Having lived at the zoo throughout his childhood, Whitnall’s earliest memories involve animals. “Back in the 1990s, granddad hand-reared tiger cubs,” he says. “My first memory is walking around the back garden with them. I worked at the zoo and was the youngest ever zoo-keeper in Britain – aged 11; I got an award and went on Blue Peter. I started with reptiles, birds and in the farmyard. As I got older it became small mammals: red pandas, meerkats, coatis and racoons.”
It sounds like the type of life every schoolboy dreams of, but Whitnall is circumspect. “The zoo went through waves,” he explains. “Growing up, I saw animals in cages, and there was a lot of politics… It played on my mind quite a lot.”
Cash flow problems saw the zoo – which had been his grandfather’s pride and joy – start to slip backwards. By the time Whitnall took up a scholarship at Bournemouth University in 2014 to study television production, he’d made up his mind to leave wildlife behind.
Life had other ideas. Under the management of his indomitable mother, Lynn, and father, Craig, Whitnall returned to Paradise Wildlife Park to combine his two interests – conservation issues and social media. While in charge of the now-rechristened Hertfordshire Zoo’s social media accounts, his viral videos attracted CBBC who, during lockdown, sent cameras to follow Whitnall, and his brothers Aaron and Tyler, as they helped manage the zoo. Five series later, One Zoo Three has catapulted him to celebrity status and turned him into an Instagram star, with 800,000 followers.
He is keenly aware, however, of the delicate balance between the natural world in reality and the version of it that is portrayed on our screens. “I’m so conscious of how I’m communicating. Social media is the most draining part of my work. It affects me more than I’d like. On the other hand, I’m aware it can be the most powerful way of communicating and educating my audience. I wouldn’t be here today without the power of social media.”
The evidence is in front of us. The project to save Yuna and the other Ukrainian lions would never have happened without social media. It’s how Whitnall discovered Yuna’s plight and, when he offered to re-home her, the Animal Rescue Centre in Kyiv asked if he could take the other four. To fund the rescue, he also persuaded followers to donate over £500,000 to transport them out of the war zone and build the Lion Rescue Centre at the Big Cat Sanctuary.