Zoos and Aquariums Editing and Proofreading Services

Zoos and aquariums justify keeping animals by what they contribute — conservation, research, education — and visitors increasingly ask whether that justification holds. The claim is made on the interpretation panel at the enclosure, in a sentence next to a photograph of the species in the wild, and it is frequently the weakest sentence in the building: a general statement about supporting conservation efforts, attached to an animal whose presence in this enclosure has no traceable connection to any of them.

We edit what zoos, aquariums and wildlife parks produce — enclosure interpretation panels and species information, conservation claim and programme descriptions, breeding programme and studbook explanations, research output descriptions for public audiences, rescue and rehabilitation narratives, animal welfare and husbandry information for visitors, keeper talk scripts and presentation content, education and schools programme material, signage on animal behaviour and enrichment, position statements on captivity and species decisions, membership and adoption scheme material, fundraising and conservation appeal copy, and responses to criticism about keeping animals. Our editors work on the sentence that has to justify the enclosure.

The conservation claim on a panel is where credibility is built or lost, and specificity is the whole of it. "We support conservation of this species in the wild" is unverifiable and is read by an increasingly informed visitor as institutional boilerplate. We write these so the claim names the thing — the field project by name, the amount contributed last year, the number of animals released and where, the individual animal in front of them and its origin and role; so an animal that is not part of a breeding or conservation programme is described honestly, since most are not and pretending otherwise weakens every genuine claim on the site; so the research is described in terms of what was learned rather than as an activity, because visitors can assess a finding; so rescue animals are distinguished from captive-bred ones, as that is the question visitors are actually asking; and so the harder question is met somewhere on the site rather than avoided. Institutions that are precise about the modest true claims are believed about the substantial ones.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including collection information, programme material and unpublished research. We are editors rather than zoologists, welfare or conservation specialists, and we offer no view on animal welfare, husbandry, conservation status or the merits of keeping any species. What we can do is make claims specific and interpretation readable.