Visited the zoo today for the first time in years. I was rather impressed with the new additions, as the snow monkey exhibit is excellent and the Polar bear exhibit is above average. I am also excited to see the redevelopment of the lion house ongoing, as it was sad to see animals in those conditions during my last visit.
One thing that has to be said for Lincoln Park - for all of the subpar former exhibits, once they commit to a renovation, they seem to knock it out of the park.
I'm very curious to see the plans for Lion House. The poster concept is interesting but doesn't feel clear to me. Thank you for uploading the image all the same. I'm hopeful some of the small species - particularly servals, which still fit the habitat - may return.
Lastly one thing that struck me about the zoo is wasted potential in regards to the collection. The zoo has a great primate collection for its size, but besides that has relatively few species for the site. Even when there are animals, they feel like placeholders (alpaca, bactrian camel (2 exhibits), peccary). The reptile collection on the website is 28 species, and in person its not much more than that. The mammal collection is rather small as well, except for primates. The bird collection is about 65 species. I hope the zoo focuses more on growing its collection, rather than simply housing megafauna as has been the recent trend.
Most of the recent renovations (Great Ape House, Penguin-Seabird House, Bear Line, now Lion House) all involved axing larger collections of species to focus on providing the best possible care for fewer species, as often happens. The old Bear Line often held five or six unique predator species, including hyenas and wolves as well as multiple bear species, but the shoddy Polar Bear enclosure desperately needed a renovation and now we have a better habitat and fewer species. Many will be pleased to see the big cats having more space at Kovler Lion House, but I think many of the smaller species - the serval, the pallas cat, the red pandas - were doing fine and I'm sad to see them go, even if lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars deserve better. All of these exhibits needed renovation to provide better animal care, but the species collection suffered some; we lost fifteen or so species in those renovations for five keystone animals. I think the Children's Zoo and African Journey ratios were much kinder, but even the latter has deteriorated - the elephants have died, and I believe on my last visit only giraffes and ostrich had access to the outdoor yard, which once also had gazelles and a secretary bird, I think. I want to say the waterbuck might've been there once, too, but I could be flat-out wrong there.
The Antelope-Zebra area feels much, much more old school, with interesting species showing up from time to time and no common theme, but as an expense the habitats themselves feel like generic holding paddocks for whatever animals happen to be there on a given day - the Takin have made for an interesting addition, but the camels and ostriches have jumped around here and there, and the kangaroos are nice to have but stick out quite a bit. I miss the oryx but they're ancient history now. (I didn't even realize they currently had both zebra species; knew it had happened in the past.)
