Considering Tropic World innovative is not "in spite of" other indoor rainforests. Tropic World being innovative doesn't mean that the rain forests in Topeka or Sedgwick County Zoos weren't *also* innovative. Keep in mind that despite those other ones existing, no Rainforest exhibit indoors was built at the sheer scale of Tropic World before its opening, with Tropic World and Bronx Zoo's Jungle World (which opened a few years later) both being the largest in the country until the eventual opening of Omaha's Lied Jungle. Tropic World's huge size did make it innovative, even if by today's standards it arguably doesn't hold up.
Parade Magazine (1989) - Best and worst zoos in America
- Thread starter SusScrofa
- Start date
Topeka and Sedgewick County were definitely innovative and I meant no disrespect to those two facilities, nor Bronx or Omaha. I was apparently misinformed as to the age of Lied Jungle but correct about the other buildings.
The zoo is still considered a major zoo and much better regarded than being "half-decent". You dismiss the Insectarium and aquarium as if they are minor achievements. The zoo has made major advances in the last 40 years, just not to your tastes perhaps.
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Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
The zoo did have lions fairly recently before that - they were in the Asian area. I remember seeing the lions BTS when I was there in 2013.Talapoin should still be there, although sadly they were off-exhibit when I visited (January 2022). I also thought the same thing about the elephant enclosure, and some of the primates and the lion exhibits felt like they could use some more expansion and aesthetic upgrades as well. The reptile house held up quite well actually, and I don't think they have carpet anymore but don't rememberI'm actually surprised hearing lions were only added as recently in 2018.
While operated by the same organization, I do not see how the aquarium and insectarium as separate entities from the zoo reflect on the quality of the zoo other than as an excuse for delayed development due to a diversion of funds. I would be inclined to agree with @snowleopard and say that overall the Audubon Zoo is largely disappointing — decent but disappointing — it’s dated with a lot of unreached potential — largely due to decades of mismanagement, squandered funds, and extreme turnover in staff. The newer developments (elephants, lions, orangutans, nocturnal building) are all nice enough from a visitor perspective, but they have all already had welfare and husbandry concerns that have had to be addressed post-construction. The mixed-savannas and pampas are nice but decades old, and the reptile house is impressive but showing its age. The Louisiana Swamp has impressive theming, but many of the exhibits are now small and dated… And the rest of the zoo… Small enclosures with dated holding and a lot of wasted space.
Aquarium - very good and a major achievement
Insectarium - now closed but reportedly exceptional and will soon reopen
Zoo - has NOT made "major advances in the last 40 years". Unfortunately, you are incorrect as the zoo itself has been mainly stagnant.
I've already illustrated that the zoo's geographical zones date from the 1970s and 1980s, all 40 to 50 year-old infrastructure. Of all the major zoos in the United States, Audubon is up near the top for doing the least in the past half-century. The last revamp of the century-old Reptile House was in the 1980s. The South American zone is almost all 1980s enclosures. The African Savanna is 1980s with a few minor additions and the elimination of the popular hippos. The North American section (Louisiana Swamp) is 1980s. World of Primates is 1980s. The Asian section is 1979 and the revamp has resulted in a tiny elephant yard that cannot ever allow breeding because the barn and the paddock are too small. "Major advances" could describe the aquarium and insectarium, but looking just at the zoo it's important to note that it has only marginally changed since the 1980s. Stagnant is an apt description when looking at the facts.
I'm not saying that they are the same facility, which clearly they are not. I'm saying that to accurately track the progress of these zoos across time you need to take into account what the organizations that run them have done. The Audubon zoo built an aquarium and an insectarium since the Parade Magazine article came out 40 years ago. To say that Audubon Zoo has made little progress in that time, or stagnated, is just not accurate. They have built an aquarium and an insectarium like Omaha did, they just organize them differently as discrete attractions.
If somebody was redoing the Parade article today they would take that into account.
Saying "since the 1980s, the Audubon organization has accomplished things in the same ballpark as Omaha" is 100% a hot take and something few, if any, knowledgeable people here would agree with.
