Biggest, bestest, exhibit of all time..!

@Taccachantrieri: the Calgary Zoo website has a a few generic diagrams of its "Project Discovery" project, and like you said that cost has ballooned to $133 million. It's amazing to think that the beluga whale pool has been eliminated (partly due to cost and partly to public opposition in Calgary) and yet the cost is still astronomical.

On a different topic, have you visited the zoo since August? I know that the elephant birth was a success, but how do you rate the $10 million expansion of the elephant exhibit? And most importantly, with the horribly cold weather that Calgary has been experiencing, are the elephants locked inside 100% of the time? It seems that with minus 5-15 degrees being the norm over the past two months that the hippos, gorillas, giraffes, elephants, etc won't have seen natural light in all of that time.
 
Should Calgary be spending its money on Tropical Halls for they're exotics instead..?
 
@NZ Jeremy: the Calgary Zoo spent $33 million on "Destination Africa", which opened to the public in January 2003. There are gorillas, hippos, giraffe, african-crested porcupines, colobus monkeys, etc housed in massive indoor halls. The problem with such an endeavour is that the animals spend 6 months of their life trapped inside, as the weather in Calgary is snow, snow and more snow for around 6 months of every year. A $10 million expansion of the elephant exhibit was completed in 2007, but again the animals aren't allowed outside in poor weather conditions.

It's gratifying to see that the zoo's next major project is the $133 million polar bear, arctic fox, seals, penguin (several species) Arctic/Antarctic project...but they are still waiting on federal funding from the Canadian government for what is supposedly going to be the size of a football field.

The Calgary Zoo is a decent establishment, regarded as the #2 zoo in the nation after the massive Toronto Zoo. Calgary only has about 1,200 animals as compared to Toronto's 5,000...but has improved considerably over the past twenty years.
 
snowleopard said:
@NZ Jeremy: the Calgary Zoo spent $33 million on "Destination Africa", which opened to the public in January 2003. There are gorillas, hippos, giraffe, african-crested porcupines, colobus monkeys, etc housed in massive indoor halls. The problem with such an endeavour is that the animals spend 6 months of their life trapped inside, as the weather in Calgary is snow, snow and more snow for around 6 months of every year. A $10 million expansion of the elephant exhibit was completed in 2007, but again the animals aren't allowed outside in poor weather conditions.
Click to expand...

I think it is only normal that some animals aren't allowed outside in poor weather conditions. It would be dangerous for them if they did go out, I think.

I'm not sure whether the indoors are adequate at Calgary. Indeed I agree in many zoos they aren't ,whereas they should be. This is mainly so in the more northern and also many temperate zoos.

I don't so much have a problem with animals in indoor enclosures (at least, smaller ones) that represent biomes( Burgers' ecodisplays, for example).
But I understand your problem. As many indoors aren't adequate, I must agree.
Sad, it is. If these animals have to spent much of their time inside, then built adequate enclosures.
And they should also be able to see daylight, instead of being locked up in cages with only artificial light.

I agree to a certain extent a lot of animals need outside enclosures.
Maybe, the animals should get the choice to go out or not. They do it with certain animals in some zoos here in winter.

But then again, I think spending time and entertaining visitors with maybe less popular temperate and boreals ,even arctic animals is a good thing.

I like the Calgary project a lot. It sounds impressive.
Glad they scrapped out (?) the belugas though.
 
Somewhat surprisingly in the last few years the majority of my visits to the Calgary Zoo have been in the fall, winter, and early spring.

Our weather here isn't quite as bad as you presume Snowleopard. Calgary was voted as the city in Canada with the most pleasant weather. Yesterday we had a chinook and the temperature rose to +3. The Zoo was likely a couple of degrees warmer. Even over Christmas we had very little snow on the ground and had several days of positive Celsius temperatures. Chinooks in Calgary are capable of providing a 30 or 40 degree Celsius change in a day. In Loma Montana a chinook caused a 57degree Celsius change in 24 hours!

Another thing to consider is that during the winter the humidity in Calgary is really low which raises the "apparent temperature". Our winters are also very sunny which increases the pleasantness of colder temperatures.


