Werribee Open Range Zoo Werribee Open Range Zoo

All of those type of zoos are the same, with an hour bus tour and then an hour of walking around the smaller exhibits, gift shop and cafe. Its totally frustrating to have to whiz by animals in an hour time frame and not have the opportunity to stroll around at ones own pace. .

Shifting the hamadryas baboons from their old-style cage at the Melbourne Zoo to Werribee is by far the most logical thing I've heard for years, and anything would be better than their current accommodations.

The Uk/European Safari Parks are similar except for 'Bus Tour', read Driving in a car (or coach) through the reserves.There is usually also a similar area as yours where you can walk around smaller animal exhibits. At Woburn (and probably the other Safari Parks, you can go through the reserves as many times as you like, but the experience is the same each time around, and at peak times, its really like sitting in a glorified traffic jam, so once is enough anyway.

When I visited Woburn last year, the whole visit took me less than an hour to see everything there. Contrast with Whipsnade Park, only a few miles distant, which has a very similar range of species but somehow there is much more to look at and you can easily spend the whole day there. Similarly London and Chester Zoos require full day visits( and even then you won't probably won't have seen everything at these massive collections..)

Regarding the Hamadryas baboons. InUK they've been kept successfully in the past at Windsor Safari Park in an 'open range' enclosure while South Lakes (;)) has a group sharing with White rhino/giraffe etc and it works fine. If Melbourne removed theirs to Werribee, it would provide a good exhibit, and remove the continual critisism about their cage at the zoo. BUT they are such a good and active exhibit, it would really almost benefit them to have a colony (properly housed) at both locations!
 
melbourne already has a good mandrill exhibit. so i figure one species at each.

Yes, I forgot about Melbourne's Mandrills. Actually Paignton Zoo here in Uk have a small Mandrill group in one enclosure and a large Colony(c.50) of Hamadryas baboons on a 'baboon rock'- the activity levels and exhibit value of the Hamadryas Baboons is far superior, though I guess if there were 50 Mandrills, not 7, they'd be an almost equally good exhibit too.
 
Last time I was at Adelaide they had two colonies next to each other (Mandrills and Hamadryas Baboons.) Interesting to compare........
 
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