Los Angeles Zoo & Botanical Gardens Future Exhibits

mstickmanp

mstickmanp

Well-Known Member
As many of you know, the Los Angeles Zoo will be opening 4 exhibits in the next 3 years. The exhibits are "Golden Monkeys of China", "Pachyderm Forest", "Herpetofauna-Invertebrate Species Survival (HISS) Center", and "Rainforest of the Americas".

All these new exhibits should be amazing and world-class as they are being designed by The Portico Group which designed "Russia's Grizzly Coast" at Minnesota Zoo, "Steller Cove" and Great Northwest exhibits at Oregon Zoo, Clore Pavilion at London Zoo, and both "Jaguar Cove" and "Tropical Rainforest" at Woodland Park Zoo.

Golden Monkeys of China-Fall 2008
This exhibit will be home to the only Golden Snub-nosed Monkeys (1.2) in the western hemisphere.
The Portico Group - Projects - Zoos
Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens

Pachyderm Forest-November 2009
The whole exhibit will be about 6.7 acres in size, which will have four yards and a big elephant barn. Three of the yards will add up to 3.7 acres, which will be for the elephants. There will also be a Muntjac and Crane mixed exhibit, and another small exhibit next to the takin exhibit. The exhibits will be located right in the middle of the zoo, and will have six themed viewing areas surrounding the exhibit.
The Portico Group - Projects - Zoos
Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens
http://lazoo.org/support/images/PachydermForest.pdf

Herpetofauna-Invertebrate Species Survival (HISS) Center-May 2010
It will be located in the Aquatics Section at the zoo. Not much is known about this exhibit as, it's still being designed. All I know is what is written in the book "America's Best Zoos", which mentions separated sections. One section will be for venomous and damp forest reptiles, and amphibians (including Japanese Giant Salamanders). An outside boardwalk by the Alligator Swamp, and another building with Southwest Desert reptiles.
Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens

Rainforest of the Americas-September 2010
It will be located near the zoo's Aviary. The same goes for this exhibit, as nobody knows much about it. "America's Best Zoos" says there will be a small building where it will exhibit stingrays, piranhas, electric eels, and other Amazon animals. The outside will have exhibits for jaguars, tapirs, harpy eagles, and giant otters.
Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens

The Portico Group also mentions a new exhibit I had never heard of before. The exhibit will be called Asian Temperate Forest, and all the website shows is the concept art. It appears that it's going to be built in the zoos Eurasia section where the tigers, markhors, and indian rhino are currently exhibited and where the Golden Monkeys of China was built. In the concept art it shows that all the buildings/exhibits will have the chinese look, which is the same as the Golden Monkeys of China pavilion is.
The Portico Group - Projects - Zoos

All these exhibits mean a great future for the Los Angeles Zoo.
 
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Where will the future Herp house be located?....so far I have only assumed that it will replace the aquatics region. Especially since the zoo has slowly been relocating or phasing out the species in this area.
 
okapikpr said:
Where will the future Herp house be located?....so far I have only assumed that it will replace the aquatics region. Especially since the zoo has slowly been relocating or phasing out the species in this area.
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Yeah, the HISS Center will be located where the aquatics section is right now. There is even some trees already marked to show which ones are staying or going.
 
I'm not sure from where, but I'm sure they already have it planned where they will get the female elephants, unelse they wouldn't of started building the new exhibit.
 
The future for the Los Angeles Zoo is indeed bright, and with all of the upcoming exhibits I would like to visit again in 5 years to see what it all looks like. However, sometimes new habitats can cost a fortune and still be disappointing, as the Campo Gorilla Reserve looks spectacular but isn't the best enclosure for gorillas. The possibility of an Asian Temperate Forest set of habitats sounds wonderful, as the zoo already has an indian rhino, sumatran tigers, markhors and a variety of other Asian mammals.
 
snowleopard said:
The future for the Los Angeles Zoo is indeed bright, and with all of the upcoming exhibits I would like to visit again in 5 years to see what it all looks like. However, sometimes new habitats can cost a fortune and still be disappointing, as the Campo Gorilla Reserve looks spectacular but isn't the best enclosure for gorillas. The possibility of an Asian Temperate Forest set of habitats sounds wonderful, as the zoo already has an indian rhino, sumatran tigers, markhors and a variety of other Asian mammals.
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After finding out that the designers of the 4 exhibits are the ones that designed "Russia's Grizzly Coast" it got me more excited about them. I just hope they don't mistakes like the designers of Campo Gorilla Reserve and Red Ape Rainforest.
 
