In a World Animal Day Facebook post today, ZooParc Overloon mentioned that the new African wild dog exhibit has been open to the public since last saturday. A picture is included in the post.
ZooParc Overloon Facebook post (2022-10-04)
I visited Overloon yesterday and saw the new African wild dog exhibit. It is quite nice, good size and with a decent lay-out, and seems to be some improvement from the previous exhibit, as is the new meerkat exhibit next to it. The little "African school"/wildlife conservation center near the two new exhibits is also quite nicely done and themed (including an "open door" with a glass plane looking out into the exhibit), although it could have done with more signage or educational displays. I appreciated the fact that the new African wild dog exhibit can also be seen from some of the existing lion viewing areas (behind the lion exhibit and separated from it by a moat and fence in a lower-lying zone). My biggest criticism of the new exhibit would probably be that the viewing area on the tiger side of the new exhibit is difficult and quite risky to access as it on a steep dirt berm, and could be make more visitor-friendly (the same is also true of a main viewing area for the fossa exhibit, although that one has big, uneven rocks instead of a dirt berm).
I noticed that near the new African wild dog and meerkat exhibits, there is a substantial expansion area, already fenced into the zoo but still with three (empty?) farm stable buildings on it, surrounded by corn stubble. It is quite a sizable plot of land, it certainly has quite a few possibilities for future developments. It will interesting to see what they will do with it.
I enjoyed the new Madidi south American area also. Decent, good-looking exhibits, apart from the boa constrictor terrarium, which looked bland and basic and was also not presented at an ideal height for viewing and had a lot of reflection on the window. The Madidi area also presents an attractive collection. Although the area's name refers to an area in Bolivian Upper Amazonia the collection actually comes from different areas of South America, and the signage also mentioned different South American habitats (Amazonian rainforest, Atlantic forest, grasslands, mountains), which I definitely found a plus. They also found a good solution for their South American aviary, netting the visitor area so the birds can still go out and be seen fairly well. What I did miss a little in this area were some South American parrots and maybe curassows or seriemas, but there is still some space left for future exhibits in this area, for example the space of the former meerkat exhibit, so perhaps something like that will one day be added, or at least something interesting will hopefully soon be done with that area.
One thing that I did not like very much where the dinosaurs sculptures currently temporarily installed for their "dinosaur weeks". These sculptures were partially animatronic. There were some head and/or arm movements (which wasn't the bad part) but the statues also produced a fair bit of dumb groaning and moaning noises, which irritated me quite a bit, and which I found very unnecessary and distracting. It also bothered me that the sculptures ranged so much in size, from several times smaller than the actual size over more or less life-sized to several times enlarged. Some of the statues looked relatively nice, but a few were also butt ugly. At least their Dilophosaurus model did not have the Jurassic Park neck frill. That said, I don't personally feel that dinosaur statues add that much to the value of a zoo visit.
