Persephone
Well-Known Member
I'm going to front-load the review section of this thread since there aren't really clear sections for most of the zoo.
I went to this one because it's in the AZA's Pathway to Membership program and I didn't want to have to go back to Ontario to visit it if/when it regained accreditation. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. Something about the vibes felt really off. Privately owned zoo in a tourist trap, probably. Privately owned zoos in the U.S. without corporate backing are often... lackluster would be a charitable word. Roadside is another. And yeah I fully, 100% believe this place was probably like that twenty years ago. But now it's in an awkward phase where parts of it are better than the equivalent exhibits at Toronto Zoo and parts of it still feel like they were made with a very tight budget.
Let's start with the zoo's first half, the worse one. 90% of the exhibits in this area, farm aside, are the same two or three metal cages over and over again. The smaller ones are mostly for birds and small primates. The larger cages are metal semicylinders maybe twenty or thirty feet long at most. The fully enclosed nature actually wasn't bad for the many gibbons since it gave them plenty of climbable space. There was a baby gibbon that was learning to play and many active adult siamangs scattered through a few separate exhibits. The cages were also pretty solid for the fox, lynx, and raptor species.
Just... not the big cats. Safari Niagara has the five Panthera species, clouded leopards, and cougars. All but the tigers are held in the larger cage models. The tigers have a pretty great exhibit with elevated platforms and a water feature. Both had climbed up onto their structures when I was there. It's at about the same level of quality as I saw at the Toronto Zoo for its tigers. The lions have a similarly good exhibit on the other side of the zoo, which made it baffling that they were also held in a cage in the first half. I get that they want to have the big cats clustered together, but... is it really worth it? The cages also aren't the bottom of the barrel for snow leopards and clouded leopards, because that bar is very low. Pretty clearly beneath industry standard for the jaguar, leopard and cougar. I know it's just something cats do, but the cougar was carrying on throughout the entire day and could be heard screaming halfway across the zoo.
Now, I do have hope, though. Because the rest of the zoo is actually pretty dang good. The wolves have a decently large enclosure. Not as large as the best wolf enclosures, but not enough where I really pitied them the same way I did the big cats. The bears back in the (sparsely attended) Alaska section had pretty nice exhibits. I thought the brown bear one was better than the equivalent at the Toronto Zoo. And this was my first time seeing a muskox. The pasture was at least big enough to not have been trampled down or overgrazed. And I spent a long time staring at the animal, knowing I might never get the chance for another decade or so.
The Indian rhino had a very large exhibit with a large wallowing area. The hippos actually had a kind of decent amount of land, even if the vast majority of the exhibit was aquatic. It was a surprisingly large exhibit all things considered. The rest of the megafauna exhibits in the second half of the zoo were pretty spacious, except for the red river hog one that was really small for no apparent reason. It easily could've been expanded into the adjacent wetlands.
The reptile house is seen entirely from the outdoors. Most of the larger herps have pretty decently sized enclosures for the species. Just really hard to see into them because of glare.
The signage throughout the zoo emphasizes the importance of native species, including many not in the zoo, as well as the hydrology and environment of the Great Lakes. Pretty good signage for a new, privately owned zoo. And a pretty good facility to boot. Once they've had a chance to make larger big cat exhibits in the forest they'll really be a pretty top tier facility. I look forward to revisiting this rising zoo in ten or twenty years to see what they've made of themselves.
Species are only signed once if they have multiple exhibits. I tried to sign them in the exhibit with the most species if they were also held in a single-species exhibit. The * at the end means I didn't see it. If (sub)species was unspecified I defaulted to the most common and left a (?) to indicate that I was unsure.
