Your Local Zoo

I wanted to change the whole DLC prediction, wishlists threads and try something different (if this has been done, well, here's another).

So, as the title says, what's your local zoo, and what do you love about it it (and hate about it, if applicable). What's the best exhibit? What's your favorite animal there? Is there anything there that you kinda base your zoos off of?
 
So, I'll start. My local zoo is the Houston Zoo. I just found out today that it's the 2nd most visited zoo in the US (2 million per year), and it's the 10th best zoo in the US (boo yah).

Recently, in celebration for the centennial next year, they've done a lot of construction and updates. In 2019 they released the Texas Wetlands, housing American alligators, whooping cranes, and a bald eagle they rescued. It is built near a manmade pond (where local animal and ducks come). Overlooking the lake is the Cypress Circle cafe, with a cypress tree in the middle.

Then, next year they released my favorite exhibit: the South American Pantanal. I love it; there's a jaguar, giant otters, a green anaconda, and even a nice, large enclosure with giant anteaters, capybaras, and tapirs. The whole area is just a fun stroll.




And next year in really excited for the Galapagos Islands. Sea lions, Humboldt penguins, Galapagos tortoises. I wish it was autumn 2022 already.
 
I live closest to Yorkshire wildlife park. And I do love it there. Being a wildlife park rather than a zoo means the enclosures are amazing. They have rescued multiple animals, it all started when they rescued some lions from Romania. My favourite every time I go is the polar bears. They are always playing with each other or in the lakes. They recently got sea lions from whipsnade and the enclosure is brilliant compared to what they used to have.

But....the zoo that has my heart is chester. Its the first zoo I visited with my boyfriend and we always spend all day there and feel like we could spend more time. My favourite there is the monsoon forest or the chimps. We always head straight for the chimps. The only thing that bothers me is with it being an older zoo the enclosures are nothing on the wildlife park.
 
I wanted to change the whole DLC prediction, wishlists threads and try something different
Oh thank god lmao

Roger Williams Park Zoo. Capron Park Zoo. Mystic Aquarium. The absolute trifecta that have indulged me in so many different experiences for animals and interactions alike. It was really fun even having the chance to recreate a couple of these with my buddy NicholasLionRider. Just a bunch of very unique species held in these areas that you don't really see too commonly outside of New England.
 
Wildlands Adventure Zoo Emmen

Love about the Zoo:
The look of the zoo. It's a zoo with multiple themed parts. It's only a couple of years old (after moving from their old location with a more traditional look) and actually resembles a lot of DLC.
Serenga section = Africa building pieces, Nortica section = Aquatic building pieces and Jungola section = SA building pieces. And has multiple rides.

Dislike about the zoo:
The species and visibility of those species. My hobby is photography and moved to other zoos for that. It used to be one of my favorites. The amount of species is improving, though.

Best habitat:
The safari ride. It's a mixed habitat with a truck tour.
 
My local is Orana Wildlife Park. I used to work there a while ago. I've been visiting since I was a little kid and watched it evolve.

What I love is how open and spread out it is. It's definitely not a world-class zoo and has a fairly small budget, but the majority of habitats use natural barriers and provide a lot of space. My favourite habitats are the native bird free-flight aviary, which is currently being renovated, and the Great Ape Centre. The GAC holds two male western lowland gorillas, and for a time was home to Auckland Zoo's orangutans while their habitat underwent renovations, which was an incredible thing to see. However the park has been unable to source its own orangutans so now their side of the habitat is home to siamang gibbons, but they look incredible in there.

Orana also maintains the most successful cheetah breeding programme in the southern hemisphere.

What I don't like is generally the staff. Unfortunately the business model has become very nepotist in recent years, with underqualified people being hired and promoted based on who they know within the trust that runs the place. Their head keeper for carnivores (which includes tigers, lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, and others) is a girl who is trained as a vet nurse, not a zookeeper. The most galling thing is that the starting position is in their barnyard section, so often they have freshly trained zookeepers working with kunekune pigs and llamas while this girl who is barely out of high school is dealing with the management of two prides of lions and a pair of critically endangered tigers.

