Bucket list of Australian zoos I'd most like to visit:
- Warrawong Sanctuary, Urimbirra Wildlife Park - These are both small, lower budget native wildlife parks, and I'm mainly keen to visit them because they're zoos in my local region I haven't visited yet. Warrawong also has the only remaining platypus population on mainland South Australia, but they live semi-wild in a big lake so I wouldn't really consider them captive
- Taronga Zoo, Melbourne Zoo, Perth Zoo - Just the big capital city zoos I haven't been to yet, also have quite a few species I haven't seen in zoos yet
- Wild Life Sydney Zoo - Sets itself apart from most other wildlife parks by being set indoors, right on the Darling Harbour
- Healesville Sanctuary - First place platypus were bred in captivity, also one of the biggest native fauna parks in Australia
- David Fleay Wildlife Park - Home to some really cool species like the bridled nailtail wallaby, Proserpine rock wallaby and Lumholtz's tree kangaroo. David Fleay, the park's founder and namesake, was also a pretty legendary Australian biologist - he's the person who first bred platypus at Healesville
- Territory Wildlife Park - Houses a bunch of species from the tropical Northern Territory not kept in captivity anywhere else in the world, and if the Alice Springs Desert Park is anything to go by it'll probably be one of my favourite zoos
Some zoos in the surrounding region I’m interested in:
- Auckland Zoo, New Zealand
- Zoological & Forest Park, New Caledonia (I actually will be visiting Noumea later this year but only very briefly so I'm not sure I'll have the time to visit the park - that's the best way for me to see kagu and a bunch of other New Caledonian endemics though!)
- Singapore Zoo, Singapore
- Night Safari, Singapore
- Port Moresby Nature Park, Papua New Guinea
Of course visiting a whole bunch of zoos in Europe and North America would be amazing, but there are so many that I wouldn't know where to start with choosing between them!
