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splaat66

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hi all

just found this website and thought i would contribute. i am an australian on a 3 month stay in Minnetonka in the US. naturally, the first thing i did was join the Minnesota Zoo as we are Taronga members and wanted to keep up our animal visits for our 3yo son.

it is fantastic. we love it. it has so many things we don't see in australia which is great and thankfully no sad looking koalas like the houston zoo does.

if you are a local you no doubt have been to the zoo but the recently opened minnesota trail is great and worth taking another trip for. also the butterfly house is just our favourite place, we love to just sit and watch them flutter by hoping they will land on us which they do sometimes. for australians, we love to go and watch the carribou and moose (our favourite animal at the moment). the moose is so crazy and goofy, they are just gorgeous. just wish they had a male as it would be fun to watch his antlers grow.

most fasinating of all is the takin. what a whacky animal!! i love that i am 41 and can still find things that amaze me like this animal.

i guess for us the fun thing about the Minnesota Zoo is the chance to see things that we don't see in Australia but that you read about in books like the armadillo, the raccoon, the porcupine and the aardvark - what a weird thing that is!!

anyway, thanks Minnesota Zoo, we have been having a ball.
 
I lived in Minnesota for three months in 95. I was at uni on an exchange program at the time and left at the start of April so I never saw the place without snow. It would have been interesting to go to the zoo in the winter and see the animals in snow but I unfortunatly didn't.

I have heard the city is very nice in summer. In winter everything including most the snow is grey and I would not have called it nice.
 
Sadly, it's the coldest place on Earth in winter (I was there one winter where it reach -25º), and in summer, it's hot, and full of mosquitos. Still, there aren't many places where it gets so cold every few years, that the Mississippi freezes, and they carve massive ice bricks (~ 1 cubic metre), and build a 5 storey ice castle out of it, that you can walk into.

But Fall (aka Autumn), along the Mississippi, when the tress have all changed color is truly spectacular.

Skiing through the zoo in winter is fun - it's a massive place, and quite impressive.
 
well i was very sad that our trip here in MN hadn't been when the snow was here but now i am glad it has been summer as we have missed the yucky winter in sydney and the scenery here is gorgeous. we have done the mississippi valley both north and south and walking in a few of the state parks and we love the wildlife refuge down the mississippi from the airport on, the birdlife was great. most importantly though, the zoo was interesting, i can't imagine what it would be like in winter with all that snow and so many things closed.

yesterday was our last trip to the zoo as we are leaving on sunday. we said goodbye to 'our' moose and the butterflys. we are very sad.

thanks to minnesota for so many natural and animal encounters, it has been great. even to see raccoons and deer instead of rabbits and kangaroos on the side of the road has been refreshing.
 
zoo in MSP

Do they still have another ( albeit smaller ) zoo in St Pauls ? I think it is/was in Como Park
 
yes they do still have the Como Park Zoo but i found that to be incredibly sad. it actually made me feel sick walking around it as it was just your classic old fashioned zoo with small pens. they didn't charge to get in so i am not sure where they get their funding. they have a polar bear that had this little pond that he splashed in and a heap of concrete that another one just paced around in. honestly, i was just so sad for the animals and i really don't understand why they allow this to happen but maybe i am over sensitive as noone else seemed bothered by it.
 
I was browsing zoo websites earlier today, and the Minnesota Zoo site has a great virtual tour of its new "Russian Grizzly Coast" exhibit. They spent around $25 million on this area of the zoo: grizzly bears, sea otters, european wild boar, amur leopards, etc. The construction videos and simulated tour are top-notch...so maybe I'll add this to my list of zoos to see on this summer's epic road trip. It appears to be an absolutely fantastic set of enclosures.
 
"Russia's Grizzly Coast" should be a great addition to the zoo.
Here's a picture of the bear exhibit (from late last summer) that I found on the construction company's site. Construction is continuing through the winter and landscaping resumes when the snows melt. This view is from the zoo's monorail that passes the edge of the site:

You may watch the construction proceed using the live cam IQeye501 IQEYE012D81: Live Images Digital Pan Tilt Zoom
 

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@zooplantman: the virtual tour on the zoo's website should appeal to a designer/horticulturalist such as yourself.
 
what a fantatsic exhibit preveiw and plan. If any body knows of other sites with this sort of details, link me please!
 
snowleopard said:
@zooplantman: the virtual tour on the zoo's website should appeal to a designer/horticulturalist such as yourself.
Click to expand...

