I would have sworn up and down they still had harbor seals. Looking into it, I think I have been mistaking some of the smaller female gray seals as harbor seals and only definitively identifying the males accurately as Gray seals, combined with my knowledge the zoo previously held Harbor seals and had signage up until definitely more recently than a decade. Thank you for the correction.
That sounds like an absolutely dreadful, depressing visit. If someone described a facility I hadn't visited to me in these terms I would stay the heck away from it.
Baboon Island was replaced by restrooms, planters and native grasses, a pretty smart decision, and some of the planters have since been awkwardly converted into some cool turtle habitats. The outdoor prairie aviary is a recent and welcome development.
There's no reason to doubt they won't try to follow through on the plans they recently unveiled. Tropical Forests was a part of the same master plan and matched fairly closely what was intended. The zoo has also seen the most successful fundraising effort in decades recently.
That said, the timeline will be long and despite the name, the Next Century Plan was never really looking to be completed by the zoo's centennial. The next project is a a four-phase development of the Africa section of the zoo, which should definitely be complete within ten years or less, followed by a significant reinvention of Australia House and a reworking of the zoo entrance, and then after that new penguin and sea lion exhibits near the entrance. These projects alone could all take over ten years since this is essentially six or seven major projects. If every project takes two years, the zoo will take twelve years to develop each of these, and I can easily see some of them taking longer. The Asia expansion, dolphin lagoon, Bear Grottos, multiple North and South America exhibits, Andean lagoon, etc. are all scheduled for later, which is another half-dozen or more projects which will require completely new fundraising campaigns from the current and could take an additional decade to build. Dolphins may very well be phased out of captivity by then.
The klipspringers haven't been seen indoors by a zoochatter in several years, although I haven't done a winter daytime visit in years myself.I appreciate the replies!
@JVM: Glad to hear about the Tropical Forests' crowd control changes. I had a feeling that was the case, and this'll help with less backtracking and a more efficient route in the future.
I may have walked the area a little too fast, but I only remember seeing the nyala/crowned crane savanna and the dik-dik habitat outside. I was also under the impression that the klipspringers are mainly/entirely confined to the kopje building. Perhaps they and the dik-dik rotate? That sounds very interesting about the mudskippers - I'm intrigued to know how that worked out with maintaining the fish in the area and such. At least that entrance trail will be getting new habitats to bring some additional new life soon.
Oh, I stand corrected about the brown bears - I tried looking around online but couldn't find much on specifics.
To the east side of Habitat Africa is the outdoor giraffe habitat and the African painted dog cabin, and on the west side the dik-dik/warthog yard faces the Pachyderm building and directly south of it is the larger enclosure for Nyala and crowned crane. To the south of the building, between painted dog cabin and Nyala enclosure, there is a little indented 'overlook' area that includes the outdoor painted dog habitat, another viewing area for the giraffe habitat over a moat, the chainlink outdoor klipspringer habitat, and viewing for the nyala habitat. It looks pretty similar to the dik-dik enclosure at a glance and both are built off the former Small Antelope/Aardvark House.
