Sacramento Zoo New North American river otter exhibit and future of Sacramento Zoo

DavidBrown

DavidBrown

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
The renovated river otter exhibit has opened at the Sacramento Zoo. The attached article also has a video showing the exhibit:
Sacramento Zoo opens renovated otter habitat - Sac Paws - sacbee.com

My friend snowleopard had a bad experience at this zoo and called it a "dud" zoo. I respectfully disagree. It does have some seriously outdated monkey, ape, and big cat exhibits, no question. They know this and have plans to fix them...like most zoos, especially in this economy, money is a serious problem. Rumors are that the monkey exhibits will be replaced in the near future.

There are nice giraffe exhibit, sifaka and black and white lemur complex, flamingo and waterfowl pond, hoofstock yards, giant anteater exhibit, and jaguar exhibit.

Is the Sacramento Zoo worth visiting? If you are visiting the Sacramento area or passing through the Central Valley of California and need a rest stop, I would say yes. Probably no if you are looking for spectacular zoos.

I am an unapologetic Sacramento Zoo fan, so this is a very biased review.
 
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@DavidBrown: you are most definitely an unapologetic Sacramento Zoo fan if you like the gravel-pit hoofstock yards.:) Seriously, thanks for posting the otter video and the exhibit looks impressive. The only downside is that excellent otter exhibits are a dime a dozen in North America and I honestly hope that the zoo does something soon about the metal cages for several of its primates.
 
snowleopard said:
@DavidBrown: you are most definitely an unapologetic Sacramento Zoo fan if you like the gravel-pit hoofstock yards.:) Seriously, thanks for posting the otter video and the exhibit looks impressive. The only downside is that excellent otter exhibits are a dime a dozen in North America and I honestly hope that the zoo does something soon about the metal cages for several of its primates.
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@snowleopard:
I like that the hoofstock yards are open and not obstructed by a fence. The gravel-pit is a functional relic of the 1970s, although not particularly groovy in appearance perhaps.

Not to be argumentative, but isn't it GREAT that excellent otter exhibits are in abundance? I see absolutely no downside. Excellent exhibits should be celebrated, and the more the better.

I have heard that the bad old monkey cages, which I think you rightly criticize, will be razed as the next redevelopment project. I think the model for their replacement will likely be something like the excellent sifaka/black and white lemur complex that replaced one of the old metal monkey cages already, but this is conjecture.
 
It seems that the Sacramento Zoo has made the decision that to move the zoo to a new location is not feasible, so they are focusing on modernizing their current 14 acre facility into a modern 21st century zoo. While this means that there will never be elephants or gorillas returning to the zoo in a new location, it does give the zoo a clear route into the future.

Viewpoints: Help keep the Sacramento Zoo off the endangered species list - Sacramento Opinion - Sacramento Editorial | Sacramento Bee
 
I recently visited the zoo this past winter.
I do like that they have the yellow-billed magpie pair since it's an endemic species. The lemur exhibits are nice as is the waterfowl. But there is also room for a lot of renovation and I know that's difficult for zoos to do now since not a lot of people want to donate enough to help with every single renovation.
A lot of the exhibits are also extremely dark. I visited on a sunny day and a lot of the bird exhibits have a plastic sheet covering them which makes the exhibit super dark. I almost missed the bateleur eagle passing by its cage. I know it's nice to give animals shade, especially during sunny days, but I think the covers could be replaced with trees.

I'd still say stop by if you're on the road and passing through the area.
 
The otter exhibit looks very nice.

While what SL says about great otter exhibits being a dime a dozen may be true, I hardly think that matters since the vast majority of the people who go to that zoo rarely if ever visit these other zoos with strong otter exhibits.
 
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