Woodland Park Zoo Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo 2008

snowleopard

snowleopard

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This zoo was first opened in 1899, and its 92 acre property features about 65 acres devoted to the actual zoo grounds. A relatively small zoo in terms of its collection, with about 1,100 animals, but a prestigious zoo in terms of quality over quantity. The Woodland Park Zoo trails only the Bronx Zoo of New York in terms of AZA (American Zoo and Aquarium Association) Best Exhibit Awards.

Award-Winning Exhibits:

Trail of Vines (Tropical Asia) - a pair of spacious orangutan enclosures, lion-tailed macaques, indian pythons, malayan tapirs, and a pair of siamang gibbons. Award won in 1995.

Elephant Forest (Tropical Asia) - 3 Asian elephants in a 1.5 acre exhibit, surrounded by a mock-temple environment. This enclosure won best exhibit of the year in 1989 but has since come under fire for being too small. How times have changed in the zoo community.

African Savanna - Giraffes, ostrich, gazelle, zebra in one large paddock, with patas monkeys, lions, african wild dogs and hippos in adjoining exhibits. Award won in 1980.

Tropical Rainforest - Poison dart frogs, colobus monkeys, ocelot, a variety of birds, and two connected gorilla enclosures that were reportedly the first naturalistic gorilla exhibits ever (1978).

Northern Trail - The most popular section of the zoo according to zoo polls. A pair of 900-pound grizzly bears, river otters, rocky mountain goats, arctic foxes, snowy owls, porcupines, gray wolves and roosevelt elk in a fantastic set of exhibits. Award won in 1994.

Jaguar Cove - a lush, glassed enclosure with a variety of enrichment that includes a pond for underwater viewing.

The zoo is arranged geographically, and was one of the first zoos worldwide to showcase its animals in such a way. A temperate forest region has red pandas, asian cranes, japanese serow, and a wetlands aviary. There is also a small insectarium, a spider house, and the typical family farm/barn setup. There is an Australiasian section, snow leopard, komodo dragon, sun bear, sloth bear, sumatran tiger, butterfly house, raptor centre, etc. Another new and fascinating exhibit is one that doesn't house any animals (only kids) and is called "Zoomazium". It cost $10 million and is basically a large building that serves as an indoor play-area for children.

There is also a very good night-and-day building, which is neatly divided in two. One half has a large reptile, amphibian and small mammal collection in heated exhibits. The second half is the excellent nocturnal house, with many bats, porcupines, slow loris, galagos, douroucellis, tamanduas, sloths, etc.

In May of this year a new flamingo exhibit opens (with about 40-50 donated Chilean flamingos), and in May 2009 a $3 million Humboldt penguin exhibit will also open that will include underwater viewing. The zoo has opened a new exhibit basically every single year for close to 15 years now, and has won many awards over the past 30 years. One detriment to Seattle's Zoo is that the weather is not the best, witih very little snow but a heap of rain. Some years there is an average of 40 inches of rain, causing most zoo visitors to show up in the summer months between May and September. The attendance for the rest of the year is only about 35%, but overall there are about 1.1 million visitors each and every year.
 
I visited the Seattle Zoo last weekend, and the true highlight was seeing the baby female gorilla that they have. It was born on October 20th, and so is only three and a half months old. They have two gorilla troops at the zoo (12 apes in total) in side-by-side enclosures. The intriguing thing about the baby gorilla is that for the entire ten minutes that the mother was wandering around the exhibit, before retiring to the den, the baby never left the mother's right arm.

She wasn't clinging to the mother's back as is frequently seen in tiny gorillas (I suppose that she is too young) but instead never once relented her two-handed grip on her mother's arm. Even when the mother climbed up some of the branches in the exhibit, seemingly oblivious to the baby, the little girl continued to cling on for dear life.

Also, there were a pair of lesser galago babies that are only a few months old and jumping around with great precision. A sumatran tiger cub and a malayan tapir youngster are the other major newborns at the zoo in the last year.
 
I've just been reading Hancocks' book about zoos called A Different Nature and he speaks most highly of Woodland Park Zoo, particularly about the pioneering gorilla enclosure. It's worth a read.
 
Pygathrix said:
I've just been reading Hancocks' book about zoos called A Different Nature and he speaks most highly of Woodland Park Zoo, particularly about the pioneering gorilla enclosure. It's worth a read.
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Hardly, surprising eh??! The guy worked there .......... :p
 
The book "A Different Nature" is extremely entertaining simply for its discussion of the many noteworthy exhibits around the world. The Woodland Park Zoo does claim to be the first zoo to ever have gorillas in a naturalistic environment, and yes Hancocks was a driving force behind many zoo exhibit changes.
 
jelle said:
Hardly, surprising eh??! The guy worked there .......... :p
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Tut tut, I don't think he mentions this fact in his book. Did he go to work there because it is such a great zoo, or was he part of its development, and therefore surreptitiously blowing his own trumpet?
 
woodland park gorilla enclosures.

