Chester Zoo 2003 - Orangutan exhibit

May 2003

I visited three UK zoos with some British zoo friends following my USA visit: Chester, Twycross and Colchester. Regrettably it was my first time with a digital camera; both cards were full of photos from the USA and I was only able to take few photos in the UK. I still need to do a proper UK zoo tour.

Orangutan exhibit.

This island is now part of the Sumatran orang utan enclosure.

bongorob said:

This island is now part of the Sumatran orang utan enclosure.

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Thanks Rob, I hope to revisit Chester later this summer or autumn!

I thought it was Tuan's island?

This exhibit was on the eastern end of the house (facing the old Caughall Road car park) - as the old house is still there I guess most of this island is under the netted outdoor exhibits used by all three ape species at different times.

The island that remains is the western end one and was usually used, then as now, by Borneans (as you say, usually Tuan these days). The two islands were (more-or-less) mirror images of each other.

Thanks for clearing that up Maguari

Maguari said:

This exhibit was on the eastern end of the house (facing the old Caughall Road car park) - as the old house is still there I guess most of this island is under the netted outdoor exhibits used by all three ape species at different times.

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That is indeed approximately where the old north-eastern island once stood.

SMR said:

That is indeed approximately where the old north-eastern island once stood.

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Hope you don't mind but I've saved this to my computer for quick viewing than having to dig this thread out in future

Would like to say that looking at the image though I've noticed so many other - if only subtle - changes. Things of note were Cedar house, the loss of the parrot house, the conversion of the coati enclosure into a wonderous lawn and - sounds stupid - the growth of the trees in the okapi paddock. Do you know what year each ariel snap was taken in and if the camels still occupied that paddock in the first picture? It goes from a clear grass paddock like a cut lawn, to a few trees dotted around to alot of trees in the third one.

A stupid question, but do you have any other ariel pictures of Chester Zoo (as a whole) that you could pass on? It is fascinating, in a zoonerdy way, to sit and look at ariel maps so many years apart and see how much it has changed, and how it has