Association of friends and sponsors of Wilhelma

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Great ape house with an open-air enclosure sponsored by the association

The Association of Friends and Supporters of Wilhelma Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt is the support association of the zoological-botanical garden Wilhelma in the Baden-Württemberg state capital Stuttgart . With over 33,000 members, it is the largest zoo support association in Europe. The association is a member of the Association of German Zoo Supporters . Members receive free entry to Wilhelma. The association also organizes lectures, excursions and a musical summer evening on the zoo grounds.

history

The association was founded on September 21, 1956. The reason was that expansion plans could not be implemented because the city was not ready to participate. On December 14, 1956, the first chairman was elected at the first general meeting with the former minister of education Gotthilf Schenkel . At that time the association u. a. the animal population of the first restored house in Wilhelma, including the Indian rhinoceros "Nanda" with 100,000 DM. One year after it was founded, the association had 221 members. After an advertising campaign, the membership increased from 4,000 to 9,000 in the mid-1980s. Ute Hempel was the managing director until 2009 and has been Nicole Englert since then.

Projects

The association usually supports individual Wilhelma projects, v. a. new buildings. Examples are the young animal rearing house from 1982 (0.5 million euros), the facility for bear and climbing animals opened in 1991 (1.75 million euros), and the Albert Schöchle Amazon House, inaugurated in 2000 (3.95 million euros) ) and the facility for African great apes completed in 2013 (9.5 million euros). A total of 18.6 million euros had been made available by September 2016. The next step is to fund the new elephant enclosure.

Chairperson

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Website Association of German Zooförderer e. V. , accessed on May 4, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b Wilhelma magazine, issue 3, autumn / winter 2016/2017.