Pygathrix said:
I've just been reading Hancocks' book about zoos called A Different Nature and he speaks most highly of Woodland Park Zoo, particularly about the pioneering gorilla enclosure. It's worth a read.
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I've never been but have seen photos/heard that the Gorilla enclosures are very good. I think they were indeed (among) the very first naturalistic displays for Gorillas although not specifically built for them... they were old concrete Bear Grottoes which were planted out and the vegetation then left for a year to establish and mature before the Gorillas were introduced. Consequently they weren't able to destroy it all and its been a very successful exhibit ever since, as a result.
 
Seattle new baby gorilla

snowleopard said:
I visited the Seattle Zoo last weekend, and the true highlight was seeing the baby female gorilla that they have. It was born on October 20th, and so is only three and a half months old. for the entire ten minutes that the mother was wandering around the exhibit, before retiring to the den, the baby never left the mother's right arm.

She wasn't clinging to the mother's back as is frequently seen in tiny gorillas (I suppose that she is too young) but instead never once relented her two-handed grip on her mother's arm.
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Do you know the parents(names?) of the baby?

Hanging on to the mother's forearm is typical behaviour in very small baby gorillas- its usually the next stage after the mother holds the very newborn tightly to her chest. I guess clinging to the mother's forearm is easy as there is plenty of hair to grip and the baby is upright and can look around it too. The 'riding on the back' stage usually doesn't come before six months, often later.
Some mothers try to put their very small infants on their back as they feel less encumbered this way- too early is usually the sign of a mother whose either inexperienced and a bit stressed, or just a bad/lazy mother.
 
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@Pertinax: I seem to recall that you are the resident gorilla expert on ZooBeat. The two gorilla enclosures at the Woodland Park Zoo each feature 6 apes, with one silverback male in each and the other 10 gorillas (including the unnamed baby) all being females. Amanda (37 years old) and Vip (28 years old) are the proud parents, and the newborn is their 3rd offspring and the 12th ever at the Seattle Zoo.

On a side note, the zoo has 5 orangutans, and one of the males has "created/drawn" two paintings that have been on Ebay all week. Bids close tomorrow, but one of them has hit $800 already.
 
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snowleopard said:
The book "A Different Nature" is extremely entertaining simply for its discussion of the many noteworthy exhibits around the world. The Woodland Park Zoo does claim to be the first zoo to ever have gorillas in a naturalistic environment, and yes Hancocks was a driving force behind many zoo exhibit changes.
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Hi snowleopard,

On Hancocks I was only egging you on ...!

I stand corrected: Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo is a damn fine example of unconventional zoo design and many enclosures like those of the gorillas and snow leopards (your a fan of them, I certainly love them ... trillions ...).

And lest we not forget: WPZ was a pioneer in in-situ conservation programmes and being the driving force behind the International Snow Leopard Trust (citing Helen Freeman's fame).

By the way, can you tell us what new exhibits are on the way at WPZ?
And why oh why are these Zoo Checkers US-style so interested in criticising WPZ's elephant management record?

Cheers,

Jelle
 
@jelle: In May of this year a new flamingo exhibit opens (with about 40-50 donated Chilean flamingos) and they are about halfway to completion as of right now. In May 2009 a $3 million Humboldt penguin exhibit will also open that will include underwater viewing. There are diagrams posted at two different parts of the zoo, and the penguin exhibit looks especially interesting. Apparently there will be a minimum of 40 Humboldt Penguins, sandy shores, rocky sections, and the underwater viewing will be a massive hit with zoo visitors. The zoo has consistently opened new exhibits every year or two for the past 20 years, and are spending another $3 million creating a new west entry (with a second gift shop, cafe and sitting areas) for late 2009. They only have about 1,100 animals, but as you can see from the original posting on this thread they are still one of the better zoos in North America.

As far as the elephant program is concerned, it illustrates how things have changed in the 19 years since their elephant exhibit opened to the public. It won Best Exhibit of the year in North America at the time, but now the enclosure's 1.5 acres has been heavily criticized for simply being too small. They only have 3 elephants, and they've had the same three for years and years now. Unfortunately it is a poor mix, as one is African (Wantoto?) while the other two are Asian (Bamboo and Chai). Bamboo is an anti-social elephant that was actually sent to the nearby Point Defiance Zoo because she has never really fit in well at the Woodland Park Zoo. However, she also didn't succeed at that establishment and is now back in Seattle.

Through artificial inseminaton Chai gave birth 7 years ago to a baby named Hansa, but that young elephant died last year at the age of 6 due to a herpes virus. Now the zoo has been inseminating Chai once again in order to get her pregnant, and the anti-elephant critics have been up in arms complaining about another possible elephant death. Also, due to Seattle's poor weather, which includes 40 inches a year of rain, the elephants spend their nights locked in a barn that was great 19 years ago but is now rightfully deemed too small.

I adore Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, as it is one of the best zoos I've been to and has won 6 exhibit awards in North America. However, they should discard their elephant program and send the 3 member "herd" to either other zoos with larger exhibits are to elephant sanctuaries. There was a rumor that a pair of greater one-horned rhinos could possibly replace the 3 elephants, and in my opinion that would be a terrific move for the zoo.
 
Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo is also involved in 44 different conservation projects in 30 countries. They have recently printed large posters declaring those statistics and placed a few around the zoo as part of their conservation message.
 
elephants at Seattle

Have you been to Tacoma Zoo ? -- Tacoma is a neighbouring city just South of Seattle .
My understanding is that they also house elephants .
Which zoo has the better elephant enclosure , I wonder ?

If Tacoma has more room to develop a larger elephant enclosure , it would make sense to have the elephants there , and use the current Seattle Zoo elephant enclosure for other animals ......
sigh...... but I am dreaming ......
 
According to their 2002 Long Range Physical Development Plan the Woodland Park Zoo were not interested in replacing their elephants with indian one-horned rhinoceros, instead they were going to add indian one-horned rhinoceros to the area adjacent to their current elephant exhibit. I seem to remember that they wanted to use some of the current elephant exhibit space because it was rarely utilized by the elephants.

What a step backwards for an organization that in a lot of other ways has been progressive!
 
in the current issue of Connect. the magazine for AZA, there is a small feature on the gorilla birth at WPZ. its under the section for conservation breeding.
David Hancocks book is a great read, i got it in 2005 and is, in my opinion, one of the best books about zoos ever produced. more people participating on this forum should read it. it would raise the depth of arguments somewhat
 
I have responses for 3 different people in this message:

@Glyn: the Hancocks book is indeed an informative read, and I'm glad that it has been brought up on this forum. There is an enormous amount of discussion regarding zoo exhibits within it, complete with photos and designs layouts. A top-notch piece of literature!

@Taccachantrieri: you are correct with your statement regarding the greater one-horned rhino idea that was being discussed at the Woodland Park Zoo. Their elephant exhibit is 1.5 acres, but it is in a long, winding enclosure that isn't a typical square or round area. The visitor path also winds alongside the exhibit, surrounded by lush foliage, and therefore at times it is difficult to locate the 3 elephants. There were plans afoot to incorporate the rhinos on the south end of the exhibit, as the elephants do rarely venture all the way down to that section.

That 2002 idea was rightfully shot down by elephant-activists, and then a new idea was broached by a city councillor last year (when the baby Hansa died) to then replace the elephants with a pair of greater one-horned rhinos. It was taken up by the zoo board and ignored, so I'm not sure if there are any current plans to incorporate rhinos into the collection. For now the zoo is focused on new exhibits for flamingos and penguins.

@Nigel: I have been to the Tacoma Zoo twice, and it is actually called the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. It is a small zoo, and only takes 2-3 hours to see. They opened an Asian forest section a few years ago that I have mentioned a few times on ZooBeat. The sumatran tigers, malayan tapirs, western anoa, siamang gibbons, and another species of gibbon all rotate through 5 different exhibits via unseen chutes and passageways. They are also famous for their red wolf program, as that is a species that almost went extinct not too long ago.

The Point Defiance Zoo does have Asian elephants, and I think there are 3 there as well. The exhibit is not as nice as the Seattle one, and is typical of many elephant exhibits in that it is far too small.
 
Pygathrix said:
Tut tut, I don't think he mentions this fact in his book. Did he go to work there because it is such a great zoo, or was he part of its development, and therefore surreptitiously blowing his own trumpet?
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Sorry to be late to the party (again)!
Hancocks was director of the zoo and says so in the book.
He is widely credited with enabling the start of the immersion experience zoo exhibit developed with designers Jones & Jones, from which sprang Jon Coe and so many others. I think every zoo designer around today looks to their work as the innovation. Of course, that was almost 40 years ago and there is a question in the design community now about "What else is possible?"

His book would interest this group, I think, for his criticisms of poor zoo design around the world and his call for doing things "right" or not at all.

Did snowleopard mention that WPZ is doing a new (or is it renovated?) penguin exhibit?
 
@zooplantman: the current Humboldt penguin exhibit is being bulldozed, and $3 million is being spent on a new enclosure which is due to open in May 2009. See my post on February 7th for all of the details regarding new exhibits for both flamingos and penguins. The zoo is, as usual, constantly spending millions on updated exhibits.
 
gorillas again

snowleopard said:
Amanda (37 years old) and Vip (28 years old) are the proud parents, and the newborn is their 3rd offspring and the 12th ever at the Seattle Zoo.

On a side note, the zoo has 5 orangutans, and one of the males has "created/drawn" two paintings that have been on Ebay all week. Bids close tomorrow, but one of them has hit $800 already.
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'VIP' was the first Gorilla born at the Wassenaar Zoo in the Netherlands. I think his first home in the USA was at Milwaukee- Wassenaar's gorillas went to the USA when it closed. Only his younger brother Yaounde stayed in Europe and is now a successful breeder/troop leader in a French Primate Park.

The two gorillas I know best from the Seattle groups are the oldies- 'Pete' and 'Nina' I remember reading a report of how one of Pete's daughters,still living that group, was mated with VIP ( or vice versa) but without the trauma and fuss of actually transferring her into the other group (they just seperated the pair for matings- very good husbandry!)

re the $800 Orangutan paintings- don't knock it if it make money, I guess...;)
 
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