The chimps had been fed inside the house a few minutes earlier, so only one is visible , in the second passageway. It's a vast improvement on the previous chimp paddocks, but the planting is negligible I'm sorry to say and I was surprised to see the electric fence along the edge of the ha-ha: I presume that the chimps have either been throwing things at the visitors or getting up to mischief out of sight at the bottom of the wall (both of which might have been predicted when the enclosure was designed).
@gentle lemur This looks like the outside of an American warehouse! I'm sure this is a welcome improvement on the husbandry of the chimps, but it's just downright ugly! Budongo Trail is eons better IMO, and Kitera Forest at North Carolina is an example of how to do an immersive chimp facility correctly. How many million pounds went into this?
@Wyman The cost was reported as £3.5 million. Zoo projects like this always sound absurdly expensive nowadays, but I don't think this is out of line. If you look at some of the photos of it under construction, you can see the size and strength of the off-show areas - which of course are absolutely necessary to house a large group of chimps. The aesthetics of the exterior are not exciting, but I would have no problem with that if the paddock was thickly planted to take the eye away from the building and the perimeter wall. I don't like the interior because it full of dusty fake tropical plants, which I think are a waste of space and money because they add nothing of value to the chimps, the zoo staff or the visitors.
