I have an update on progress at
Monterey Zoo, but first here is my 7-paragraph review of the facility from my
Snowleopard's 2017 Road Trip thread:
An hour south of Santa Cruz, and about half-an-hour from Monterey and its world-class aquarium, lies the inland city of Salinas and the somewhat infamous
Monterey Zoo. This facility is closed to the public except for a daily one-hour tour that starts promptly at 1:00 and on some days in the summer there is a second, 3:00 tour. I arrived at this zoo with very low expectations as I’ve never met anyone who has visited and from what I’d seen online I didn’t have my hopes up. However, I always maintain that every single zoo is worth visiting at least once, partly because “it is there” but also because each zoo deserves an opportunity to reveal itself to an individual. I’ll visit any zoo once and there are hundreds of facilities that I’ll never go back to again but at least I give them all a shot. I found that Monterey Zoo was a real mixed-bag, with some atrocious cages but there is a wave of optimism that gave me hope for the future. The zoo has radically changed in the past 3 years as before that it was regarded as a roadside hellhole.
There were enough visitors signed up for the 1:00 tour so that we were all divided up into two groups, with a tour guide for each crowd. I travelled around in a cluster with about 20 others and our guide was a joke-cracking lady who wore a microphone around her head that was turned on just loud enough to amplify her voice but not loud enough to scare the neighbours. I was impressed immediately, as sometimes on guided tours the presenter’s voice can become drowned out with other noises. I found out that it has only been in the last few years that Monterey Zoo actually became a non-profit zoological garden as before that for a long time it was a training facility for animals that appeared in movies, stages and on television. All the basic, cement-and-wire metal cages were simply holding pens for the animals when they were not touring or being featured elsewhere. As the modern world of cinema has used computer generated images instead of real animals, places with performing critters have understandably suffered.
The first 30 minutes of the tour is the old section of the zoo, which is nothing but tiny metal cages and what amounted to just about the worst zoo I’ve seen in my life. Clay Center Zoo in Kansas still has that title, but at Monterey Zoo there are species such as two leopards (a spotted and a black), African Lion, Caracal, Siberian Lynx, Spotted Hyena, Red Fox, Hamadryas Baboon, Ring-Tailed Lemur, Red Kangaroo, Capybara, Binturong, Patagonian Cavy, American Alligator and Brown Pelican in absolutely disgustingly tiny cages that are lacking enrichment, space or anything worthwhile. In just about every single example there is only the one animal; therefore, I mean one Capybara in a black bucket of water, one Spotted Hyena in a nasty little cement cage, etc. It is fascinating to be able to see the animals so close and the guide gushed forth a lot of information, but this part of the zoo is simply pitiful and downright disgraceful.
However, the good news is that there are a number of cages in the old part of the zoo that are sitting there empty: a trio of metal cages for bears that made me cringe to even imagine bears living in them, several primate cages, and several empty blocks where cages have been torn down and removed. As bad as this area currently is, the situation used to be much worse even up until 2014. The tour guide said that there came a point where a decision had to be made whether to abolish the idea of a zoo or radically transform the entire park into a non-profit venture and a “proper zoo”. The latter idea was chosen and things have altered considerably since then. A brand-new Warthog exhibit has been built and it is quite good and on top of that I was amazed to learn that every single day the Warthog is taken out for walks on a leash! A new Camelid pair of enclosures (Alpacas, Dromedaries, Llamas) has also been constructed near the zoo’s entrance. Elsewhere, the Binturong is removed daily and carried around as it is tame enough to pet, and the two elderly Ring-Tailed Lemurs both are leashed and even taken inside the main house to sleep at night if it gets too cold. Any visitors staying on-site in the “Safari Bungalows” get to meet an animal or two outside of its regular enclosure.
At the back of the zoo is a large paddock that the guide claims to be 5 acres in size, although it was difficult to ascertain the accuracy of that statement as all visitors had to stay behind a certain line and we only had the one clear angle of the habitat. Inside that exhibit are 4 African Elephants, an Ostrich, a Plains Zebra and 2 Asian Water Buffalo, all cohabiting together. For an extra fee of $7 per person, on top of the regular $15 for the guided tour, visitors can feed the elephants by standing back and allowing the trunks to do all the work. At this point the two tour groups merged and about half fed the elephants while the other half moved on to the last section of the zoo. I should make mention of the fact that it was quite extraordinary to see the zebra, ostrich and buffalo mingling with the 4 elephants and in terms of size the elephant paddock is certainly a very good one. However, there is only the one pool far away from visitors and only one very tiny shade structure in a bland, barren field.
