IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 17

Text A — WESTLAKE WILDLIFE PARK: VISITOR INFORMATION

Westlake Wildlife Park is open every day of the year except 25 December. Last admission is 90 minutes before closing.

Opening hours: - Summer (1 April-30 September): 09:30 to 18:00 - Winter (1 October-31 March): 10:00 to 16:30

Admission: - Adult (16-64): £24.50 - Child (3-15): £15.50 - Concession (over-65, full-time student with ID, registered carer): £19.50 - Under-3s: free - Family ticket (2 adults + 2 children): £72.00 - Annual pass: £85.00 adult / £55.00 child, includes 20% off in the gift shop and one free guest day each season. Booking online at westlakepark.example normally saves £2 per ticket. Tickets are non-refundable but may be transferred to any date within 12 months.

Travel and parking: - Car park: £6.00 per vehicle per day, payable at the entry barrier. Coaches park free. - The 442 bus from the town centre stops at the park entrance every 30 minutes on weekdays and every 60 minutes at weekends. - The cycle path along the river runs to the park's main gate. Free bicycle racks are located beside the entrance plaza.

Accessibility: - All paths are tarmac and step-free. Manual wheelchairs are available to hire from the information point for £5 a day, returnable by 16:00. A small number of electric mobility scooters are also available; booking in advance is essential. - Assistance dogs are welcome throughout the park except in the Walk-Through Lemur Wood, where guide-dog users are escorted through an alternative viewing route.

House rules: - Do not feed the animals. Food brought from outside the park is not permitted within the animal enclosures or the picnic meadow during summer weekends, when the on-site cafés are open. - Smoking, including e-cigarettes, is restricted to two clearly marked outdoor zones near the car park. - Drones are prohibited everywhere within the park boundary.

Text B — DAILY ANIMAL FEEDING AND TALK TIMES

Westlake Wildlife Park offers a programme of keeper talks throughout the day. All talks are normally free with park admission, typically last approximately 15 minutes, and take place at the relevant enclosure. Talks are weather-dependent and may be cancelled in heavy rain or extreme heat.

Morning: - 10:30 Penguin feeding and talk (penguin pool, near the entrance) - 11:00 Meerkat keeper talk (Kalahari Lookout) - 11:30 Asian elephant breakfast (elephant paddock, weather permitting) - 12:00 Giraffe close encounter — small groups, additional £8 per person, booking required at the information point

Afternoon: - 13:30 Sea lion training session and feeding (Sea Lion Cove amphitheatre) - 14:00 Tiger feeding (rainforest viewing platform; please note the talk does not take place if there are fewer than ten visitors at the start of the slot) - 14:30 Reptile handling session (Reptile House — limited to 20 visitors per session, no children under 6) - 15:30 Bird-of-prey flying display (flying arena; cancellation possible in winds above Force 5)

Evening (summer only): - 17:00 Lemur Wood twilight walk — book at the information point; £5 per person; ends at 17:45 sharp. Notes for visitors: - The Asian elephant paddock and the lemur wood are subject to seasonal rest periods. Check the noticeboard at the main entrance on the day of your visit. - Please remain behind the barriers during keeper talks. Photography is normally permitted, but flash photography is not allowed in the Reptile House at any time. - Lost children should be brought to the information point, where there is a dedicated reuniting area.

Text C — WESTLAKE WILDLIFE PARK: ZOOKEEPER DUTIES HANDBOOK

This handbook summarises the duties of a section keeper at Westlake Wildlife Park. The same principles generally apply across all sections — mammals, reptiles, birds, and aquatics — though specific tasks typically vary.

Daily routine: - Pre-opening (07:00-09:30): visual health check of every animal; provision of fresh water; preparation of morning feed; cleaning of overnight sleeping quarters; setting up enrichment items for the day. - During visitor hours: scheduled keeper talks; ongoing observation of behaviour; spot-cleaning of public areas of the enclosure; assistance with the giraffe close-encounter sessions. - After closing: a final visual check of every animal; recording of daily observations in the keeper log; preparation of the night's enrichment; secure locking of every gate.

Animal contact: - Direct contact with category-A species (large carnivores, elephants, hippos) is only permitted by senior keepers with at least three years' on-park experience. Trainee keepers do not enter category-A enclosures without an experienced keeper present. - Reptile handling is restricted to those who have completed the eight-hour reptile module and have signed the bite-protocol acknowledgement form. - All animal contact requires hand-washing immediately before and after. Where contact is with hoofed mammals, dedicated rubber boots are worn and disinfected at the boot-dip on exit.

Recording and reporting: - Every keeper completes a daily log entry per enclosure. The log captures any change in feed quantity consumed, any change in behaviour, and any observed injury, no matter how minor. - Concerns are normally flagged to the section head verbally during the morning briefing and recorded on the green concern slip. A red slip is used for an animal showing signs of acute illness or injury — these are reviewed by the duty vet within the hour.

Visitor interaction: - A friendly, approachable manner with visitors is part of the role. Common questions (diet, age, conservation status, names) should be answered clearly. Difficult questions about animal welfare should be referred to a senior keeper. - Photography requests from visitors are politely declined when they would interfere with animal care or other visitors' enjoyment. Personal social-media posts about identifiable animals generally require approval from the marketing team.