Peach-Faced Lovebird*
Red Panda
Common Marmoset
Geoldi’s Monkey*
Flamingo (Sp?)*
Scimitar-Horned Oryx
Great Horned Owl
Snowy Owl*
Eurasian Eagle Owl
Victoria Crowned Pigeon
Golden Eagle
Andean Condor
Bald Eagle
Domestic Goats
Budgies
Long-Tailed Chinchilla*
Guinea Pigs
Chickens
Sun Conure
Miniature Horse*
Miniature Zebu
Alpaca
Pot-Bellied Pig
Chinese Geese, Mute Swan
Amur Tiger
Southern Ground Hornbill
Lar Gibbon
Fallow Deer
Siamang
Ringtail Lemur*
Brown Lemur*
Black and White Ruffed Lemur*
Canadian Lynx*
Serval*
Bobcat
Moluccan Cockatoo,* Goffin’s Cockatoo*
African Lion
Red Fox
Eclectus Parrot*
Generic(?) Leopard*
Double Yellow-Headed Amazon
Cougar
American Badger
Jaguar*
African Grey Parrot*
Snow Leopard*
Gray Wolf
Clouded Leopard*
Ayam Cemani Chicken
Dark-Handed Agile Gibbon
Musk Ox
Brown Bear
American Black Bear
Emu
North American River Otter
White Rhino
Indian Rhino
Reindeer
Generic(?) Giraffe
Hippopotamus
African Painted Dog
Red River Hog
Waterbuck (Elippsen)
Sarus Crane*
Bactrian Camel
Blue Gold Macaw,* Green Wing Macaw,* Scarlet Macaw,* Military Macaw*
Common Squirrel Monkey*
Malagasy Tree Boa*
Black-and-White Tegu
Red Footed Tortoise
Boa Constrictor*
Honduran Milk Snake*
Western Hognose Snake*
Unsigned Snake
Corn Snake*
Savannah Uromastyx
Royal Python*
Hedgehog (Sp?)
Gila Monster
Blue Tongued Skink
Meerkat
African Spurred Tortoise
Argus Monitor
Ostrich*
Scarlet Ibis,* Cape Thick Knee*
Red (?) Kangaroo
Common Eland, Wildebeest, Plains (?) Zebra
American Barn Owl
Nilgai
I went to this one because it's in the AZA's Pathway to Membership program and I didn't want to have to go back to Ontario to visit it if/when it regained accreditation. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. Something about the vibes felt really off. Privately owned zoo in a tourist trap, probably. Privately owned zoos in the U.S. without corporate backing are often... lackluster would be a charitable word. Roadside is another. And yeah I fully, 100% believe this place was probably like that twenty years ago. But now it's in an awkward phase where parts of it are better than the equivalent exhibits at Toronto Zoo and parts of it still feel like they were made with a very tight budget.
Let's start with the zoo's first half, the worse one. 90% of the exhibits in this area, farm aside, are the same two or three metal cages over and over again. The smaller ones are mostly for birds and small primates. The larger cages are metal semicylinders maybe twenty or thirty feet long at most. The fully enclosed nature actually wasn't bad for the many gibbons since it gave them plenty of climbable space. There was a baby gibbon that was learning to play and many active adult siamangs scattered through a few separate exhibits. The cages were also pretty solid for the fox, lynx, and raptor species.
Just... not the big cats. Safari Niagara has the five Panthera species, clouded leopards, and cougars. All but the tigers are held in the larger cage models. The tigers have a pretty great exhibit with elevated platforms and a water feature. Both had climbed up onto their structures when I was there. It's at about the same level of quality as I saw at the Toronto Zoo for its tigers. The lions have a similarly good exhibit on the other side of the zoo, which made it baffling that they were also held in a cage in the first half. I get that they want to have the big cats clustered together, but... is it really worth it? The cages also aren't the bottom of the barrel for snow leopards and clouded leopards, because that bar is very low. Pretty clearly beneath industry standard for the jaguar, leopard and cougar. I know it's just something cats do, but the cougar was carrying on throughout the entire day and could be heard screaming halfway across the zoo.