In game I often recreate their many random herbivore habitats. While I tend to buff up my African animals to a higher standard, I like to do simplistic enclosures for animals like the reindeer, American bison, and Dall sheep based on Orana's habitats (which include bison, yak, waterbuck, zebras, addax, I believe nyala now, and others).
 
Burger's Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands

I love the biome themed domes in the zoo. There's an actual tropical rainforest you can walk through, and a desert, and a mangrove, among others. They all match the temperature, moisture level, and flora of their respective biomes, and of course the animals! The zoo is divided into several sections based on biomes, and is as much a botanical wonder as it is a beautiful expose of the animal kingdom.
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The best habitat in my opinion is in the mangrove section and it is for Manatees. When I'm there I feel like I am on the other side of the world.
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Brookfield Zoo, outside Chicago. Grew up on this zoo. Very large and very old zoo. they were one of, if not the first zoo, to start creating cage-less habitats for the animals. Some of the buildings are original and very outdated, but they have been making strides to update and improve. I have always like Tropic World as it was revolutionary back when it was built, but this is also showing its age and needs to be redone. The zoo I'm building in the game is designed off the future master plan I dug up for Brookfield Zoo.

Lincoln Park Zoo - run by the park district of Chicago and located on the shore of Lake Michigan. Smaller more compact zoo, but again a favorite. They too have changed over the years, but the location can't be beat. They had/have a great ape program and I was blessed to have a close cousin that worked with this program for many years.

Now - I'm in SW Florida and the closest home zoo is Napes Zoo. A way small zoo compared to other big cities, but it has one really cool exhibit. The monkeys and lemurs all reside on islands out in a good size lake. So ringed lemurs are one island, gibbons on an other. As I understand it, monkeys do not like water and will not swim off the islands as long as they are cared for and fed. A pontoon boat ride takes you around the islands for pretty close up views of the critters. A really different and nice approach to view them.
 
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I didn't have a local zoo as a kid and I had only visited some zoos while doing tourism in other cities. Then I moved to Finland and Helsinki Zoo has become my local zoo. It's actually called Korkeasaari, which means high island.

It is a modest zoo which focuses mostly on animals that can cope with the cold, so there are very little African or tropical animals. What I like the most is that the zoo is an island and is very natural. You can get there walking over a pedestrian bridge or by boat, so no cars on the island. Most of the habitats are big and they basically just put a fence around the natural landscape of the island. There are no big buildings or supermodern facilities.

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They have a nice range of cats: snow leopards, Siberian tigers, Asiatic lions, Amur leopards, Eurasian lynx and wild cats, and they are usually active, because they don't have to hide from the heat. I had never seen a snow leopard moving in other zoos, and here they are one of my favourite animals.

There are also many European animals which are on the spotlight, including Alpine marmots, reindeer, lynx, bearded vultures, pine marten, Eurasian otter, European bison, musk ox, wolverine, and wild boars. The moose died and have unfortunately been replaced by takins. However, the big stars of the zoo are the Eurasian brown bears, which are my favourite animals in the park. In all my visits, they are the only animals that are always active doing things. There's a restaurant in which you can eat watching the bears through a glass.

The only bad thing is that the zoo is not very big and I miss some more species. I understand that they don't have polar bears because there's no much space available for them, but I wish they had penguins, artic foxes (they have the fennec), seals, beavers and wolves, for example.
 
I love this thread!❤️My local zoo would be the New York City Zoos which include the well known Bronx Zoo and Central Park Zoo as well as smaller lesser known zoos such as the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn and the Queens Zoo in… well Queens. All of these zoos are at least 30 minutes away at minimum so I don’t go very often. The Queens Zoo is a zoo made up of entirely animals from North and South America. It’s a small zoo featuring animals such as Cougars, Elk, Pronghorn, Bison, Sea Lions, Peccaries, and Andean Bears. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of a zoo that features animals only from North America, so some inspiration has been drawn from the zoo, definitely. ZooAmerica is a zoo in Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA that includes animals from only North America, which I draw inspiration from often as well.

