Greetings from Canada!

Meaghan Edwards

Meaghan Edwards

Well-Known Member
I am a 24 year proud Toronto Zoo member with a great love and appreciation of animals and responsible zoos worldwide. I'm eagerly awaiting for the completion of their new tundra and Australasia biomes, among many other projects in the works as well as their many current excellent programs (frog conservation, etc).

I currently don't have a career in the zoo field but would someday love to be a keeper at the Toronto Zoo, but unsure of where to go for the education.

Been lurking here for a bit, glad to be here :)
 
Welcome to the forum :)

I for one would love to hear more about Toronto Zoo.
 
Welcome Meaghan to the forum, Toronto zoo is a great zoo, I would be glad to hear of any news from there
 
Another Canadian!! Welcome to the site, and there are a couple of articles here that I placed on the Toronto Zoo thread. Any new information that you have on Canada's largest zoo would be greatly appreciated.
 
Welcome, fellow Canuck :D!

I have always wondered why the Toronto Zoo does not attract more visitors, do you have any good ideas that you have been mulling around in your head?

Is it because it is not as good as the Calgary Zoo :p! After all, the Calgary Zoo attracts just as many visitors per year in a much smaller city! The city of Calgary also attracts less international visitors.

I guess I should not razz you so much, after all you do not actually live in the city of Canada's sins :p!

BTW you are not allowed to call Calgary a redneck metropolis, because I absolutely hate it when it so often displays these characteristics! However, at least some parts of the city are very progressive , and are very accepting of every type of individual :).
 
@Taccachantrieri: the success of the Calgary Zoo is impressive, as I have noted on another thread here at ZooBeat. Perhaps in a massive city such as Toronto there is much more to do and see, while in Calgary the options are slightly less?
 
Part of the reason I think perhaps Calgary receives more visitors is because it might be easier for the locals to get to the zoo. I've heard form many people it is very tricky to get to the zoo via public transportation. I think it'd be a good idea if there could be some sort of shuttle bus that goes out to the zoo, like what Hamilton is doing to try and get more people visiting the waterfront, using a tram replica. Some other considerations with regards to the smaller percentage of visitors includes the SARS crisis; this took a huge bite out of attendance. I sometimes have to wonder if the violence also scares people form coming to Toronto to visit the zoo :( When you come over there in the summer, though, you wouldn't know that there was ever a bite out of the attendance! It is PACKED. When I do visit in the summer, it's always when it's later in the day when it is also cooler.

You brought up a very interesting point Taccachantrieri, but you caused me to ramble ;)

With Toronto getting Giant pandas in the near future, lets see which zoo gets more visitors :D ;) I would like to check out the Calgary zoo sometime. It sounds like a very nice zoo. You guys have African Wild Dogs, I'm so jealous!
 
Toronto Zoo getting giant pandas? Is that true????

If the Calgary Zoo ever does get financing for its enormous Arctic/Antarctic exhibit then its attendance should climb much higher. The upcoming Conservatory renovation will not drag in extra visitors.
 
African Wild dogs are absolutely magnificent Zoo animals :D:p. They look positively ravishing, they are extremely active and social, are quite popular amongst visitors, are an endangered species, their environment is relatively easy to replicate, and they breed in captivity quite well.
To top it off I have not seen them exhibit stereotypical behavior (which can be hard to track). I think this can mostly be attributed to their social nature and how they constantly check one another out and adjust their movements accordingly. During my observations an individual might start to follow the same route but as it is doing so it will be distracted by another individual and change its movements.

The Calgary Zoo's exhibit needs to be considerably larger. Before the African wild dogs moved in it was covered in grass, but within a year or so the dogs trampled almost all the grass away with their almost constant movements. This is more proof that the African wild dogs do not always follow the same paths in their exhibits. Relatively recently the Calgary Zoo has added a lot of sandy like substrate to their African wild dog exhibit.

Overall it does not surprise me in the least that so many Zoos are adding African wild dogs to their displays. They are one of the few larger sized animals that I actually think Zoo's should add to their collections, hopefully at the expense of other large carnivores ;).
 
The Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle has a fantastic, $1.5 million african hunting dog exhibit that is only a few years old. There are tiny caves, a massive fake termite mound, a tiny stream bed, sand, dirt, trees...basically everything that a great exhibit needs. The Calgary Zoo's exhibit by comparison is very small and disappointing, although the animals are always entertaining to watch. It's intriguing that one can barely ever see any type of jackal in a North American zoo.
 
It really does not help matters that the Calgary Zoo did not design that exhibit for African wild dogs. Originally, that area was to be part of the outdoor gorilla habitat so that the gorilla exhibit would surround visitors. Later on close to the opening of Destination Africa the Calgary Zoo decided to make this area a sitatunga habitat. That plan was canned for whatever reason and they displayed cranes in there for a while.
The Calgary Zoo has supported African wild dog researchers for years now so when the opportunity came to fill a mostly empty exhibit with intriguing animals they jumped at it, even though it was it is not a very good exhibit for African wild dogs.

I really hope that they can figure out where to build a new better exhibit, but I somewhat doubt that will happen. If I ran the Zoo I would consider expanding the African lion exhibit and replacing them with African wild dogs, and letting the gorillas have all the space originally allocated to them. In a lot of respects this would not be the most popular move.
 
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