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The use of AI, a limit on the scale of projects, law enforcement, and Gerald Durrell's 100th anniversary are some of the key items on Durrell's 2025 agenda as it seeks to refocus following a year of turmoil.
Matthew Hatchwell, Chair of the Board of Trustees – who was re-elected for a second term last night – looked to shift the conversation to the future after a year that saw members and former staff speak out against the Trust.
Last night's AGM saw more than 1,000 people vote in an election that could have completely overturned Durrell's leadership – but despite efforts by rebel members to put forward a full slate of candidates, the organisation's own picks took every available seat on the charity's trustee board.
Reacting to the results, Mr Hatchwell said he felt "relief" after the difficulties of the past year, which saw rebel members in a group called 'We Love The Zoo' spent time in arbitration with Durrell before trying to oust the charity's trustees in an extraordinary general meeting in May.
"It's been a stressful few months and that doesn't all lift immediately," he added.
Mr Hatchwell told members in a speech last night that they should "reflect on whether a Durrell membership is right for them" if they couldn't get behind the current leadership.
But speaking to Express today, he said: "We're always open to constructive criticism and we can always improve what we're doing.
"But we feel as though as a board, we've engaged with this group of critics as actively and constructively as we possibly can now, for 18 months, and we've been very patient in responding to their concerns.
"But we went through the extraordinary general meeting, we've just been through the AGM where there was a motion brought by that group of members, and we just feel that the time has come for us to focus on the future.
"So all of the work on the new strategy and so on, is where our energies need to be focused. And so we very much hope that all members will join us on that journey."
Pictured: Matthew Hatchwell was re-elected to the Board of Trustees for a second term last night.
He added: "We absolutely hope that everyone will will do so. We don't want to lose members. We want more people to be joining Durrell and so we urge all our members to work with us and continue on this journey together.
"There's always room for discussion. There's always room for healthy disagreement – but let's keep the focus on the future."
The Rewild Our World strategy, launched in 2018, is up for a review this year in timing that Mr Hatchwell called "serendipitous".
The review would include questions about the scale and role of Durrell, particularly in international rewilding projects.
"I think probably the question of scale is going to be an important one," explained Mr Hatchwell.
"Durrell has got a very particular institutional focus on species conservation and I think there are probably limits to how much you can expand that – with an individual site and without losing what it is that makes Durrell so special.
"So I think one of the key conversations that we'll need to have is: how big do we want to get?"
Pictured: Durrell has a 100-year lease on land in the Scottish Highlands.
He explained: "The bigger you get, the more you get drawn into areas of conservation, for example around law enforcement, that aren't massive priorities for Durrell sites where we work because of the institutional expertise here around species conservation.
"Up to now, haven't taken a lot of direct kind of legal responsibility for that. If we were to do that in future, I think we need to make a very deliberate decision that that's something that we want to do."
Law enforcement, he said, included managing or marking borders to sites – for example in Madagascar, where park boundaries aren't typically marked.
Durrell's 100-year lease on land in the Scottish Highlands was "enormously significant" in a field where five-year grants are common, he added.
Durrell has grown "enormously" in the past seven or eight years, Mr Hatchwell said, and that growth should continue – but not necessarily through measures like a bigger board of trustees.
AI tools could become more important, he explained.
"We're also going to have to be smart about working as efficiently as we can," said Mr Hatchwell.
"Just one of the examples that we were talking about yesterday was integrating AI tools as much as we can into increasing the efficiency of how we run our programs.
"We're going to be looking at a very different organisation, I suspect, in 10 years time. AI will affect an awful lot of how we all work, I suspect, over the next decade.
"We need to make sure that those conversations, those processes, are taking place within Durrell as well."
Asked about the environmental impact of AI – with the UN Environmental Programme warning that AI could use more water than half of the UK's annual consumption in 2027 – Mr Hatchwell said the answer "has to do with carbon footprint overall", citing Durrell's carbon offsetting project, Rewild Carbon, in Brazil.
Mr Hatchwell thanked staff and members "on behalf of the Board, my fellow trustees and the executive leadership team, for all the work that they put in and the support they provided over the last 12-18 months".
"It's been a difficult period and I we're all absolutely determined now to focus firmly on the future," he added.
Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of Gerald Durrell's birth and events starting in January are in the charity's calendar – from a plaque unveiling and trails at Jersey Zoo, to a trek to Gerald Durrell's birthplace in India.
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