When I was building my classical zoo back in May, I really took inspiration from both the Prospect Park Zoo and the Central Park Zoo. The Bronx Zoo is a huge zoo with which I take a lot of inspiration from. I was actually super bummed when I found out that the Monorail in the game was only one car and I couldn’t really replicate the monorail from the Bronx Zoo. Not a zoo, but the New York Aquarium in Coney Island is also one I’ve been to a many times (I’ve been to all of these at least once with the Bronx Zoo being the most)

I know this is a little off topic but my favorite zoo is the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., USA. And yes, I’ve been to the San Diego Zoo, but I still think the National Zoo is better!
 
Here in Guatemala we only have one zoo "La Aurora Zoo", is not very big but I would say it has great habitats and wellfare!
It has plenty of different animals including giraffes, meerkats and hippos but it is only so much it can have for its size.
 
A lot of these zoos are amazing, beautiful.

Another zoo (of sorts) is located in Galveston, TX. Moody Gardens, 3 large pyramids. 1 is a museum (never been), 1 is an aquarium, and the 3rd is a jungle walkthrough.

The aquarium has many nice tanks, some small sharks and penguin (it's been many years since I've been). The jungle pyramid has monkeys, stingrays, birds (also been many years).

The only other one I know about is the Houston Downtown Aquarium, but I don't enjoy it as much, and it's very small
 
John Ball Zoo is my local zoo. My favorite animal is the lions. You can hear them roaring throughout the zoo especially on rainy days. Love the lions roar there’s really nothing quite like it. The best exhibit I’d say probably belongs to the Siberian tigers. They have two different sections connected by a tiger trail which the tigers can walk from one to the other. My likes are the zoo has grown a lot since I was a kid and I have many great memories there with my own family and when I was a kid. My dislikes or nitpicks if you will is it is a small city zoo so space is somewhat limited. They were going to relocate when I was younger which would have given them much more space but it was voted down. I’d love for them to get a pair of rhinos but there’s simply just not enough room. They have gotten meerkat, African porcupines, giant anteaters , and a few other animals I’m yet to see since Covid. Anyway I love the zoo and feel very lucky to have it about 5-7 miles from my house. Detroit zoo is about 3-4 hrs away. And then a place called Boulder ridge is a animal park about 50 minutes away.
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Chimp exhibit
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One thing I implement into my planet zoo builds is just the fact I always do a temperate or taiga zoo simply because the majority of zoos I’ve been to the climate is always a temperate atmosphere. Truth be told I struggle at tropical zoos and much prefer temperate or taiga.
 
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My favorite local "zoo" is Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. I live closer to the Central Florida Zoo, Animal Kingdom, and SeaWorld, and they all have their own strengths and weaknesses but, Busch Gardens was always that magical place growing up for me. The park combines my love of theme parks and animals in a perfect way. This park, along with Animal Kingdom, are the main reasons I always tend to build with highly themed areas and storytelling galore. I used to love Rhino Ralley, an old ride the hide that drove you through the animals and eventually lead you to river rapids. I love their large expansive Serenghetti Plains which take up almost half of the park. There are views of the plains from almost the whole park. They have a bunch of up-close animal encounters and there's almost always an animal on every corner. Recently they seem to not be putting as much focus into adding animal experiences and prefer to add more rides (as the rest of the SeaWorld company is doing). A part of me is devasted that these cost-reducing measures are making the park look more generic and not as story-driven as it once was. (If you want that go to Animal Kingdom).

