Burgers' Zoo Burgers Zoo

[Swedish Zoo Fan]

Hey there... I really wanna visit Burgers Zoo someday. But first i wanna know some important information about it: Where it is, what animals they have, a map over the zoo and that...

I would be really happy if you could tell me about this really good-looking zoo.

 

[Toddy]

Burgers Zoo is absolutely an absolutely fantastic zoo with many intresting animals and enclosures. Their biggest features are the five "Ecodisplays": Bugers Bush, Burgers Desert, Burgers Ocean, Burgers Mangrove and Burgers Safari.

The Bush is en enourmous greenhouse filled with rainforest. As i far as i know, it's the biggest indoor rainforest in the world? Inside live many free ranging birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects, and in open enclosures around the forest you can se such animals as the aardvarks, oriental small-clawed otters, yacare caimans, manatees and capybaras. Exploring this rainforest alone can take all day, since you have to look closely to find a lot of the animals.

The Desert is an indoor replica of an area in the Arizona desert. Like the bush, many birds and reptiles live in here. The few mammals in here all have private enclosures. These include bobcats, bighorn sheep and skunks. It's a really unique expirience.

The Ocean consists of huge aquariums with animals from the coral reefs and even the deep seas. Just breathtaking

The Mangrove is the smallest ecodisplay, and the least impressive. It's just a small indoor exhibition with various small animals from the mangroves, such as kingfishers and mangrove monitors.

The Safari is the only outdoor ecodisplay. On a huge savannah lives giraffes, white rhinos, wildebeest, zebra and waterbucks together (maybe i forgot a species or two), and in two seperate enclosures you can see cheetahs and lions. I know that they also just opened a new savannah themed restaurant there.

In the "older" part of the zoo you can see such species as orang-utans, siamangs, warthogs, bongos, Sri Lankan leopards and tree procupines, as well as a large number of birds in the older aviaries and pheasentry. The two enclosures for chimpanzees and gorillas are some of the best i have seen for the animals, and the chimp-group is huge!

Burgers Zoo is my second-favourite zoo so far, only surpassed by Blijdorp Dierenpark (Rotterdam Zoo)

Here is a map taken from their website, though it isn't the best one i have seen (anybody got a better one?):

 

[snowleopard]

Great description Toddy! I love it when people post detailed reviews of various zoos and wildlife parks. It's especially important for folks who live on different continents.

 

[Swedish Zoo Fan]

Thank you for the description Toddy!!
It sounds like a really good zoo.... Gonna visit it soon!
Do you know anything about their future plans?

 

[Trebaruna]

Burgers is of course one off the leading zoos here in the netherlands. It’s best known for the ecodisplays as toddy already mentioned. I'll just give some additions to his story.

That the mangrove isn’t very impressive is for the simple reason that it was build to test the roofingstructure, which was later used for the bush.
In the bush all continents are combined. There are separate corners for afrika, America ans asia, but the free ranging animals don’t seem to know that (the yacare caimans are no longer in the bush. They have been switched for spectacled ones.) I’m not sure whether the bush is still the largest indoor rainforest, perhaps Massaola in zurich is larger?
On the savanna are also roan antilope, thompsongazelles, red hartebeest, and maybe greater kudu, but I’m not sure about that one. (there are also enclosures for pelicans and dikdik) The restaurant that opened this year overlooks the savanna.

The old garden has a large bird section. This doesn’t look that well, but there are some interesting species though. This year a new ecodisplay will be opened; South east asia. (on the site of the Bactrian camels, yak, bison, watussi etc). Some or the species will be; sun bear, Sumatran tiger, banteng, langur (obscurus), gibbons, etc (also deer of which it is not know what species, monitor lizards, javan peafowl, and I believe pig tailed macaques…) The sri lankan leopards are already fine. Their enclosure is on the edge of the new section and needs no adjustment. (There used to be jackals in the next door enclosure. They left. Now the male leopard is in there, but I thought they wanted asian jackals.)

This year they gave up their blue duikers to antwerpen because the females only had stillbirths (probably the result of different subspecies being crossed). They will now focus on the red duiker who are living with the bongos.

