Remembering our past Curator Steve Nasir c. 1999

Steve Nasir from his Facebook profile  (but not with a Newquay Zoo lion!)

Sad news passed on to me by our Curator of Animals John Meek and our Carnivore Keeper Mike Downman, that Steve Nasir our curator at Newquay Zoo from the late 1990s has passed away suddenly.
Back in the days of private ownership by Mike Thomas at Newquay Zoo (1993-2003), Steve joined us as our Curator from Cotswold Wildlife Park (where he worked with Mike Downman). He wrote about this in our Newquay Zoo Paw Prints magazine in July 1999:

Newquay Zoo July 1999 Paw Prints Newsletter  (10b)

Shane or Tina at Newquay Zoo, one of our rescued Pumas from the closed Haigh Zoo 1994

Interesting to read and remember that Steve had had positive connections with us at Newquay Zoo from 1994 onwards, first with our rehoming his two Pumas Tina and Shane from Haigh Mini Zoo in Wigan when it closed in 1994.

They moved into the vacant old 1969 Lion House (recently used from 2003-2016 for Fossa and demolished 2019 to make home for Wallabies). Public fundraising for a new Puma House would go on for about 4 or 5 years opening in 1998/9 and now home to our Carpathian Lynx.

An original  1969 walled enclosure that became Tippy’s Café c. 1999

In 1996 we worked with Steve again, taking on young Tippy our first Brazilian Tapir in 1996 from Cotswold Wildlife Park – after whom Tippy’s our smaller café near the Penguins gained its enduring name, after the white tips on this young Tapir’s ears (officially now the Lazy Lion Grill c. 2019)

Tippy in our 1996 Guidebook

An interesting more personal note about Steve Nasir in the previous May 1999 Paw Prints newsletter (10a):

A sack of old Holborne? Unusual and very personal choices from Steve Nasir. A pen or word portrait.

Unfortunately we appear to have no photos of Steve in our archive from his brief time with us as Curator in 1999 before moving to another zoo. We found some on Facebook. 

Steve, as I remember him,  was a very sociable character, a good storyteller in the pub after work about his many animal exploits. He also talks in his July 1999 article  about pairing up animals. Steve was a one man animal dating agency. With his long zoo experience, he always ‘knew a man who knew a man’ who worked in a zoo who had a match for one of our animals.

Like many keepers of his generation, Steve had moved around different zoo collections quite a lot, working if our memory serves well variously at Chessington Zoo, Haigh Zoo Wigan c. 1994, Cotswold Wildlife Park c. 1994-9, Newquay Zoo in 1999, Flamingoland and WWT Martin Mere from 2013.

WWT Martin Mere’s Twitter Tribute to Steve Nasir 

Our thoughts at this sad time extend to Steve’s family and friends.

RIP Steve Nasir – remembered by an ageing few at Newquay Zoo. I shall think of him, next time I am down getting a coffee at Tippy’s Café, although I think Steve would prefer a pint instead …

Blogposted by Mark Norris, Newquay Zoo Archive blog post 6th February 2020.