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Australia Zoo's mine - just down the mountain, 20 minutes away. Most of it is very Australian landscape, but being in Queensland more tropical than other Australian Zoo's and I took photo's years ago of the Asian inspired Elephant enclosure - the theming was really nice where the people accumulate - but a bit barren as one of the other photos shows. It's quite expensive to get in - but everything in Australia is really expensive so par for the course . . . Every shot of the Elephants was this angle - they just would not turn around.
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Would really like this pot for my property though.
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I have three main local zoos, and it's hard to say which is my favourite given they're all so different! I know there's a couple smaller zoos nearby that I've managed to not visit yet (Warrawong Sanctuary and Gorge Wildlife Park) but I'm sure I'll get around to them sometime.

Adelaide Zoo could be considered my true "local" zoo given it's the closest to me and the one I've visited most throughout my life. The second oldest zoo in Australia, it isn't awfully big at only 20 hectares (which is what happens when you're situated in the middle of a capital city) but still manages to squeeze in some 300 species, specialising in Australian, South American, African and South-east Asian fauna.

The main consequence of the zoo's size is that they now have trouble housing many of the larger species up to modern welfare standards, but in recent times they've largely negated that problem by moving most of the big stuff to Monarto Safari Park and focusing largely on smaller species (the largest animals there currently are giraffes, and they've had their enclosure nearly doubled in size from what it was when I was a kid to allow them to stay). Out of the remaining megafauna exhibits, the lion enclosure is definitely too small but they've avoided that welfare issue by basing the lions at Monarto and only cycling individuals through Adelaide Zoo for a limited period of time.

It's also the only zoo in the Southern Hemisphere with Giant Pandas, so they tend to be the zoo's main "draw" species used in marketing and such. As part of Zoos SA's 20 year master plan there will be all sorts of exciting changes coming to the zoo over the next few years, and we've already seen some great new additions recently such a Komodo dragon and a pair of dingoes.

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The other branch of Zoos SA is Monarto Safari Park, which until recently was called Monarto Zoo, and it lies about an hour out of the city. While Adelaide Zoo is pretty small, Monarto is contrastingly the largest safari park in Australia at around 1,500 hectares, and was originally established by the former zoo in 1983 as a closed-to-the-public, purpose breeding area and endangered species sanctuary only to be opened up as a zoo and educational facility a decade later. The lion enclosure alone could fit the entirety of Adelaide Zoo with room to spare.

While the species diversity is lesser, Monarto has a much greater variety of large mammals including highly endangered species such as scimitar-horned oryx, addax, Przewalski's horse, black rhinoceros, Mesopotamian fallow deer and African wild dog. More than half of the animals on the site aren't even on display, but participate in backstage breeding programs. The park can be navigated either by the shuttlebuses that take you through the various enclosures, or you can take the various walking trails that pass through native mallee scrub inhabited by all sorts of interesting wildlife. Monarto Safari Park is also a part of Zoos SA's 20 year master plan and will change even more dramatically, and the new Wild Africa section (currently well underway) will nearly double the size of the already enormous park.

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Cleland Wildlife Park is the only one of the "big three" South Australian zoos not to be part of Zoos SA, but nonetheless it sets itself apart through its large and varied collection of native wildlife from across the state. Located in the centre of the scenic Cleland Conservation Park in the Adelaide Hills, just outside the city, the majority of the park consists of walkthrough enclosures that allow visitors to interact with a variety of animals including many species of kangaroos and wallabies, emus, potoroos, bandicoots, waterfowl and aviary birds, as well as many non-contact species displayed in separated exhibits throughout. It's probably got my favourite atmosphere of all the local zoos, and I've always wished there were enough Australian species in the game to build something like it. Cleland Wildlife Park also has a proposed master plan that could see big changes come to the park, but unlike Zoos SA I don't know if that's in action yet. One of the most exciting planned additions for me is a new nocturnal facility complete with platypus!

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I didn't have a local zoo as a kid and I had only visited some zoos while doing tourism in other cities. Then I moved to Finland and Helsinki Zoo has become my local zoo. It's actually called Korkeasaari, which means high island.

