and curiosities in this way. Have a decent sized enclosure with a utube video running alongside so visitors can see the animal in its natural environment hunting & catching animals. If the creature is out of sight so be it. Children will like pressing buttons to run the videos. A life sized model. Have cameras that can move around the enclosure. We should not be compromising animals quality of life in this most appalling of ways.

The gift shop was plastic toys in every colour. In a world where we are trying to teach children about sustainability, recycling and reducing waste it seemed a lost...

We visited Tilgate Animal Centre today. This is the first time since pre-lockdown. It cost £30 for two adults and 3 children (not bad value for money until you get inside).

Pre-pandemic the animal centre was well maintained and had a large variety of animals.

I was saddened to see the state of disrepair that the park has fallen into and the now limited number of animals!

There were overgrown stinging nettles across all of the path edges which caused the children to sting their legs multiple times.

The main walk along the lake has been closed down and replaced with metal fences and signs notifying that the structural integrity of the bridge is in question.

On closer inspection, the walkways to the bridge are all overgrown and resemble a walk way that's not been walked over for a long time.

Overall, there wasn't a great deal to see other than overgrown pathways and former animals enclosures. The meerkat have a new enclosure which is lovely but their former enclosures have been left to fall into a bad state.

I'm hopeful that the management can restore this wonderful animals sanctuary to its former glory.

I find it hard to believe that Crawley Council haven't provided the centre with additional funding/support loans/grants during...

Visited on a fairly quiet weekdday. The last time I had been was before covid so was interested to see if it had changed. I still think it is a place young children will love but there are a few areas where it could do with improvements. There was quite a few empty or unkempt enclosures which made me think perhaps there was some funding issues? The boardwalk was sadly closed over concerns to its structural integrity. It was a hot day and I kept looking at what shade and water the animals had access to - I'm not a pig expert but their enclosure was dry as a bone. I'm sure welfare is top of the priority list for a place like this and it is regularly monitored by the correct authorities but I geuss its natural to have concerns when seeing animals in captivity. One of the donkeys looked pretty sad but who knows, he might have just been old and grumpy. But, like I said, young kids (and animal lovers) will probably love seeing some the of the animals and the Meerkat's are probably worth the price of admission alone. I think it's a nice addition to the forest and the town as long as the conditions and happiness of the animals are...