I haven't looked at it, I'll be interested to see how they present it. I was the landscape designer for the project, and I'm looking forward to seeing it -not this spring when it opens - but in a year or two when the landscape settles in.
 
Short on cash, MInnesota Zoo puts most projects on hold

This is a link to a sad article citing a lack of funds for the Minnesota Zoo. They are just opening their $25 million "Russia's Grizzly Coast" exhibit this spring, but it looks like that will be the only new exhibit for many years. Perhaps the press releases surrounding these enormously expensive new set of enclosures will entice visitors to significantly boost the attendance, and allow the zoo to actually set aside some extra cash.
 
I certainly hope so!
It is a hard time for zoos in the US expecting government funds. The Minnesota governor ...who really seems to be a zoo supporter, unlike his predecessors ... also just eliminated proposed US$11million funding for the Como Zoo. And of course, the Louisville Zoo just lost the promised state funds to build "Glacier Run."
 
kare11.com :: KARE 11 TV - Orphaned grizzlies have new home at Minnesota Zoo

The grizzly bears have arrived! What is astonishing is that over $23 million has been spent on only 11 animals. Three grizzly bears, four sea otters, a pair of european wild boar and two female amur leopards. Just over $2 million per animal, although there is hope of adding an additional amur leopard and of breeding the wild boars. I still have plans to more than likely visit this zoo in July...and hopefully I'll see the trio of fisher kittens that were recently born there.
 
Zooplantman said:
I certainly hope so!
It is a hard time for zoos in the US expecting government funds. The Minnesota governor ...who really seems to be a zoo supporter, unlike his predecessors ... also just eliminated proposed US$11million funding for the Como Zoo. And of course, the Louisville Zoo just lost the promised state funds to build "Glacier Run."
Click to expand...

You guys in the US are certainly on a roll with this kind of political scapegoat in the making! As soon as financially lean times come around the corner, the environment, FWS conservation programmes, endangered species and zoos as state recreational, educational and conservation breeding institutions are made to pay.

Yet some quarters seem to be exempt and have actually led to the lean mean times in the US. Defence is being splattered with everything at the expense of national coffers (I just hope you all do the sensible thing and choose the right candidate in the Presidentials later in the year!)! I would be an ashamed and distraught US citizen if I where taken over by this kind of .....!!! :mad:
 
Thank you for expressing our frustration, Im glad others out in the world see what we (loyal US zoo enthusiasts) are faced with. What we need for our economy is a federal work projects agency...thus a stimulated economy and new zoo exhibits just like the good old days. :)
 
Interestingly, at least two major zoo exhibits were partially funded by the Federal government during the last major financial "down time" in the US, the late 1970s:

Jungleworld at the Bronx Zoo (just the building shell--as Zooplantman pointed out, most of the interior exhibits were designed and funded later).

San Francisco Zoo's "Gorilla World" was built with federal funds, together with the adjacent Musk Ox Meadow (now bulldozed to allow construction of the African Savanna exhibit). While Gorilla World opened just one year before Woodland Park Zoo's near-legendary Jones and Jones Gorilla Exhibit, it was already a bit behind the times, basically a large open pit with viewers surrounding the gorillas from all sides. However, it did (and still does) include live trees which the animals had full access to, and a soft grassy substrate, which put it leagues ahead of most gorilla exhibits of its time.

Something tells me zoo exhibits are not going to be a high funding priority for the current or any near-term federal administrations, sadly enough.
 
okapikpr said:
Thank you for expressing our frustration, Im glad others out in the world see what we (loyal US zoo enthusiasts) are faced with. What we need for our economy is a federal work projects agency...thus a stimulated economy and new zoo exhibits just like the good old days. :)
Click to expand...

I was refering more to the Great Depression and the massive public work projects that took place at many zoos across the country...Toledo, Buffalo, Audubon, San Francisco, and many more. Nearly every major zoo during that time had at least one WPA building or project. The Toledo Zoo was basically built from these funds.
 
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