Simply the best visitor attraction in Scotland

Highland Wildlife Park recently scooped the Best Visitor Attraction award at the Scottish Thistle Awards 2025. If you work in tourism, you’ll know the Thistles are a bit like the Oscars of Scottish hospitality. They celebrate organisations that are genuinely exceptional. To see Highland Wildlife Park take home the top prize, in a field full of brilliant visitor experiences from across the country, was an incredibly proud moment for all of us at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

It’s a recognition rooted in much more than busy days and happy visitors. It speaks to years of work to rethink how we tell Scotland’s conservation story. That work is most visible in Scotland’s Wildlife Discovery Centre at the park, which opened last summer and is reshaping how people of all ages connect with the natural world.

When we set out to create the Discovery Centre, the goal wasn’t simply to add new buildings. It was to bring together everything the park does, from caring for cold weather species like polar bears and snow leopards, to connecting people and communities with nature - and to our groundbreaking work to breed Scottish wildcats for release into the Cairngorms. We wanted to do something a bit different from the doom-and-gloom conservation messaging which is all too common with this type of project, and focus instead on connection, empowerment and hope.

Visitors can now begin their day in The Gateway, our first indoor exhibition space in the park’s fifty-year history. It’s immersive and hands-on, with stories, games and experiences that put people at the heart of the conservation story.

From there, the Learning Hive is an amazing community resource, bringing together schools, families and community groups for a wide range of activities including climate workshops, STEM learning and storytelling. At the top of the park sits the Conservation Den, overlooking the wildcat breeding for release centre. Many of you will know that Highland Wildlife Park is home to the Saving Wildcats project which is returning the 'Highland tiger' to the Cairngorms National Park - an incredible example of conservation partnership in action.

As well as wildcats, you will see other native species of past and present such as wolves and lynx, and hear about our work with partners to save threatened Scottish invertebrates including the pine hoverfly, the dark bordered beauty moth and even the medicinal leech. And of course there are the famous faces too, from snow leopards and Amur tigers to our beloved polar bears – the youngest of whom, Brodie, will be heading down to Yorkshire Wildlife Park soon on a sabbatical whilst we work to update his habitat at the park.

The visitor centre has had a complete refresh as well, with locally sourced food and new changing places facilities in place as part of our commitment to making nature more inclusive and accessible for everyone. And, as ever, our team of keepers, guides and volunteers bring it all to life. Their talks and tours regularly receive five-star feedback, and for good reason.

I think that blend of natural heritage, community spirit, science and storytelling is one of the reasons the judges recognised the park this year. The Thistle Awards celebrate experiences rooted in place and people, and the Highlands has that in abundance.

Nature needs us all more than ever and this accolade will spur us on to do even more to protect wildlife and make our natural world more accessible.

For now, though, I just want to say thank you to everyone who supports the park: our volunteers, neighbours, visitors and the wider Badenoch community. I hope you feel as much pride in this award as we do.

Ben Supple

Deputy CEO