Elephant Crossing

Iam very disappointed with this facility:mad:. On the plus side it did increase space, has skylights that permit strong waves of light to pass into the building, and replaced the old concrete floors with heated rubber floors. For the most part though the exhibit seems like a bandaid solution. The indoor space for elephants is only 10,000 square feet and the outdoor space isn't much more than an acre. The elephant exhibit should have encompassed at the very least the other side of the interior of the building where there's currently room for traveling exhibits and the exterior of the other side of the building where there's an interactive "Fallow deer experience". Plantings are pretty much none existent but include a raised planter of junipers :confused:! There was supposed to be features inside the building for enrichment devices and manipulating feeding devices, but I certainly didn't see any. Perhaps their removal was part of the budgetary decision to remove some of the "bells and whistles (zoo media staff quotation)" :mad:. The exterior of the building is aesthetically pleasing but the inside feels and looks like a drab empty hall. In the winter the elephants have the choice of whether they want to go outside on warmer days and often travel back and forth between the outside and the inside of their exhibit.


Anyways I'll post more later, but I have pressing things to do very shortly.
 
Thanks for the info! I find it difficult to believe that the small elephant herd would willingly go outside for hours at a time if the weather is only a few degrees...and Calgary has also experienced quite a few days of minus temperatures. I'm glad to hear that there hasn't been that much snow this winter, as that will allow for the tropical animals to gain a little bit of snowlight. Do the hippos, giraffe, gorillas, etc also venture outside? Are they allowed to?

It seems like the $10 million spent on expanding the elephant exhibit was a bust...as an acre of outdoor space is ridiculously small. I've got friends who have backyards larger than that, and they certainly don't have a herd of elephants living with them. It just goes to show that it is virtually impossible to locate a truly great pachyderm exhibit.
 
When it's only a few degrees outside the more tropical species at the Calgary Zoo will not spend hours on end outside, but rather much smaller intervals like 15 minutes interspersed with trips back inside.

The Gorillas have a semi-outdoor enclosure with a netted roof that's surrounded 360 degrees by heated buildings. They also have access to both heated rocks and artificial branches. In the wild gorillas live in secondary forests where little light penetrates vegetation cover to reach the floor where gorillas spend the majority of their time. In captivity gorillas tend to avoid sunny areas, especially if it's hotter outside. The indoor enclosure at the Calgary Zoo has several skylights that support two trees growing in the middle of the exhibit and numerous plants around the perimeter that extend into their enclosure. In the summer I've seen the gorillas more often in their indoor exhibit than their outdoor exhibit (when they have access to both simultaneously) so I hesitate to say that they have a really strong desire to be in the light outside, although without tests I refuse to reach any conclusions.

Hippos secrete three liquids, one of which acts like a sunscreen and absorbs sunlight. These substances are secreted more frequently when the animals are on land. River Hippopotamus are also crepuscular and nocturnal feeders, and spend most daylight hours submerged in water. At the Calgary Zoo the indoor hippo exhibit receives some natural sunlight. I wish they had more sunlight, but I don't know how important it is as a welfare concern.

The indoor giraffe exhibit also receives natural light from some skylights, although this isn't to the extent that they would experience in the wild. They really should have addressed this better by including more skylights. Instead of having an enormous airplane hanger door for a wall maybe they should have had glass with a smaller retractable door to one side.
The biggest problem I have with this exhibit is it still isn't big enough. A sufficiently large indoor facility would probably be unfeasible.

A big concern sunlight wise for me is the meerkat exhibit. They only have an indoor exhibit that does get plenty of natural air when the airplane doors of the building are opened, but doesn't receive abundant strong rays of sunlight that allow thermoregulation. They don't have a large heat lamp or strong artificial light lamp either.
 
Taccachantrieri said:
. In the wild gorillas live in secondary forests where little light penetrates vegetation cover to reach the floor where gorillas spend the majority of their time. In captivity gorillas tend to avoid sunny areas, especially if it's hotter outside. In the summer I've seen the gorillas more often in their indoor exhibit than their outdoor exhibit (when they have access to both simultaneously) so I hesitate to say that they have a really strong desire to be in the light outside, although without tests I refuse to reach any conclusions.
Click to expand...

In warmer climates too, Gorillas in captivity prefer to be under cover and for much of the time avoid open areas if they can. It seems this is less related to temperature than the feeling of security a covered/indoor area gives them. In a number of European zoos where there are large outdoor areas for them to use, the gorillas prefer to largely stay inside- if given the choice. In some zoos this behaviour is so extreme they only venture outdoors when food is distributed for them, rather like wild gorillas venturing out of the rainforest to feed in open 'bais' for short periods and then returning into the forest again.

For this reason many zoo exhibits which incorporate a large open space don't fulfil their needs adequately- in order to make better use of the enclosure they are sometimes shut outside- which can be stressful for them if little or no cover is available. I know of at least one silverback male who chooses to spend about 95%(or more) of his time indoors despite having access to a large outdoor 'island.'
 
