Wasted space refers to the fact that this was originally a combination of frog exhibit (pond at bottom) and aviary. Various different birds were housed in the first few years and you can see from this photo it is a beautiful space for them. Now the large space is wasted (in the sense of not being used for animals) and for the life of me I can't imagine why they don't put just a few birds in there. Cardinals or pyrrhuloxia or cactus wren - any small songbirds would make the exhibit many times more interesting.
Personally I felt ASDM had quite a lot of animal exhibit space that was underutilized. In Life on the Rocks alone (where this enclosure is for those who aren't familiar) there are a few spaces which once held animals but now sit empty (the bat cave comes to mind). To make things much more frustrating, the zoo's signage remains the same from when animals were held in these enclosures. This led to me searching this enclosure and the old bat enclosure for quite some time thinking animals still lived in them.
@jayjds2 "It’s a beautiful space for the frogs too. What’s to say they don’t use it?"
I have been there dozens of times both during the day and at night (on summer Saturdays they remain open until 10pm). I have never seen a frog away from the pond area. Toads might use it, but not frogs.
