The company that owned Pinjarra’s Ranger Red’s Zoo has gone into insolvency, potentially owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts, but its new owner says he is keeping the zoo open and even has plans to expand to a new location.
Ranger Red’s Zoo and Conservation Park, known as Peel Zoo until 2019, entered voluntary administration on June 18 and has since gone into liquidation through WA Insolvency Solutions.
Bradley ‘Ranger Red’ Holland said the company went into liquidation as he could not come to any other agreement with the family of his late business partner Peter Mascaro, who died in 2022, to allow him to buy out the company.
“The zoo was previously owned by myself and the Mascaro family and the company that we had went into liquidation,” he said.
“My company has come to the rescue of the zoo and taken over the zoo and purchased some of the assets out of the liquidation, and will plow ahead to keep the zoo open.”
WA Insolvency Solutions’s Jimmy Trpcevski has been appointed as liquidator for the original owner of the zoo and said part of the reason the business went into administration was because it “just couldn’t meet its debts”.
“There was (also) a dispute with the shareholder of the company which, according to the director, prevented him from dealing with his day-to-day (expenses) in an orderly way,” Mr Trpcevski said.
“As a consequence of that appointment and based on limited funds that was in the company, (as) the administrators we made a decision to close the business so we didn’t trade on that day (June 18) and we terminated all the staff on that day as well.
“So effectively, the administration ran its course, we’ve done our inquiries and our investigation, and as of a couple of weeks ago the company was placed in liquidation, and Greg (Prout) and myself became liquidators of the company.”
Mr Trpcevski said he and Mr Prout, also at WA Insolvency Solutions, will continue their investigations over the next three months before reporting their findings to creditors and detailing potential courses of action.
Mr Holland said taking over the zoo with his own company had allowed him to re-hire staff members and he had since added a new park manager.
Mr Trpcevski said the original company owed about $800,000 in liabilities to creditors but noted the amount “could significantly decrease” because there were values requiring “further investigation and supporting documentation” to determine their true values.
Mr Holland said he could not comment when asked by the Times if he personally owed money to the creditors.
But he said the zoo had been hit hard when it could not operate during COVID when restrictions were in place, during which he said he was forced to dip into his personal savings to pay staff and feed the animals, meaning that money put aside for renovations “has been eaten up”.
He also said the current cost-of-living crisis meant he was seeing less visitors through the zoo’s gates.
“People are struggling to pay rent and then on top of them trying to pay rent, you’ve got to put food on the table and all those kind of things,” he said.
“Going to the zoo is a luxury and a lot of families just can’t afford that luxury.”
Mr Trpcevski said the licences for owning the zoo’s animals were in Mr Holland’s name, rather than the previous company, making him liable for the care and responsibility of them.
Despite this uncertainty, Mr Holland said he has plans to expand the zoo over the next three years to a new location in Preston Beach, which would see new animals and enclosures added, and the opening of a vet clinic that would service the zoo, as well as native animals being looked after by wildlife carers.
He said the Pinjarra location would stay open as a more “hands-on” zoo experience.