No. It is not a ranking of organizations. It is a ranking of facilities.
If it were written today it would likely be written differently. Audubon Zoo had not built the aquarium and insectarium when that Parade Magazine was written, nor had Omaha. They made the same decisions to build those facilities, but to organize them differently.
Also, we are losing sight of the fact that the point of that Parade article was to identify very bad zoos, which they did, and which had the effect of improving many organizations.
This whole Audubon Zoo thing has gone off in an unproductive tangent. Audubon Zoo was cited as a top American zoo 40 years ago. Modern professional zoo rankers probably would assess it differently now as other zoos have risen in prominence, but we would only know that if someone did another comparable survey and investigative article now.
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I have never seen any media rank best zoo organizations instead of best facilities.
SusScrofa
Well-Known Member
Not really. Parade didnt rank WCS or SDZS as "top zoos", only Bronx and San Diego Zoo. Central Park, Queens and SDWAP were left off the list and I doubt any of their merits, or lack thereof, were taken into consideration when placing their sibling zoo in the top spots.
I doubt they'd take that in account, if I'm being honest. It is true that the Audubon Zoo has made little progress. It would not be true to say that the organization has made little progress. The fact the facility owns an aquarium in a different part of the city would in no way impact somebody's visit to the Audubon Zoo, as it has no bearing on the visitor experience (the same could be said in reverse- someone visiting the Aquarium wouldn't have their experience affected by the zoo). Really what the article is looking at is the visitor experience, and the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas does not impact, positively or negatively, the visitor experience for the Audubon Zoo. Likewise, the other WCS facilities don't impact the visitor experience at the Bronx Zoo, and the Safari Park doesn't impact the visitor experience at San Diego.
No, the article was not about the visitor experience as you are asserting, Neil. It was about the zoos from an animal welfare perspective primarily. Now the assessment would likely include conservation contributions and impact as major metrics as well.
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WCS had not taken over the smaller zoos when that Parade article was written (hence the Prospect Park zoo being rated as one of the worst). We can speculate about how they would do things now. I think that they likely would account for organizations that run multiple facilities, because that is a trend that has really taken off since the original story was written. San Diego was one of the only organizations that ran two zoos back then, although Smithsonian National Zoo and Bronx Zoo had off-grounds breeding facilities at the time also.
No media organization has ranked best/worst zoos in a methodologically rigorous survey-based way since Parade did almost 40 years ago to my knowledge. There are multiple "best zoo" polls and internet listicles, but those are all created by travel writers who usually don't really know what they are talking about.
SusScrofa
Well-Known Member
Central Park and Queens joined in 1988, so unless the article was actually published before 1989, technically they had joined. Although my main point is the language used. If Parade was truly judging orginization and not individual facility, I'd expect the name of the organization to be used rather than the individual zoo to reflect that. I'd like to see counterproof for me to believe otherwise.
And even if it was indeed organization, it doesn't change the fact that the Audubon Institute is focusing a disproportionate amount of money into the aquarium while leaving the zoo to begin falling behind. I can't help but feel that would be a negative mark on the institution as a whole if such a ranking was held today.
It wasn't Parade itself doing it, it was the Humane Society. Good luck finding them ranking *best* anything related to animal captivity now. We have no idea if it was "methodologically rigorous" or not, we just know 21% of the people they asked returned their surveys. USA Today also includes zoo experts on their panel that select the finalists.
Is that happening? People here are asserting here that is happening, but I don't know that it is. The AZA has not made that judgement in its accreditation, which would be one measure of that.
What USA Today does is mostly a PR exercise for the zoos included, which is fine, but is very different from what Parade was doing 40 years ago which was more of a 60 Minutes type expose on bad zoos.
You are conflating things that are not really the same. The Parade article that this discussion is about was not ranking the best zoos for the same purpose as the travel PR articles that you are talking about do. It was citing them as examples of what good zoos should aspire to achieve.
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