Area residents may be sipping wine for an adult-only evening next year in the Great Bend-Brit Spaugh Zoo, according to Zoo Director Scott Gregory.
“The zoo’s never done an adult-only thing,” Gregory commented during last week’s annual meeting of the Great Bend Zoological Society. Nex-Tech has sponsored an event called Zoo Fest for several years but indicated it won’t continue that particular event in 2015. However, the company has shown an interest in finding new ways to support the zoo. Gregory said it is considering hosting an event called “Wine in the Wild” next October.
The 2014 Zoo Fest drew 2,500 people, down from years when attendance was reported at over 3,000.
The zoo’s biggest ever event was this year’s Zoo Boo. Gregory, who came to the zoo at the end of 2009, noted that at his first Zoo Boo in 2010 there were 12 organizations involved and about 1,700 people came to the event. This year there were 35 organizations and businesses, and 5,750 in attendance. It started at 6 p.m., but the first person arrived at 3 p.m,  and “by 5 the line was outside the park.”
Gregory is leaving the zoo at the end of the year to accept a new job managing a zoo in Florida. During his report to the Zoo Society, he noted that the zoo’s raptor rehabilitation center had accepted 35 birds as of Nov. 10, and had released 16 back into the wild. “This is one of the best rehab facilities in the state of Kansas,” he said.