Very bad is the orang enclosure. They only have a indoor place that they share with siamang gibbons. They were not planned to be in the new asian section…

I don’t have any maps with me now. Maybe I can find some when I’m home again. I do have a link where I have some pics of the animals from burgers: NL: Arnhem (Burgers Zoo) @ Fotopic.Net

 

[Toddy]

Great description Toddy! I love it when people post detailed reviews of various zoos and wildlife parks. It's especially important for folks who live on different continents.

This brief review doesn't do Burgers Zoo justice by a long shot Fanastic zoo

Thansk for all the info Trebaruna! There is a strong possibility that i will return to the Netherlands this summer and do som "zoo-ing" I am lookig forward to this new Asia theme. I had already seen that they were building something on their website, but I did not know what. In Holland, I plan to visit ARTIS, Blijdorp, Burgers, Emmen, Apenheul, and if possible, the Dolfinarium in Harderwijk. Do you have any suggestions about which zoos i should see?

I also compared Masoala and Burgers on ZooLex:

Masoala
Length: 120 m
Width: 90 m
Height: 30 m
Space: 10.800 m2
Volume: 324.000 m3

Burgers Bush
Lenght: 150 m
Width: 95 m
Height: 20 m
Space: 14.250 m2
Volume: 285.000 m3

 

[Trebaruna]

In Holland, I plan to visit ARTIS, Blijdorp, Burgers, Emmen, Apenheul, and if possible, the Dolfinarium in Harderwijk. Do you have any suggestions about which zoos i should see?

Sure. Besides these ones you could think of
Amersfoort: the best nighthouse of the country. A part of the zoo is nicely themed as ancient rome-babylon-persia.
Safari beekse bergen: the only safaripark in the country. You can travel through it by, car, bus, boat, and a large part of the park is also visibly by foot. Lots of ungulates incl some rare species like whitelipped deer, vietnamese sika, mesopotamic fallow, persian goitred gazelle, banteng, onager, kulan, etc. This park was also the first park to receive some sudanese cheetas (the park now breeds both subspecies). Some other species: African elephant, sloth bear, sun bear, dhole, chimps, gorillas, etc. Its a very big park. One of the best safariparks i know.
Ouwehand dierenpark (Rhenen): It's best known for the bear-woods, where they keep abused brown bears (i believe they have about 12 now) in a forest together with some wolves. Recently the park started keeping african elephants. Other important attractions of the park are the polarbears, white lions, the tigerforest (with amur and white tigers) the orangutans (and the largest indoor playground for children in the country ) There is also an old but nice little aquarium.
Gaiapark: The newest big zoo of the netherlands. Located in the very south the country. Very nice naturalistic enclosures. This year they will expand with an enclosure for a group of white rhino. The already have gorillas, bongo, iberian wolves, przewalski, giraffe, woollymonkeys, etc. Very good looking park, but if you like history like in artis, blijdorp etc you are in the wrong place here.

Those are the biggest zoos. Of course there are also a number of small parks worth visiting. When you tell me where in the country you think you might be staying i can give you directions to some smaller zoos that you might be able to combine with other zoos on 1 day. (Maybe its better if we talk futher in private messages so we don't go to much off-topic here )

 

[Sun Wukong]

Largest Indoor Rainforest Zoo Exhibit according to own testimony: Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo "Lied Jungle"
Henry Doorly Zoo's Lied Jungle

Been to "Lied Jungle" in 2005-what can I say? Quite interesting species collection and on the first look quite interesting; on the second look size of the enclosures/suitabilty for animals kept ?!? No outdoor exhibits for the two tapir species or the pygmy hippos, f.e. ...Had to agree to David Hancocks' critiscm about it.

Burger's is great! But watch out for free-roaming "ESB"s

 

[Pedro]

I've been to Burger's twice and really had a nice time!
Trebaruna gave you better insights that I could give concerning the enclosures so i'm just going to give you a little more infos concerning some interesting species that shouldn't be missed.
In the Mangrove : African darter (Anhinga rufa), Little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus), Australian short-necked turtle (Emydura macquarii)
In the outside enclosures : the seals (Phoca hispida), Finnish reindeer (Rangifer tarandus fennicus)
Birdhouse : hooded parakeet (Psephotus haematonotus dissimilis), thick-billed conure (Rhynchopsitta pararhyncha)
Aquarium : many interesting reef fish species and blacktip shark (Carcharhinus limbatus)
Burger's bush : african darter, gray's piping guan (Pipile grayi), Sparkling violet-ear (Colibri coruscans), Lyle's flying fox (Pteropus lylei), aardvark (Orycteropus afer), Red-rumped cacique (Cacicus haemorrhous), bar-shouldered hill partridge (Arborophila brunneopectus) and many more...
Burger's desert : Meriam's kangaroo rat (Dipodomys meriami), bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis californicus), scaled quail (Callipepla squamata)
...

