Having lived at the zoo throughout his childhood, Whitnall\u2019s earliest memories involve animals. \u201cBack in the 1990s, granddad hand-reared tiger cubs,\u201d he says. \u201cMy first memory is walking around the back garden with them. I worked at the zoo and was the youngest ever zoo-keeper in Britain \u2013 aged 11; I got an award and went on Blue Peter. I started with reptiles, birds and in the farmyard. As I got older it became small mammals: red pandas, meerkats, coatis and racoons.\u201d<\/p>\n
It sounds like the type of life every schoolboy dreams of, but Whitnall is circumspect. \u201cThe zoo went through waves,\u201d he explains. \u201cGrowing up, I saw animals in cages, and there was a lot of politics\u2026 It played on my mind quite a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cash flow problems saw the zoo \u2013 which had been his grandfather\u2019s pride and joy \u2013 start to slip backwards. By the time Whitnall took up a scholarship at Bournemouth University in 2014 to study television production, he\u2019d made up his mind to leave wildlife behind.<\/p>\n
Life had other ideas. Under the management of his indomitable mother, Lynn, and father, Craig, Whitnall returned to Paradise Wildlife Park to combine his two interests \u2013 conservation issues and social media. While in charge of the now-rechristened Hertfordshire Zoo\u2019s social media accounts, his viral videos attracted CBBC who, during lockdown, sent cameras to follow Whitnall, and his brothers Aaron and Tyler, as they helped manage the zoo. Five series later, One Zoo Three has catapulted him to celebrity status and turned him into an Instagram star, with 800,000 followers.<\/p>\n
He is keenly aware, however, of the delicate balance between the natural world in reality and the version of it that is portrayed on our screens. \u201cI\u2019m so conscious of how I\u2019m communicating. Social media is the most draining part of my work. It affects me more than I\u2019d like. On the other hand, I\u2019m aware it can be the most powerful way of communicating and educating my audience. I wouldn\u2019t be here today without the power of social media.\u201d<\/p>\n
The evidence is in front of us. The project to save Yuna and the other Ukrainian lions would never have happened without social media. It\u2019s how Whitnall discovered Yuna\u2019s plight and, when he offered to re-home her, the Animal Rescue Centre in Kyiv asked if he could take the other four. To fund the rescue, he also persuaded followers to donate over \u00a3500,000 to transport them out of the war zone and build the Lion Rescue Centre at the Big Cat Sanctuary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having lived at the zoo throughout his childhood, Whitnall\u2019s earliest memories involve animals. \u201cBack in the 1990s, granddad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":965140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[24408,390,388,19910,224,70,1715,34328,16,15,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-965139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animal-welfare","9":"tag-family","10":"tag-lifestyle","11":"tag-lions","12":"tag-relationships","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-standard","15":"tag-top-story","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116586004299337036","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}