August 2008. This brutal concrete enclosure is made worse by the obvious iron bars that ring the bottom slope. An ancient cage that should really be bulldozed.
August 2008. This brutal concrete enclosure is made worse by the obvious iron bars that ring the bottom slope. An ancient cage that should really be bulldozed.
Those bars are far away from zoo visitors, at the bottom of the grotto, but I think that they can be pulled back for either the tigers or zoo keepers to enter and exit. There is another section of the exhibit (at the top) that also has bars that lead to the night quarters. I just think that it's bizarre that a zoo has such obviously ugly iron bars visible to the public.
The amur leopard exhibit opened in 1999, and it is quite naturalistic but also far too small. There isn't a photo of it here at ZooBeat because it's a tough habitat to photograph. Tall trees surround the enclosure, and there is no way to get an overall shot. The amur tiger exhibit is definitely much older and is a typical carnivore grotto. According to the zoo's website the bear grottoes were renovated in 1986 and the polar and sun bear exhibits were opened that same year. The amur tiger exhibit used to hold other carnivores, and so is at least 22 years old...but I have a feeling that it's more like 50 years old because it seems as if it was part of the old-style, original zoo layout. Either way it's something that should really be bulldozed.
