@StellarChaser Not even close. The San Diego Zoo cougar exhibit is okay, but nothing spectacular whatsoever. I'll list one terrible exhibit and 8 excellent ones below, with all the photos having been taken by me. Of the 8 good ones, at least 6 of them are open-topped and that is unusual when it comes to cougars.
The worst I've seen is the one at Jo-Don Farms (now closed) in Wisconsin in 2018:
Shalom Wildlife Zoo (Wisconsin) opened up a large cougar exhibit in 2017:
A small portion of the fantastic cougar exhibit at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum:
White Oak Conservation Center (Florida) with a Florida Panther up in a tree:
Oregon Zoo:
Living Desert Zoo (California):
North Carolina Zoo:
Wildlife Prairie Park (Illinois) has a massive cougar exhibit:
Shalom's one looks very large, I like its big pond since Cougars are strong swimmer, and very few exhibits provide them big water body. But the climbings look pretty few (maybe can be seen in this perspective?)
That photo of Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum's exhibit is a small portion? Approximately how large is the total area? I find some videos from youtube but they only can show certain portions. Well, we really need an ultra-wide angle for the exhibit pictures. Anyway, this exhibit looks impressive.
Why do you think Oregon Zoo's cougar exhibit beats over San Diego's, I can't see any differences merely through these pictures.
Approximately how large the North Carolina's one is, the landscape is very nice.
Wildlife Prairie Park's one is impressive too.
Northwest Trek Wildlife Park's one has both decent water body and climbings, I like that. But the fence is not tall and just closed to the trees, how do they prevent the Cougar to escape? And, from this angle, this exhibit looks like not that large?
There really isn't much to choose between the Oregon and San Diego Zoo cougar exhibits, although I prefer the Oregon one as it is surrounded by tall evergreens and not as 'open' as the San Diego enclosure.
Northwest Trek has a thick, dense exhibit and it goes back a little farther than what is shown in the photo.
I like the one at Wildlife Prairie Park in Illinois, as it is at least an acre or more in size. A huge habitat!
@snowleopard I can't recall if you've been back to Oakland since they opened the California area, but IMO it easily has the best cougar exhibit I've ever seen (along with one of the best jaguar exhibits). There aren't many photos of it in the gallery; I can remedy that later, but for now here's one from @Arizona Docent that shows some of it. It's basically just a patch of meshed-in oak savanna, which is perfect because a) it's the local environment they're found in; b) the live oaks make for active arboreal cats, and c) the lack of brush and foliage other than the oaks makes it easy to watch them.
@nczoofan it's the highlight of that whole complex, really; some exhibits look starker than others, but for the most part they just fenced in existing wild area and it really works.
Thanks @Coelacanth18 for the mention of Oakland. I visited that zoo in 2011 and not since, so obviously the huge new California zone has dramatically altered the size of the zoo. I would love to head south to California again in the future.
