Damian Aspinall

John Damian Androcles Aspinall (born 24 May 1960) is an English businessman and conservationist. He has raised and released a number of a zoo-bred lowland gorillas in Gabon.

Aspinall is the son of Jane Gordon Hastings and John Victor Aspinall (d.2000) who was a zoo owner, gambler, founder of Aspers, conservationist and the stepson of Sir George Osborne, 16th Baronet. Aspinall's step-mother is Lady Sarah Aspinall; in 1972, his father had married, (for thethird time), Lady Sarah ("Sally") Courage, widow of the racing driver Piers Courage and daughter of Francis Curzon, 5th Earl Howe (d.1964). From the age of six, Aspinall was educated as a boarderat Millfield School, Somerset.

Aspinall's wealth is estimated to be around £1B. Aspinall acquired his wealth independently in the real estate business, his father refusing to assist him financially. After his father's death in 2000, Damian bought back the family casino interests with the help of Australian associate James Packer, son of Kerry Packer.

He runs the John Aspinall Foundation started by his father, and his stated goal is to breed gorillas and return them to the wild. He manages Howletts Wild Animal Park and nearby Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, where 120 gorillas have been born and 77 presently live.

Successes

Kwibi, the celebrity gorilla released when 5 years old in 2005 in Gabon, had been born and raised at Howletts, a wild animal park in Kent. Aspinall tracked Kwibi in 2010 and the video of the reunion became widely viewed on YouTube.

In October 2019, Aspinall - alongside an international team of conservationists - rescued 11 elephants, 4 giraffe, 19 buffalo and 29 wildebeest from Blaauwbosch in South Africa's Eastern Cape after a sustained period of drought and neglect at a mismanaged game reserve.

In February 2020 The Aspinall Foundation, of which Damian Aspinall is chairman, became the first organisation in the world to send captive bred cheetahs from the UK for rewilding in South Africa. Aspinall personally released the two male cheetah, who were born at Port Lympne, into their new home close to Cape Town.

Controversy

A BBC report in 2014 stated that the facility said that it had "successfully reintroduced more than 50 gorillas back into the wild since 1996" and that the Aspinall Foundation managed two gorilla rescue and rehabilitation projects in Gabon and Congo, respectively. In fact, Aspinall had purchased about a million acres in Africa and turned the area into a park in an attempt to protect gorillas whose numbers have been reducing due to the loss of habitat and poaching. Gorillas from his Port Lympne animal park were being sent to this area.

Aspinall has said he would like to close all zoos and send the captive animals into the wild. Over the years however, not all of the gorillas introduced into Africa survived, possibly due to having been primed to humans and being unable to care for themselves in the wild and attacks by other gorillas. One report in 2014 stated that a family of ten zoo-born silverback gorillas were sent to Gabon and at least five were killed, an outcome many had predicted.

In a 2016 interview, Aspinall blamed one gorilla that the Foundation had released for killing the five others in 2014. He also complained about the negative publicity about the event. "What about the 60 we released that survived? There's no glory if you get it right. We get no press, no publicity - but boy, if anything goes wrong, they jump on you."

Aspinall was married to Louise Elizabeth Julia Sebag-Montefiore (b. 31 July 1962) for 15 years. Louise is the mother of two of Aspinall's daughters; Tansy (1989) and Clary (1992). After his divorce from Louise, Aspinall dated Kirsty Roper and Donna Air, the mother of his third daughter, Freya Air Aspinall (2003). In 2016, Aspinall married Victoria Fisher.