The Highland Wildlife Park is at Kincraig, thirteen kilometres south-west of Aviemore, and it is run by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland — the same charity that runs Edinburgh Zoo. That matters, because it means the park is a conservation and breeding operation with visitors on it, rather than a roadside collection.
It works differently from a normal zoo, and the difference is the point.
The visit divides in two.
The main reserve is a drive-through: you take your own car slowly through a large enclosure holding European bison, red deer, Przewalski’s horses — the last truly wild horse species, extinct in the wild and reintroduced from zoo stock — elk, yak and Highland cattle. The animals have space and the cars move at walking pace among them.
It takes around half an hour, and it is genuinely different from watching animals through a fence.
The walk-round section holds the specialist collections: polar bears, which are the park’s best-known residents and are kept in some of the largest enclosures in Europe; Amur tigers; snow monkeys; wolves; snowy owls; Arctic foxes; and Scottish wildcats.
Worth singling out. The Scottish wildcat is functionally extinct in the wild — the remaining population has been so heavily hybridised with domestic cats that it is not considered viable — and the Highland Wildlife Park runs the conservation breeding programme that represents the species’ realistic future, with animals bred here for release.
For most visitors this is the only place they will ever see one. It is a small, unspectacular-looking animal in an unremarkable enclosure and it is among the most significant things in the park.
The park occupies a hillside above Strathspey with the Cairngorms behind it, and the setting does a good deal of work. The species are chosen to suit it: northern, montane and cold-climate animals, many of them species that once lived in Scotland — bison, elk, wolves, lynx, bear — which makes the park an argument about what this landscape used to hold as much as a collection.
Time: half a day. The drive-through takes thirty minutes and the walk-round an hour and a half to two.
Weather: it works in rain — the animals are northern species and are entirely unbothered — and there are indoor viewing points and a café.
Accessibility: the walk-round section is on a hillside with paths; the drive-through requires a car, and a shuttle bus operates for visitors without one.
Booking: advisable in the school holidays.
Facilities: café, shop, toilets and picnic areas.
By car: thirteen kilometres south-west of Aviemore on the B9152 at Kincraig, signposted from the A9. A car is the natural way to visit because of the drive-through.
By bus: services run along the A9 corridor to Kincraig; the park runs a shuttle through the reserve for visitors arriving without a car.
By train: Kingussie is the nearest station, a few kilometres away.
Loch Insh at Kincraig, next door, has watersports and a beach. Ruthven Barracks and Kingussie are a few kilometres south, and the Highland Folk Museum at Newtonmore is a little further — all three make a good afternoon after a morning at the park.
Both. A drive-through main reserve with bison, deer and Przewalski’s horses, and a walk-round section with polar bears, tigers, wolves and wildcats.
Yes — the park runs a shuttle bus through the drive-through reserve for visitors arriving on foot or by public transport.
Half a day: about thirty minutes for the drive-through and an hour and a half to two hours walking the rest.
Yes, and in some of the largest polar bear enclosures in Europe. They are the park’s best-known animals.
Because the park runs the conservation breeding programme for a species that is functionally extinct in the wild, with animals bred here for release.