AN animal version of the Eden Project will allow visitors to watch creatures such as rhinos, tigers, sharks and bears roaming through recreations of their native habitats.

The zones of the 136-acre park on the edge of Bristol will be based on the ecosystems of the Congo rainforest, Tanzanian savanna, Costa Rican swamp, ancient British woodland and a coral reef.

The idea is to move from the way that traditional zoos and safari parks segregate species and to show, as far as practical, how animals live in the wild.

“Of course we can’t recreate a hugely complex ecosystem but we want visitors to get a feel for what goes on,” said Jo Gipps, director of Bristol Zoo Gardens, who is leading the project. “It’s the notion that we can transport our visitors to actual places, like the Congo basin, that excites us. We will recreate the richness of that place, from the smallest to the largest animals and plants.”

The backers of the National Wildlife Conservation Park are about to seek planning permission for the £70m attraction, due to open in phases beginning in 2012. Part of the money has been pledged by the South West of England Regional Development Agency, and John Cleese, the comedian, is leading a campaign to raise the rest from private investors.

The Eden Project, which opened in 2001 in Cornwall and has become one of Britain’s most successful tourist attractions, pioneered the idea of recreating ecosystems within translucent “biomes”. Almost all its displays, however, consist only of plants and trees.

The Bristol project will take this a stage further by including animals. The Congo jungle exhibit, for example, will be modelled on part of the Lomako forest.

Another zone will show part of the River Congo, its banks teeming with families of chimpanzees, venomous gaboon vipers and glossy ibis. Birds such as the black-billed touraco will live in an aviary in the forest canopy above. Okapi, a striped relative of the giraffe and one of the world’s rarest mammals, will also roam the zone.

In the Sumatra rainforest zone, tigers will be seen among gibbons and orang-utans, while brown bears and wolves will be among species found in the British wood.

The most dramatic building will house an Indian Ocean coral reef. Visitors will follow a stream through a tropical forest inhabited by chameleons and Livingstone’s fruit bats. The stream will lead to a beach where a glass-covered path will descend under the “sea”, allowing visitors to feel that they are mingling with blacktip reef sharks and blue stingray.

The savanna zone, based on Tarangire national park in Tan-zania, will feature warthogs, giraffes and zebra, but because these creatures need space to roam they will live outdoors in adapted fields overlooking the Bristol Channel.

British weather presents a challenge. A spokesman said: “How do you recreate the savanna on a wet Tuesday in February? The answer is, of course, that you do your best.”

Other compromises are being made. The lions and tigers will appear to roam free, but to stop them preying on other beasts – which would upset visitors and deplete the animal stock – they will be confined by discreet electric fences and ditches.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating