I revisited Utah's Hogle Zoo this past summer and there is an excerpt from my review below. Also, today I uploaded a lot of photos from the brand-new, excellent Rocky Shores section of the facility.
Rocky Shores – This $18 million area just opened this summer and it is 3 acres in size and reflects the look of historic Cannery Row. Anyone who has visited Monterey Bay Aquarium will recognize the same style of backdrop as there is Rocky Shores Canning Co. (the underwater viewing area), a large rusty canning storage building (the indoor bear dens), the Shoreline Grill with fishing nets hanging from every hook (the new café), a gift shop, a central plaza and even new restrooms and like Asian Highlands there is an intentional effort to stick to a cohesive theme. This 3-acre section of the zoo used to be home to an ugly, chain-link fenced gazelle/ostrich yard, and also small exhibits for bobcats, penguins, Aldabra tortoises, red pandas and llamas and all of it was demolished to make way for the fantastic new addition. A motley assortment of outdated enclosures is now a superb area that has already proven to be a huge hit as surely the zoo will once again break its all-time attendance record.
Besides all of the visitor amenities and a couple of fish tanks (one of them a small crashing wave exhibit) there are essentially 5 animal habitats in Rocky Shores. First up is a pretty but basic netted aviary for a couple of bald eagles, followed by an excellent river otter exhibit that naturally has underwater viewing. A California sea lion/harbor seal pool features great viewing areas above and below water and the polar bear habitat likewise has vast viewing windows with plenty of angles for photos. The pool is fantastic and while the land area for the single male bear is not very big it is almost entirely natural substrate and on my visit the bear was digging furiously away and emerged with muddy paws. There is a chain-link fence as a backdrop but the zoo has intelligently planted many trees just before it and parts of the fence are already obscured. Lastly, there is a trio of grizzlies in a yard with plenty of close-up viewing opportunities but it could have been much larger in size. Other than bigger bear habitats I wholeheartedly give Rocky Shores the thumbs-up and it seems to be larger and more impressive than Louisville Zoo’s extremely similar Glacier Run.