The old part of the zoo was a disaster, then the Warthog and African Elephant exhibits perked things up a bit, but the final part of the zoo received huge praise from the crowd. There were cries of “wow…now we’re talking!...this is incredible…what a great zoo” as we walked up a sloping wooden ramp and entered the land of Oz. Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! In August, 2015, two large tiger exhibits made their debut, then in April, 2016, two spacious lion exhibits opened to the public, and now in 2017 two bear enclosures completed Phase 1 of the brand-new Monterey Zoo. The guide announced to the whole crowd that what we were about to see was “bigger, better and much more modern than anything the San Francisco Zoo or Santa Barbara Zoo gives their carnivores” and I’d have to agree with her. The 6 new enclosures (2 for African Lions, 2 for American Black Bears, 2 for generic zoo tigers, including a white one) are essentially large black metal cages but these particular habitats have plenty of grass, hills of sand, climbing structures, pools and are quite spacious in size. I saw lions sleeping high on their wooden beams, a tiger splashing the edge of its pool, and bears rambling around the grass and I have to admit that the lion exhibits are miles better than anything at San Francisco Zoo, Santa Barbara Zoo and even the San Diego Zoo carnivore grottoes and Elephant Odyssey big cat enclosures. At Monterey there is even a series of extra-large, beautiful new signs, a small picnic area with a lion statue and a brand-new set of washrooms. Walking up to that higher level of the zoo was like walking into an entirely different facility. The 6 new enclosures are all functional but vast improvements on the tiny holding pens at the bottom of the hill and they wouldn’t look out of place at any major American zoo.
After a decade or more where basically nothing new happened at the zoo there has been substantial investment and the future looks a lot brighter. Now that there have been great new additions for tigers (2015), lions (2016) and black bears (2017), what's next for Monterey Zoo? I picked up a magazine in the zoo’s gift shop that has computer-generated images of a new leopard exhibit and a new Spotted Hyena habitat and the guide said that the plans and designs for those exhibits are finished and the zoo is now awaiting funding for the projects. There is a grand total of 51 acres of land and the old zoo was 5 acres and the plan is to turn Monterey Zoo into a 30-acre facility that is open on a daily basis with regular zoo hours. I think that if I had visited several years ago I would have been appalled, but with the closing down of at least 8-9 old cages and the opening up of the excellent new section, now I’m eager to go back one day as long as the zoo continues its upward trajectory. I’m really hoping that plans don’t stall because if progress continues then this could be a nice little addition to anyone’s zoo trip itinerary and possibly a decent zoo in the future.
End of Review
Update:
Now that it is 2021, it is interesting to visit the
Monterey Zoo website and see all of the numerous changes that have occurred at the zoo during the past few years. Those 6 new exhibits for lions, tigers and black bears were ones I discussed during my review, but the link below contains 17 photos of the zoo and there has been steady progress down in southern California. That includes a new warthog exhibit, a new cougar exhibit for the zoo's 3 cougars, new caracal, Siberian lynx and serval enclosures, yet more new habitats for alligators, kangaroos, coatis, raccoons, badgers and various monkeys, plus several brand-new aviaries.
Here are the photos:
Donate | Monterey Zoo
When I visited
Monterey Zoo in 2017 there was a daily, one-hour tour for guests but now the zoo is open 5 hours per day, 7 days per week, and it appears that almost the entire zoo has been rebuilt during the past decade. The zoo still has two African elephants, and the use of free contact with the elderly ex-circus elephants has been criticized, but that fact aside Monterey Zoo has clearly invested a lot of time and money into overhauling its enclosures and I would not hesitate to revisit whenever I'm back in California. With so many roadside menageries still in existence throughout the United States, seeing Monterey Zoo reinvent itself has been heartwarming. In fact, the zoo received ZAA accreditation for the first time in 2020. The zoo is only 30 minutes east from the world-class
Monterey Bay Aquarium, which would make for a great combination for a traveler!
I also posted a very long and detailed review in the thread Snowleopard's 2017 Road Trip.
But yeah, for the melanistic morphs it depends more on where they live.