Now, I do have hope, though. Because the rest of the zoo is actually pretty dang good. The wolves have a decently large enclosure. Not as large as the best wolf enclosures, but not enough where I really pitied them the same way I did the big cats. The bears back in the (sparsely attended) Alaska section had pretty nice exhibits. I thought the brown bear one was better than the equivalent at the Toronto Zoo. And this was my first time seeing a muskox. The pasture was at least big enough to not have been trampled down or overgrazed. And I spent a long time staring at the animal, knowing I might never get the chance for another decade or so.
The Indian rhino had a very large exhibit with a large wallowing area. The hippos actually had a kind of decent amount of land, even if the vast majority of the exhibit was aquatic. It was a surprisingly large exhibit all things considered. The rest of the megafauna exhibits in the second half of the zoo were pretty spacious, except for the red river hog one that was really small for no apparent reason. It easily could've been expanded into the adjacent wetlands.
The reptile house is seen entirely from the outdoors. Most of the larger herps have pretty decently sized enclosures for the species. Just really hard to see into them because of glare.
The signage throughout the zoo emphasizes the importance of native species, including many not in the zoo, as well as the hydrology and environment of the Great Lakes. Pretty good signage for a new, privately owned zoo. And a pretty good facility to boot. Once they've had a chance to make larger big cat exhibits in the forest they'll really be a pretty top tier facility. I look forward to revisiting this rising zoo in ten or twenty years to see what they've made of themselves.
Species are only signed once if they have multiple exhibits. I tried to sign them in the exhibit with the most species if they were also held in a single-species exhibit. The * at the end means I didn't see it. If (sub)species was unspecified I defaulted to the most common and left a (?) to indicate that I was unsure.
Peach-Faced Lovebird*
Red Panda
Common Marmoset
Geoldi’s Monkey*
Flamingo (Sp?)*
Scimitar-Horned Oryx
Great Horned Owl
Snowy Owl*
Eurasian Eagle Owl
Victoria Crowned Pigeon
Golden Eagle
Andean Condor
Bald Eagle
Domestic Goats
Budgies
Long-Tailed Chinchilla*
Guinea Pigs
Chickens
Sun Conure
Miniature Horse*
Miniature Zebu
Alpaca
Pot-Bellied Pig
Chinese Geese, Mute Swan
Amur Tiger
Southern Ground Hornbill
Lar Gibbon
Fallow Deer
Siamang
Ringtail Lemur*
Brown Lemur*
Black and White Ruffed Lemur*
Canadian Lynx*
Serval*
Bobcat
Moluccan Cockatoo,* Goffin’s Cockatoo*
African Lion
Red Fox
Eclectus Parrot*
Generic(?) Leopard*
Double Yellow-Headed Amazon
Cougar
American Badger
Jaguar*
African Grey Parrot*
Snow Leopard*
Gray Wolf
Clouded Leopard*
Ayam Cemani Chicken
Dark-Handed Agile Gibbon
Musk Ox
Brown Bear
American Black Bear
Emu
North American River Otter
White Rhino
Indian Rhino
Reindeer
Generic(?) Giraffe
Hippopotamus
African Painted Dog
Red River Hog
Waterbuck (Elippsen)
Sarus Crane*
Bactrian Camel
Blue Gold Macaw,* Green Wing Macaw,* Scarlet Macaw,* Military Macaw*
Common Squirrel Monkey*
Malagasy Tree Boa*
Black-and-White Tegu
Red Footed Tortoise
Boa Constrictor*
Honduran Milk Snake*
Western Hognose Snake*
Unsigned Snake
Corn Snake*
Savannah Uromastyx
Royal Python*
Hedgehog (Sp?)
Gila Monster
Blue Tongued Skink
Meerkat
African Spurred Tortoise
Argus Monitor
Ostrich*
Scarlet Ibis,* Cape Thick Knee*
Red (?) Kangaroo
Common Eland, Wildebeest, Plains (?) Zebra
American Barn Owl
Nilgai
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