Emerald Park

Since its opening in late 2010, Ireland’s only theme park and zoo is located within Ashbourne in County Meath. It used to be called Tayto park, after the factory where the popular Tayto brand of crisps is produced, and thus had a Tayto theme throughout the park. As of 2023, it is now known as Emerald Park (a reference to Ireland’s nickname of the ‘Emerald Isle’) after the Tayto company said they would not be renewing their sponsorship of the park.

My dad and I first visited in February of 2012, and since then we have sporadically visited solely for the zoo, with little interest in any of the theme park rides. Animals kept at Emerald Park include wallabies, emus, meerkats, lemurs, squirrel monkeys, coatis, raccoons, otters, porcupines, corsac foxes, cranes, and bison. The park also has a rather extensive cat collection, including species such as lynx, mountain lions, Amur leopards (the only leopards in Ireland) and Amur tigers. Later years have seen the arrival of fossa (though it wouldn’t last as the two fossa that came to the park in 2016 moved to other zoos two years later), bush dogs, hyraxes, binturongs and golden jackals.

In 2017, the park opened the World of Raptors, which features an arena where a bird of prey show takes place. We watched the show in August of that year, and it was our first time seeing a secretarybird, a white, long-legged bird of prey from Africa. This bird was followed by a barn owl, and interestingly enough, it was world owl day on that day, and earlier we got two papers about the barn owl, one of which tells you how to build a box for barn owls. Other raptors that appeared at the bird of prey show include Spanish imperial eagle, striated caracara, griffon vulture, and peregrine falcon.