Following the launch of Chester Zoo’s Islands development, managing director Jamie Christon has said the £40m (US$62.2m, €56.4m) project is only the start of the UK visitor attraction’s ambitious masterplan, as it aims to become a world leader in the sector.

Speaking exclusively to AM2 Christon said that the Islands development, which opened last week, is the beginning of a multi-year masterplan currently under development behind the scenes.

“Heart of Africa was the original name for part of Islands,” said Christon. “What we want to do if this works, which clearly it’s going to, is start to geographically theme the rest of the zoo based around our field programmes across the world.”

The zoo currently runs 10 major field programmes worldwide in an attempt to save species threatened with extinction. Each programme has a species or regional biodiversity focus and looks at the likes of Asian elephant, black rhino, jaguar and red ape conservation among other species and regions. Christon said that the zoo wants to reflect the conservation work being done across these programmes at the zoo, which the masterplan will seek to address.

“Rather than having animals in particular species enclosures, it will be in geographical zones so part of the conservation education message is people are bringing back what parts of the world animals live in and why they are critically endangered,” he said.

“What we have done with Islands – addressing the issue of conservation in a world region – we want to do across the zoo. For example, phase two of Islands will include the Bali Starling Temple: we’ll have four or five Bali starlings in there, we just caught them on the edge of extinction and are starting to redevelop them. It’s a really important species and one we want to show-off and promote. That’s what we want to do across the entire zoo.”

The 111 acre (50 hectare) zoo has earmarked an additional 389 acres (157.4 hectares) of land for future development, but Christon first wants to focus on the existing zoo before expanding outwards.

“We need to reassess and redesign what we’ve already got in the original zoo, which isn’t going to be an easy task,” he said. “It’s a tight zoo and to create one new area, we’ve probably got to move six or seven things to be able to do that. We’re in the process of creating that masterplan now and hopefully we’ll be able to start to see the beginning of those works next year.”

On top of the zoo’s ambitious masterplan, plans are also afoot to redevelop Oakfield House – a Victorian mansion – as a tourist attraction. The house was the setting for Our Zoo a BBC-commissioned period drama that told the story of the founding of the zoo in the 1930s. In addition, the zoo still has outline planning permission for a 150-bedroom hotel, which Christon said is still being considered for development.