Enjoy!

 

[Trebaruna]

I wanted to put some pictures online of some enclosures in burgers, but a friend of mine already had some online so i´ll use his pics. Saves me the time searching for them, uploading them etc... So these pics are from Jordy Vulders.

The new terrace overlooking the savanna.

The terrace

The savanna (it has, rothschildgiraffes, grant zebra, white bearded gnu, red hartebeest, thompsongazelle, white rhino, roanantilope, ellipswaterbuck and greater kudu)

 

[Trebaruna]

The bush:

(the highest waterfall in our country... pretty sad our country is that flat ;-) )

 

[Trebaruna]

Next is the desert:

Collardpercari enclosure

 

[Trebaruna]

The ocean is only accesable from inside the bush

This is the backside of the bush where the ocean is located. On that side the savanna begins

A small part of the biggest window

The same tank seen from above (behind the scenes). When you're standing in the visitors area you only see the light part. That way the fish seem to disapeare into the darkness.

The new restaurant between the bush and the savanna, is also near the entrance of the ocean

 

[Trebaruna]

And finally some pics of the older zoo:

Probably the worst enclosure in the whole zoo is the orangutan-thing.

this is a small part of the famous chimpexhibit

This used to be a very deep pit for sumatran tigers. Now they filled it up and coati are living there... tigers are temporarily out of the collection. They will return next year when asia will be finished.

The cheeta-enclosure near the savanna.

 

[snowleopard]

Thanks for the awesome, large photos Trebaruna!!

 

[nicholas]

Looks fabulous. Is it privatly owned or does it get finacial help from the goverment? What's it usually like in the Netherlands?

 

[Trebaruna]

@ snowleopard: i'll tell my friend

@ Nicholas: Burgers is privately owned. It's a familybusiness by the "van Hoof" family. the previous van Hoof was a biologist that was quite well known, now i thought his son took over.
They do not receive government support. There are some zoos that get that. Mainly when they have monumental buildings that need to be looked after. Blijdorp/rotterdam is such an example. Blijdorp also receives support from the city, in return they have to keep their prices lower than other big zoos to make it affordable for "poorer people" to visit the zoo as well. Artis has recently received money for the new projects that will be build in the comming years. Most zoos in the netherlands do without systematic support. I believe there are the occasional city counsils that help when investments are needed for projects. But i must say i'm not an expert in that sort of things. Perhaps my fellow duchtman jwer knows more about that subject.

 

[CZJimmy]

Some great pics there!

It looks a fantastic zoo (with the exception of the orangutan exhibit).

What are their gorilla and elephant exhibits like?

And are the Orangs being considered for a new exhibit in the asia zone next year?

 

[Swedish Zoo Fan]

Thank you for the pictures Trebarauna...
What's their manatee exhibit like???

 

[jwer]

Just some remarks from my side. Burger's Zoo Arnhem is my favourite Zoo in Holland because it's so different from all the others. To answer some of the question's. Burger's is privately owned and afaik only Artis Amsterdam and Rotterdam Zoo receive steady support from the city council. Other's do try and get subsidies for projects, mainly when they are educational and usually manage to get some support.

As far as i know the Thompson gazelles are kept behind the scenes, the hartebeasts are visable. The Gorilla's live on a grassy island, which is decent in size and the visitors have a dug-out viewing area with windows on ground-level. The elephant exhibit isn't very large but does have trees in it, which is rare for elephant enclosures and gives a nice feel to it. The inside is a bunker with boxes per elephant, they keep old females who can't breed anymore (now 4, which is the max they can keep).

The manatee exhibit is a dark and murky pool inside the Bush. It's the part of the zoo they receive the most complaints about (as far as i heard rumours) because the animals are barely visable (if at all). The area is not small though, but even though (the same rumours again) the filters are the size of a truck they can't get them clear which isn't remarkable with all the leaf decay and waterbirds in it...