Definitely never any great apes at Reid Park and I do not think at Wildlife World either. The reason we have been told that we cannot have them at Reid Park is because they are susceptible to a local dust born condition known as Valley Fever. They do not want to introduce a foreign ailment into the captive population. Of course Phoenix has the same thing and they just put their orangutans on natural earth, so not sure how they get away with that. People can get it too (Valley Fever), but most people are not really affected by it and just build up antibodies once they have lived here a little while. (Kind of like getting a flu shot where you are injected with a small dose of the disease and your body builds up natural resistance).
Definitely never any great apes at Reid Park and I do not think at Wildlife World either. The reason we have been told that we cannot have them at Reid Park is because they are susceptible to a local dust born condition known as Valley Fever.
Valley Fever occurs in a lot of places where zoos have great apes - it was named after the Central Valley in California where it apparently was discovered.
Both the Fresno and Sacramento Zoos have great apes (orangutans at both places, chimps in Sacramento, and Fresno has announced that they want to get gorillas again in the future - both zoos had gorillas in the past) and both have dusty conditions like Tucson does. It sounds like a very odd reason not to have great apes at Reid Park Zoo. Whoever decided that policy wasn't making the decision based on science, but more likely from lack of political will or desire to fund an expensive ape exhibit and chose Valley Fever as an excuse.