It is a modest zoo which focuses mostly on animals that can cope with the cold, so there are very little African or tropical animals. What I like the most is that the zoo is an island and is very natural. You can get there walking over a pedestrian bridge or by boat, so no cars on the island. Most of the habitats are big and they basically just put a fence around the natural landscape of the island. There are no big buildings or supermodern facilities.

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They have a nice range of cats: snow leopards, Siberian tigers, Asiatic lions, Amur leopards, Eurasian lynx and wild cats, and they are usually active, because they don't have to hide from the heat. I had never seen a snow leopard moving in other zoos, and here they are one of my favourite animals.

There are also many European animals which are on the spotlight, including Alpine marmots, reindeer, lynx, bearded vultures, pine marten, Eurasian otter, European bison, musk ox, wolverine, and wild boars. The moose died and have unfortunately been replaced by takins. However, the big stars of the zoo are the Eurasian brown bears, which are my favourite animals in the park. In all my visits, they are the only animals that are always active doing things. There's a restaurant in which you can eat watching the bears through a glass.

The only bad thing is that the zoo is not very big and I miss some more species. I understand that they don't have polar bears because there's no much space available for them, but I wish they had penguins, artic foxes (they have the fennec), seals, beavers and wolves, for example.
Korkeasaari, or Högholmen as it is known in Swedish (Helsinki is officially bilingual), is possibly my favourite zoo and one I really enjoy visiting when I can. I like the peaceful atmosphere and the island setting.

There isn’t a zoo where I live now in northern Sweden and whilst there are zoos further away in other parts of Sweden, in non-pandemic times Helsinki is just as easy to get to.

Do they have takin again? I remember when they had them previously as they were my favourites. Then they replaced them with elk/moose.

I have heard from time to time that they plan to get penguins. They used to have seals near the bears and briefly held a rescued Lake Saimaa ringed seal in the otter enclosure but it died.

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They had a master plan including a very ambitious polar bear enclosure but I think that was scrapped.
 
Hah all you people With your giant Zoos dont scare me.
My hometown might only have an aquarium and a forest park With local german fauna and free entry, but that doesnt stop me from participating.

I would like to focus on the aquazoo Düsseldorf, which is half aquarium, half museum and based on the collection of a scientist, mostly fossils, minerals and invertebrates that He made accessible to the public and is now in his memory a sanctuary for the conservation of the Small creatures He loved so much, especally amphibeans.
The Zoos was renovated some years ago and has an evolution theme in its main path through the Building, as well as a focus on the history of the exploration of the ocean.
You start at a full size spermwhale Skeleton and puffins, moving through the deep sea, coralreefs, a big and beautuful tank With sharks and rays, before experiencing the amazonas With a tropical sphere connecting multiple big tanks, in which balistars are kept and breed well.
Then after moving past mudskippers the path concentrates on amphibians and reptilans, before crossing a tropical sphere With crocodiles and butterfly, before Ending the animal part With Small mamals and moving into invertebrates and the museum.
Through it all is a Lot of fun educational material, for example an ichtyostega skelleton With the amphibeans.
But the coolest part are their ambassador animals!
Its just so nice to spread awareness to smaller creatures, With the biggest ambassador being a madagadcar phython.
Other ambassadors include a three legged bearded dragon rescue, a fiendish octopus, a red toad that travelled in a shoe from south africa by accident called simba or some very chonky pufferfish rescues.
But the Most iconic and sadly deadest was Nemo, the asian small clawed otter, raised by hand after his mother rejected him He became one of the mascots of our city and conservation.
He was often introduced to important visitors or present at educational events, or sometimes you could just See him and a keeper go on a walk in the surounding park.
But for my favourite animal i have to say its Urmel, the papua monitor! Hes great, i love him, i patted him once as hes also an ambassador animal and hes just great!
 
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