This is the cage that I was very harsh on in my Sacramento Zoo review, and the cement floor, steel poles and metal surroundings are much different from the innumerable island habitats that I've seen for gibbons in the many zoos that I've visited. Why doesn't Sacramento focus on this exhibit next? Does anyone know if the zoo has anything in the pipeline other than a larger pool for the river otters?
This is the cage that I was very harsh on in my Sacramento Zoo review, and the cement floor, steel poles and metal surroundings are much different from the innumerable island habitats that I've seen for gibbons in the many zoos that I've visited. Why doesn't Sacramento focus on this exhibit next? Does anyone know if the zoo has anything in the pipeline other than a larger pool for the river otters?
My source there tells me that the replacement of the remaining old monkey exhibits is next. The lemur complex replaced an old set of monkey cages. The rest will hopefully be replaced with modern exhibits in the not-distant-future.
This gibbon exhibit is obviously not pretty compared to the gibbon islands at Santa Barbara and Oakland. The only thing I could say in its defense is that it does have vertical space that the gibbons need and they probably don't care very much about being on the ground, so from a gibbon's perspective perhaps this is functionally adequate. I agree that it is not adequate from a modern zoo goers perspective.
This gibbon pair has been at the zoo since the 1970s. I don't know what the thinking is, but hopefully the exhibit will be renovated or go away when these gibbons are no longer with us.
In your review you asked what conservation value this exhibit has, and I think that is the right question to ask. When I was growing up in Sacramento the gibbons were always popular because they were very active. I think that this did promote gibbon awareness, but there really is not much connection between the gibbons in this box and gibbons in the wild. The Santa Barbara exhibit in which gibbons can climb real trees does do a much better job of making the connection between zoo and wild.
it wouldn't take that much to update, just some more ropes + other enrichment etc, some plants + it wouldn't be that bad, even if it was only temporary