@Pertinax: you are right, and that theory supports exhibits such as Howletts. Unfashionable enclosure, but perhaps the better choice for the gorillas.
 
Interesting that this discussion has been partly about the weather in Calgary, and how it affects the tropical animals at the zoo. For the past few days the city has been experiencing temperatures (with wind-chill) of minus 30 to minus 35. By the weekend there will be a "heat wave" and it should hit plus 5. No matter how anyone describes the weather, for easily a full month now Calgary has rarely had any temperatures over a handful of degrees. Needless to say the gorillas, elephants, giraffe, hippos, etc have all spent 95% of their life in their smaller indoor quarters.

The lack of sunlight is also alarming, with the meerkats not ever allowed to access natural light outside. Even the giraffes do poorly in inclement weather, and spend most of the year being confined to their indoor exhibit. There are skylights that have to be substituted for genuine sun rays, but my overall point is that the city of Calgary is a poor choice of venue for tropical animals. It is a decent zoo, but one that is obviously ill-suited to many species of animal.
 
snowleopard said:
@Pertinax: you are right, and that theory supports exhibits such as Howletts. Unfashionable enclosure, but perhaps the better choice for the gorillas.
Click to expand...

Yep, the Howletts enclosures aren't very attractive, but the Gorillas do use every part of them, including all the roof area too. But even here they sometimes retreat into the totally 'private'(and very dark) areas of the covered halls and dens for quite long periods of time. At the 2nd park- Port Lympne, they have the same 'Gorillarium' design of covered cages but with an extra feature- huge open grassy areas leading out from them- and here as in other places the Gorillas don't use the open areas much.

I also heard that in Munich's Zoo new Gorilla exhibit opened a few years ago, some of the Gorillas had never entered the large outside area even two years after its opening.
 
About Munich: I think now most of them have been outside; one problem might be the contruction which forces them to go through a tube some seem to be afraid of.
 
@Pertinax: good points about gorilla exhibits, and I realize that Howletts has one of the best breeding records for captive gorillas in the world. I know that it has been said before on ZooBeat, but London Zoo's "gorilla kingdom" is a massive bust of an enclosure. For the money that was spent the disappointment level has been extremely high. Perhaps the 3 gorillas will eventually expand into a larger family unit, but it has been an inauspicious start for the trio.
 
Maybe zoos like Calgary better focus on temperate, and mostly boreal animals (including many north-american natives, in that case), maybe some antarctic ones could be kept outdoors there too (they can easily withstand these temperatures).

Not a bad idea too have an arctic zoo there, it seems to me. Besides the belugas (scratched ?) the arctic shores and rest seem very good ideas to make at calgary for me.

More northern and boreal zoos should focus on species that withstand the climate, or on species that withstand them more easily, or else they have to have very large, adequate indoor enclosures.
I'm not saying they cannot keep tropicals or whatever, I'm just saying zoos have to rethink themselves these days more than ever.
Maybe not a bad choice though, to think about this.

I fully agree to snowleopard's sayings.
 
@Xerxes: Unfortunately, too many of the popular zoo animals are from warmer climates...which makes it difficult for zoos to pass on them.
Like I wrote before: if the course of history had been different, this problem wouldn't exist, as we would then have enough mastodons, wooly rhinos and cave lions to fill all Northern zoos...;) jk
 
I'm aware of the problem, very well. No need to point it out.

I wasn't saying they shouldn't keep these species.
My point is : use common sence, and build the necessary facilities.
I don't think it's unacceptable; it's necessary, even to keep these species.
I'm not sure what should be done about it. Maybe an equilibrium can be found.

And yes, it's quite sad these animals are extinct... they were really great.
They would be great to look at. But then again ,there's nothing we can do about it.
We'll have to do with what we have available today. Which is,I believe, wonderfull enough.
 
actually, i think its often unacceptable and sometimes foolish. good examples are maggie the elephant at alaska, or the failure of the breeding program of the northern white rhino in the czech republic.

of course though as sun wukong will no doubt point out that since there is a high level of expectation that people will see these animals, that thus gives them the right to keep them. so really, its foolish to expect zoos to change. :rolleyes:
 
I've seen good examples, I've seen bad examples. Some species are undoubtfully unacceptable in some areas, I agree.
I don't think it's always unacceptable or even foolish, but sometimes it is.

Sadly, they will indeed not change.
Some have tried it, also around here, and it's not a great succes, most of the time.
 
ZooLex Exhibit

Interesting to see the Masoala Rainforest on ZooLex. It is definitely one of the best indoor jungles in the world.
 
I've looked at that one many times I love it...
 
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