Golden Swans, Part I: Large Carnivores
I’ve allocated five of these nine spots to big cats, because most major European zoos have at least several species, and there are clear differences in needs across most of the species, though I have combined jaguars and leopards. Bears get three spots, again because many zoos have multiple species, the standard of bear exhibits across Europe is surprisingly high, and I want to reflect that strength. I approached that as ‘best three, for any given species’. Unfortunately that does mean choosing just one large canid exhibit, but that’s not too great a hardship.
So let’s begin.
The Golden Swan for Best Tiger Exhibit goes to… Burgers Zoo. It was at Burgers Zoo, and outside this exhibit specifically, that I first had the idea to summarise my trip in this way. This enclosure is, to be frank, a class above and beyond any other tiger exhibit I saw, with its immense size and gorgeous landscaping. There are some good tiger exhibits elsewhere, but this wasn’t a hard choice.
The Golden Swan for Best Lion Exhibit goes to… Burgers Zoo. 2/2 for the biggest of the big cats. I’d criticised the overall standard of lion enclosures across Europe just before I saw this enormous, simple, but attractive chunk of forest. Before Burgers the best lion exhibit I saw was probably at Attica, of all places. After Burgers though we went on a run, with wonderful exhibits at Rotterdam, London, Edinburgh and Chester as well, and a case could be made for all of them. But Burgers is more tasteful than London, bigger than Rotterdam or Edinburgh and has superior viewing to Chester. A good win in a tough field.
The Golden Swan for Best Jaguar/Leopard Exhibit goes to… Chester Zoo. Well, obviously. I spent much of the past few months decrying how poorly these spotted big cats get treated, being kept in dorm-sized enclosures for no good reason at all. Looking back, Barcelona was decent-ish, but Krefeld was the first one that really satisfied me, and then Cologne knocked it off the very next day. Cologne’s leopard exhibit was looking good until… well, until Chester stepped in and showed the Continent how it’s done.
The Golden Swan for Best Snow Leopard Exhibit goes to… Zoo Zurich. No surprises here, I suspect, but the ones it had to fight off might be. Helsinki makes great use of its natural environment with a sloping, rocky and generously-sized cage, with the adjacent reindeer exhibit serving as The Food Channel for the cats, coaxing them down towards the front. It’s only Zurich’s higher ‘production values’ in the form of better viewing – Helsinki has a fully enclosed cage – that puts it in front. The other zoo Zurich had to hold off was, of all places, Bucharest. The snow leopards here have a truly enormous, fully enclosed cage that is the best Bucharest has to offer, but it’s quite apparent that it wasn’t designed with them in mind but has been repurposed from another species, probably tigers. It gets a very honourable mention, but Zurich has the best custom-designed snow leopard set-up I’ve seen, and I have to acknowledge technical mastery where I see it.
The Golden Swan for Best Cheetah Exhibit goes to… Chester Zoo. A tight one, this. You could be forgiven for asking why Burgers’ lion exhibit takes out its award, whereas the carbon-copy cheetah one doesn’t. It was in the medal position right up until the final zoo of the trip, but I prefer Chester’s multiple viewing options, with glass windows and elevated viewing over the fence, and also that there’s a series of inter-connected exhibits that make for greater flexibility. I also suspect that Chester’s exhibit was designed for cheetahs, whereas Burgers looks like it might have been repurposed from tigers after the Rimba opened? Anyway, Nuremberg also did pretty well here, but was outclassed by the other two. And while I like the *idea* of mixing cheetahs with rhinos, as at Attica and Leipzig, I’m not sure it really works in practice.
The Golden Swan for Best (Polar) Bear Exhibit goes to… Hanover Zoo. Easily. Copenhagen is good and Munich is a respectable second, but Hanover is a work of art. Sugary, syrupy art. The theming is almost too much to handle but the exhibits themselves make up for it, with deep pools constantly churning thanks to wave machines, and moderately spacious land areas with such luxuries as gradients and grass. This is one of the very few enclosures I’ve seen that does this majestic species justice. I’ll even take the crane if I have to.
The Golden Swan for Best (Spectacled) Bear Exhibit goes to… Zoo Zurich. After. Hanover’s polar bears it becomes much tougher to pick just two. A case could be made that the next best pair are both for spectacled bears, at Zurich and Chester respectively. Two into one doesn’t go, however, and I’ve plumped for Zurich. Chester might even be bigger, I’m not sure, but Zurich is spacious anyway and it has enormous high treetops to reach into that I’m treating as a tie-breaker. The landscaping is divine, as an aside – Zurich is one of the few zoos that understand that mock rock is a garnish, not a main course.
The Golden Swan for Best (Brown) Bear Exhibit goes to… Plzen Zoo. This third and final bear award is the hardest to give. It could have gone to sun bears, at Chester or Burgers. It could have found its way to Wroclaw’s brown bears instead of Plzen’s, and Munich would have been a sniff if it had been bigger too. Plzen wins though, admittedly partly because I actually saw the three bears, unlike at Wroclaw, and so I feel I saw the exhibit in action. This is probably one of the older enclosures to win a gong, and I wish it had less hotwire, but the usable portions of the exhibit are still wonderful, and it needs to be seen to be appreciated how sprawling it is: it almost runs the length of one side of the zoo. A great example of what can be achieved for a local species with nothing more than space and native vegetation.
The Golden Swan for Best Canine Exhibit goes to… Berlin Tierpark. I think when I wrote up my visit here that I neglected to mention the enormous, attractive, moated wolf exhibit. The Tierpark is rightly noted for its hoofstock, but this enclosure for wolves proves they can deliver for carnivores too. At the time of my visit there were three hyperactive wolves sprinting back and forth, play-fighting in and out of the water and from one of the paddock to the other. It’s a sadly rare pleasure to see animals *run*. The Tierpark benefits from active animals in a huge setting, with unobtrusive viewing in the form of the moat. And it had to beat out some strong competition, with excellent wolf habitats at Munich, Bucharest and even Bratislava coming into consideration, though none are truly at Berlin’s level. The closest contender was probably Chester's African hunting dogs, but they didn't give me ten minutes of compelling canine action sequences.
That’ll do for now. Chester, Zurich and Burgers have two each, and Plzen, Hanover and the Tierpark one.
Sorry I'm just a little shy, is all.
, half of zoochat is impatiently waiting for a ton of rankings, because that's what life is all about 
