The area in front of the house. This used to be the full extent of their enclosure. They can now go from here, using the fake tree on the left, across to the island in the lake.
This looks a little disappointing to me, not at all 'foresty' and again the use of a water moat as a barrier. Still, it's obviously a step up from what they had before, and hopefully the grass will be allowed to grow.
I think the main thing is that it's a great improvement on what they had and the zoo has made the best use of the limited space available. The orangs are making full use of the new facilities and have the added enrichment of being able to view the public from many different angles!
Zoos may name their enclosures 'forests' but they are never going to replicate them. The orang islands at my local zoo, Paignton, looked wonderful when they opened with lots of natural trees and shrubs. Now they look as though they've been ravaged by a palm oil company - a mixture of destruction by the orangs and possibly unwise and over enthusiastic pruning by the zoo.
I agree that calling an exhibit a 'forest' is not wise unless the zoo can provide something that resembles a forest. I'd much rather zoo un-forest-like climbing structures and active orangutans, than something well-planted that doesn't allow climbing opportunities... but I wouldn't call it an 'Orangutan Forest'.
It sounds like a vast improvement for these guys and that they're making great use of it. I think the main thing that looks bad here to me is that the grass looks like it's been mowed short- but if the orangutans are spending most of their time off the ground, the quality of the ground layer is pretty much irrelevant.
The main thing is its been designed to get the Orangs up of the ground and stimulate climbing high up- the overall appearance might not be at all natural but then zoos aren't natural anyway, so I think they've done a good job really.
