The zoo's website has a press release saying they will recieve 1.5 million dollars in funding from surrounding counties to build a new cat exhibit/research facility. The cat collection is already quite impressive, so some new exhibits can only improve this strength. The research facility seems to be geared toward the small species such as sand cats, black footed cats and Brazilian ocelots. Large cats will also recieve new exhibits/improvements. Large species listed are Malayan tigers, Amur leopards and snow leopards. Anyone who's visited the old Big Cat Canyon (tiger canyon) knows this is long overdue. The snow leopards have been kept in the small cat building in a rather small enclosure for quite a while as well.
Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden Cincinnati Zoo to get 1.5 mil for Cat Canyon
- Thread starter groundskeeper24
- Start date
Zooplantman
Well-Known Member
And yet, those cat grottoes are Hagenbeck designs and I'll be sad to see them go.
I visited the Cincinnati Zoo today, and intend to be rather scathing in my review of the cat exhibits there. Beautiful felines, with 15 small cat species, but showcased in shockingly tiny cages. The snow leopard had zero access to fresh air or grass, and was in a cage that was about 12 feet wide by 12 feet deep. Brutal.
I knew you wouldn't be too impressed with the state of things there. It's a zoo with some very rare animals, but unfortunately is very short on space. It's about as urban as a zoo gets these days. It's my "home zoo" so it bums me out to see it, but that's just the way it is at the moment. The reptile building there is an absolute disgrace. It's THE oldest zoo building in the US, so it's on the national historic register, but I still wish they's find someplace else to but the reptiles. Make the buidling a monument like the Passenger Pigeon Memorial or something.....
From the renderings that I have seen, I believe that they still use them in the design...it will be a canyon, something needs to makeup the canyon walls.
Well, I found the Cincinnati Zoo has a new blog called Cheetah Days. The second item, if you scroll down a little, shows construction on a new building with the "small cat side." However, I am not clear if this is the new public exhibit or if this is just a holding facility for the animals in their cat ambassador program. Can someone out there in Ohio clarify things? Have they started construction on the new Cat Canyon project yet?
http://www.cheetahdays.com/
http://www.cheetahdays.com/
tigertiger
Well-Known Member
The blog has been around for over a year now--as a result, I totally recommend sitting down and reading it all the way back for some good, cheetah fun
. The area they are referring to their is the new expanded areas for the Cheetah Encounter show/exhibit. The area is one of the zoo's new openings this summer and one of the major upgrades to the area is the 'behind the scenes' areas. Can't say whether the Canon has started though.
Just to clarify, Big Cat Canyon was not Tiger Canyon, it was located at what is now the White Lion exhibit. The exhibit you are thinking of is Cat Grottoes that was built in 1934, they were the first bar-less exhibits for big cats like lions, tigers and even African birds. It featured Bengal and Indo-Chinese tigers, African lions, and even African wild dogs in it's latest years such as the mid 90's in which Tiger Canyon was made. Big Cat Canyon at the same time held white tigers, they were later moved to Tiger Canyon when the white lions came to the zoo in 1988. While Cat Grottoes and Big Cat Canyon were still up, the zoo had one of the largest collections of big cats in the world.