1 - money - plants costs money, maintaining them costs money. Particularly if the animals are allowed access to destroy them. The financial situation of UK zoos has been discussed elsewhere!
2 - inclination - Colchester isn't trying to build densely-planted Woodland Park-style exhibits. If it were it's have more plants in them. This has also been discussed elsewhere - there's more than one way to skin (or indeed, exhibit) a cat!
1 - money - plants costs money, maintaining them costs money. Particularly if the animals are allowed access to destroy them. The financial situation of UK zoos has been discussed elsewhere!
2 - inclination - Colchester isn't trying to build densely-planted Woodland Park-style exhibits. If it were it's have more plants in them. This has also been discussed elsewhere - there's more than one way to skin (or indeed, exhibit) a cat!
I unleashed the floodgates of supporters for this "mangabey mansion", and I have to agree that I was over the top in my assessment of the enclosure. I claimed that it was "average at best" but in reality it is definitely at least average and in fact is much better than many truly atrocious primate exhibits all across the globe.
Snowleopard.---- You are bound to be shocked by Colchester's style of extremely unnatural-looking exhibits as Woodland Park Zoo is at completely the other end of the Exhibit Spectrum, being one of the world frontrunners with naturalised exhibits. I much prefer the latter of course but they are quite difficult to create in a site like Colchester which has relatively little Woodland on its site apart from one area in the Valley. I agree though that more planting within the exhibits would certainly be possible and would help reduce their stark and artificial appearance.
As mentioned above the absence of much/any planting in many enclosures at Colchester may be due to cost, style or other in-house considerations. Its not true of all their enclosures though- oddly just in some.
I think this exhibit (like most at Colchester) is very tasteless too- however, having seen the Mangabey group using it just a few weeks back, for an unnatural exhibit it does work very well. They have lots of space and climbing equipment and look very contented. The group comprise a pair plus their three offspring of different ages, giving rise to plenty of play and interaction. There is a pool, grass, woodchip area, ropes etc as well as the very comprehensive network of solid 'fake'(!!) climbing logs which give them a good height above ground. They can be viewed either at ground level(through glass) or from a balcony style viewing area above. I've seen photos of an exhibit for a large group of this same Mangabey species at (I think it was) East Berlin Zoo- it is basically a grassy paddock with one small group of worn-looking logs in the centre-no other climbing equipment at all. Colchester's is certainly the better exhibit of these two, in my opinion.
The indoors of this exhibit are the old(converted) lion dens and again its perfectly adequate, woodchip-floored and quite roomy. I don't think Colchester would build a large enclosure like this just for primates such as these Mangabeys and this does show it wasn't purpose built for them and they've been used to fill an outdated exhibit for a bigger animal. Nevertheless, and despite the extreme artificiality, it seems to cater for all their needs, with the exception of any form of overhead cover/canopy outside.
If you didn't like this enclosure, you certainly wouldn't like the one they built/converted for their Gelada Baboons- that is even uglier and not really suitable at all. But that's another subject!