Russia's Grizzly Coast - Minnesota
Steller Cove - Oregon
Great Northwest - Oregon
Jaguar Cove - Seattle
Tropical Rainforest - Seattle

All 5 are Portico projects...all exhibits that I have personally seen...all awesome habitats for animals!! Los Angeles Zoo should have some fantastic enclosures in the future.
 
The Portico group mentions this in the concept art of the Pachyderm Forest: "Exhibit design, architecture, landscape architecture and interpretive graphics for the Pachyderm Forest exhibits including expansion of the Asian elephant exhibits, concepts for Sumatran Rhino and tropical Asian exhibit habitats and a new underwater viewing hippo river exhibit at Los Angeles Zoo, Los Angeles, California".

The thing that I'm more excited about is that they mention a new Sumatran Rhino exhibit. I also heard from a volunteer that the zoo wants either Harry or his sister from Cincy. The site plan does not show a hippo exhibit, so maybe that will be added in the future.

This might be true because the site plan shows four yards and in the zoos website they mention only three for elephants: "Three interconnected yards spanning 3.7 acres will allow the elephants to rotate from one to the next." The whole exhibit space will be 6.7 acres, and out of those 6.7 acres 3.7 of them will be for the elephants. I heard 1.5-2 acres will be for the barn, which leaves 1.5-1 acre for the fourth yard, which might mean that SUMATRAN RHINOS MIGHT BE COMING BACK!!!!

The zoo even changed the name of the exhibit from "Elephants of Surin" to "Pachyderm Forest".
 
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I thought the plans for the hippo and such were dropped when the activists tried to stop the exhibit the first time so the zoo came back with a larger elephant exhibit instead.
 
I mentioned in my Cincinnati Zoo review how a keeper told me that Harry the sumatran rhino might be going to the Los Angeles Zoo...and so there might be some substantial truth to that rumor. That would be awesome for the "Pachyderm Forest" habitats.
 
Ituri said:
I thought the plans for the hippo and such were dropped when the activists tried to stop the exhibit the first time so the zoo came back with a larger elephant exhibit instead.
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Yeah, I remeber that hippo exhibit, which was going to be called Kiboko Cove. Probably the hippo exhibit was indeed dropped, even though it would have been cool to have a new exhibit for the hippos. Now the zoo only has one hippo, so I don't think they will bother in building a new hippo exhibit.
 
Awesome link Zooplantman! It's interesting to see the vast amount of money being utilized by the Los Angeles Zoo in an attempt to improve the aging infrastructure there. Some of the money has been wasted, as $6 million on a crappy trio of mesh orangutan cages is a disgrace, but $14 million on the reptile building and $21 million on the rainforest of the Americas zone will hopefully create fantastic habitats for animals. The almost $40 million Pachyderm Forest will represent a huge chunk of both coin and land within the zoo grounds, and so a lot hinges on the success of that set of exhibits. I am also surprised that all of that information in the 30-page report could be found online.
 
mstickmanp said:
And as I expected, it shows that some of the projects are behind schedule. I heard that they were behind schedule by a month from someone at the zoo, but I wasn't sure if it was true.
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Well, for what it's worth, the final phase of Pachyderm Forest has just gone out to bid.
 
Sorry
It means that construction teams have been invited to prepare bids for doing the job. From this a team/company will be selected to get going on the work. So it will be a couple of months before you see anything happen at the zoo. (Negotiating the construction contract with a municipality is slow work!)
 
Zooplantman said:
Sorry
It means that construction teams have been invited to prepare bids for doing the job. From this a team/company will be selected to get going on the work. So it will be a couple of months before you see anything happen at the zoo. (Negotiating the construction contract with a municipality is slow work!)
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Actually, phase II of the Pachyderm Forest should be finished by late Sept or early Oct, so Billy could move to the new exhibit while they destroy the old one. There has been a lot of construction going on lately and they are working fast. From one week to the next, I actually saw the site go from a pile of dirt to actually seeing the shape of the exhibit and the temporary shelter.

Most of the info in the Monthly Construction Report is behind by a couple of months, so maybe they already found who to do the work.
 
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