Andrew Reeve, Tropical Butterfly House manager: ‘Zoos have stepped up to the mark’

Exotic, vibrantly-coloured insects, rare bats, cheerful birds and fascinating reptiles all await visitors to the Tropical Butterfly House, Wildlife and Falconry Centre in North Anston, heading towards Worksop 15 miles from the middle of Sheffield.

And they're a popular attraction - so popular, it transpires, that there are many days when extra guests simply can't be accommodated.

"In the last eight years we've gone from 80,000 to 150,000 visitors a year," says Andrew Reeve, park manager at the Butterfly House which marks its 25th anniversary this Saturday.

"At normal busy times we can't cater for any more people, we haven't got the parking or anything like that. The peak period now is really February 'til October - November, December, January is quietish, then we're full to capacity most days."

There is an ongoing drive, he says, to manage crowds at the site, which doubled in size to eight acres half a decade ago.

"We're trying to encourage people to come in quieter times now. It's not easy to achieve. If it's a sunny day, everyone comes out, don't they? Over the February half term every zoo I spoke to was rammed. At Twycross they turned people away."

Maybe, he speculates, there is an appetite for hands-on experiences in a world so often mediated by technology.

"What we're aiming to do is empower the age group we get coming into the park to be passionate about wildlife in the future. In this day and age, everyone's on the internet so they don't really interact like we did when I was a kid. You were chucked out in a field and left to it all day."

Andrew's own passion for nature began when he was a child growing up in Harpenden, Hertfordshire.

"As a little boy I kept crocodiles in my bedroom. Of course, now you have to have a dangerous wild animal licence. The biggest one was five feet long, it used to sleep in my bedroom in a big metal bath. Crocodiles have always been a bit of a thing for me. I can't explain why, I just find them fascinating."

He was never bitten, he proudly points out.

"I always think if you've been bitten by something you don't know what you're doing, because you haven't given them enough respect."

He trained birds too, but had completely a different day job working for British Gas before being headhunted by Whipsnade, the UK's biggest zoo, in 1990.

"The problem was money, because I had kids when I was young. They matched what I was earning and I just did really well there."

He helped to set up a new zoo at Pensthorpe in Norfolk, and acted as a consultant at the Butterfly House before being hired full-time.