Text D — ENRICHMENT, TRAINING, AND VETERINARY LIAISON

Enrichment programme: - Every species at the park has a written enrichment plan, normally reviewed quarterly by the senior keeper and the head of animal welfare. Enrichment items typically range from puzzle feeders for primates to scented logs for big cats and floating ice blocks for aquatic species. - Keepers must record which enrichment items have been used each day and the animal's response in two simple categories: 'engaged' or 'no interest.' Where an item produces no interest for five days in a row it is withdrawn and replaced.

Training animals for veterinary procedures: - Many of the park's species are trained to present specific body parts on cue so that the duty vet can perform routine checks (hoof inspections, blood draws, ultrasound) without sedation. This is widely known as cooperative care. Keepers typically contribute around twenty minutes a day to short cooperative-care training sessions during the morning.

Working with the duty vet: - The duty vet is on the park every weekday morning and on call at all other times. Routine checks are normally scheduled at least one week in advance and listed on the veterinary noticeboard. - An emergency referral (a red slip) requires the keeper to remain present at the enclosure until the vet has arrived. Visitors may need to be moved away from the enclosure; this is done by a duty manager rather than the keeper.

Continued professional development: - All section keepers complete a minimum of three CPD days per year. Approved options typically include: external species-specific workshops; a quarterly internal 'animal welfare round-table'; and visiting placements at partner zoos and wildlife sanctuaries. - A current first-aid-at-work certificate is required for all keepers. Renewal courses are normally organised in March and September each year, paid by the park and held during normal working hours.

A Collections of captive wild animals are far older than the modern zoological garden. The Egyptian queen Hatshepsut imported giraffes, baboons, and a leopard from Punt around 1500 BCE for the royal park at Thebes. Chinese emperors of the Western Zhou maintained an enormous 'Garden of Intelligence' at the city of Haojing, in which animals from across the empire were kept for diplomatic display. The Aztec ruler Moctezuma kept a private menagerie at Tenochtitlán so large that, according to the Spanish chronicler Bernal Díaz, three hundred keepers were employed to maintain it. These collections were almost always private — designed to impress visiting dignitaries, demonstrate the reach of the ruler, and provide animals for ceremonial purposes — and were never accessible to the ordinary public.

B The modern zoological garden, by contrast, is essentially an Enlightenment institution. The first scientifically organised zoo, intended both for public display and for systematic study of living animals, was opened in 1752 at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna by the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. The Tiergarten Schönbrunn still operates on the same site and is widely regarded as the oldest continuously running zoo in the world. The Jardin des Plantes in Paris received the animals of the king's menagerie after the Revolution of 1789, and admitted the public in 1793 — the first time a national capital had opened a permanent live-animal collection to its citizens free of charge.

C The phrase 'zoological gardens' first appeared in London in 1828, when the Zoological Society of London, largely founded two years earlier by Sir Stamford Raffles, opened its collection of about three hundred specimens to scientific members in the north-east corner of Regent's Park. The name was abbreviated to 'the Zoo' in popular usage by the 1840s. Initially the collection was open only to society members and their guests, but from 1847 onwards it admitted the paying public, and within a decade the Zoo had become one of London's most popular Sunday excursions. Animal arrivals were major news events: when Jumbo the elephant arrived in 1865, special trains were laid on for visitors from across the country.

D The Victorian zoo was a place of marvel — and also, in the author's view, of unsparing exploitation. Animals were displayed in iron cages on hard concrete or stone, with little or no shelter. Many species lived only a few years in captivity. Some collections went further and exhibited people: so-called 'human zoos' of indigenous people from Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific toured European cities in the second half of the nineteenth century. By the 1900s, growing scientific understanding of animal needs and growing moral discomfort with the older display ethos were combining to push the institution to change.

E The decisive design innovation came from the Hamburg dealer Carl Hagenbeck, whose Tierpark opened in Stellingen on the outskirts of Hamburg in 1907. Hagenbeck abolished bars and built enclosures separated from the public by deep dry moats and concealed retaining walls, creating an illusion of open landscape behind the animals. Zoological gardens around the world copied the design rapidly. Hagenbeck's enclosures gave animals more space, allowed natural behaviour to a far greater extent than iron cages, and produced for visitors an experience that resembled looking into a fragment of the animal's native landscape.

F The next great transformation began in the late twentieth century, driven by the rise of the conservation movement. As the rate of biodiversity loss in the wild accelerated, zoos repositioned themselves as scientific institutions devoted to the breeding of endangered species, the funding of fieldwork, and public education. The Arabian oryx, extinct in the wild by 1972, was successfully reintroduced from captive-bred stock from American and Middle Eastern zoos beginning in 1982. Comparable programmes for the California condor, the European bison, and the golden lion tamarin reportedly all relied on zoo populations for breeding stock and on zoo-based research for the husbandry techniques needed to release them.

G The contemporary zoo is therefore, in the author's view, a hybrid institution: part visitor attraction, part scientific facility, part conservation charity. The largest modern zoos typically employ veterinary specialists, nutritionists, behavioural scientists, and field staff working in the countries from which their species originate. The animal-display style continues to evolve: open-range 'safari park' formats, walk-through enclosures for less dangerous species, and elaborate immersive environments in which the visitor walks through what feels like a habitat of the species concerned. At the same time, debate continues over the welfare of large cetaceans and great apes in captivity, and some institutions have closed exhibits or restructured them in response.

H Two and a half thousand years after Hatshepsut's giraffes were paraded at Thebes, the keeping of wild animals for public viewing remains a contested but enduring practice. Few institutions reflect changing attitudes to the natural world quite so vividly: the history of the zoo is, in miniature, the history of how human beings have decided to see and treat the species with which they share the planet.