San Diego Zoo San Diego Zoo News 2021

The Children’s Zoo has been renamed the Denny Sanford Wildlife Explores Basecamp, now debuting in February 2022!

Wildlife Explorers Basecamp
Well then, I certainly did not expect for them to rename the new exhibit so soon, but at least we now know that it will be quite a mouthful of a name to say, from this point onward.
 
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I imagine everyone not affiliated with the zoo will just keep calling it the childrens zoo, with a name like that :D
It is indeed quite the name, I don’t get what was wrong from the simple Children’s Zoo title :oops: However I think one reason for the name change was to try to be inclusive for all ages, the zoo replied back to me on Twitter about the name and it their answer made mention that the Basecamp can be enjoyed by all ages and implying there are activities us adults can do along with children. I am a big kid after all whenever I go to the zoo :D
 
Here’s a story by the zoo about the Basecamp, with budget of said exhibit now increased to $87 million dollars :eek: this may be singlehandedly the most expensive complex like exhibit for any zoo in the US, not counting aquariums.

Construction of San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Newest...
There are not enough expletives to describe how I feel about that price. That is absolutely ludicrous! I have no idea how this exhibit - which is less than half the size of Africa Rocks and built on completely flat piece of land oppose to a mesa - is going done as one of the most pricey endeavors in American zoo history. This better be the children's zoo to end all children's zoos for this amount.

From what's being discussed here though, it all sounds very promising. It's nice to see a truly unique children's zoo (I don't care what it's called now, I don't like the new name much and even if they pretend it's not it's still a children's zoo) with some really cool additions. It's getting repetitive seeing the same goat petting pen, marsupial walkthrough, stingray touch tank and other traditional children's zoo exhibits that we see at most zoos. But here, a 10,000 square foot invertebre house? A 7,000 square foot herp building? A two-story animal ambassador building? A squirrel monkey walkthrough? Now this is some innovative stuff! Nothing too crazy species wise, it is a children's zoo after all, but potentially some very cool herps and inverts may be added. This doesn't even account for all of the new additions directed at children which will help make the zoo much more kid friendly.

The one disappointment, no mention of pangolins. I had suspected they had been cut from the plans for a while now, but considering they are nowhere to mentioned anymore and all of the animals in the states have been pulled from public view, I think it's safe to say they won't be making an appearance.
 
There are not enough expletives to describe how I feel about that price. That is absolutely ludicrous! I have no idea how this exhibit - which is less than half the size of Africa Rocks and built on completely flat piece of land oppose to a mesa - is going done as one of the most pricey endeavors in American zoo history. This better be the children's zoo to end all children's zoos for this amount.

From what's being discussed here though, it all sounds very promising. It's nice to see a truly unique children's zoo (I don't care what it's called now, I don't like the new name much and even if they pretend it's not it's still a children's zoo) with some really cool additions. It's getting repetitive seeing the same goat petting pen, marsupial walkthrough, stingray touch tank and other traditional children's zoo exhibits that we see at most zoos. But here, a 10,000 square foot invertebre house? A 7,000 square foot herp building? A two-story animal ambassador building? A squirrel monkey walkthrough? Now this is some innovative stuff! Nothing too crazy species wise, it is a children's zoo after all, but potentially some very cool herps and inverts may be added. This doesn't even account for all of the new additions directed at children which will help make the zoo much more kid friendly.

The one disappointment, no mention of pangolins. I had suspected they had been cut from the plans for a while now, but considering they are nowhere to mentioned anymore and all of the animals in the states have been pulled from public view, I think it's safe to say they won't be making an appearance.
It certainly is trying to be ambitious with some of the features talked about in the story. Some things I started thinking off that most likely drove up the costs, along with location and the type of zoo spending money on said project, would be the LSS for the ecosystems and complete overhaul of the Children’s Zoo area. At least from the Marsh and Rainforest areas, it seems like it will be one of the most aquatics based area of the zoo with exception of singular exhibits throughout the zoo that opened at different dates.

I do feel bummed that of all the features talked about, that the pangolins have not been mentioned at all so I fear they may have been cut :( I’ll try to get info about the pangolins when I go back to see if they will be anticipated at all or just removed from the preliminary plans.
 
There are not enough expletives to describe how I feel about that price. That is absolutely ludicrous! I have no idea how this exhibit - which is less than half the size of Africa Rocks and built on completely flat piece of land oppose to a mesa - is going done as one of the most pricey endeavors in American zoo history. This better be the children's zoo to end all children's zoos for this amount.

From what's being discussed here though, it all sounds very promising. It's nice to see a truly unique children's zoo (I don't care what it's called now, I don't like the new name much and even if they pretend it's not it's still a children's zoo) with some really cool additions. It's getting repetitive seeing the same goat petting pen, marsupial walkthrough, stingray touch tank and other traditional children's zoo exhibits that we see at most zoos. But here, a 10,000 square foot invertebre house? A 7,000 square foot herp building? A two-story animal ambassador building? A squirrel monkey walkthrough? Now this is some innovative stuff! Nothing too crazy species wise, it is a children's zoo after all, but potentially some very cool herps and inverts may be added. This doesn't even account for all of the new additions directed at children which will help make the zoo much more kid friendly.

The one disappointment, no mention of pangolins. I had suspected they had been cut from the plans for a while now, but considering they are nowhere to mentioned anymore and all of the animals in the states have been pulled from public view, I think it's safe to say they won't be making an appearance.
I wouldn’t necessarily discard the possibility just yet. It is, of course, very likely that pangolins are no longer a possibility, there is still so much unknown about this project, with little mention of a species list unlike Africa Rocks. Who knows, maybe they even have them right now (seeing that San Diego is very secretive about what they keep & the pangolin program is very secretive as a whole). There is a substantial amount of evidence against the possibility, but not enough (In my opinion) to rule it out entirely.
 
tigers in the US haven’t died from it. It seems to have a more severe impact on lions more I’ve noticed

That may or may not be true. Hana the Malayan tiger at the Ellen Trout Zoo in Texas was euthanized in January 2021 after she failed to respond to treatment for her respiratory symptoms and was confirmed to have tested positive for COVID-19, though it's possible the confirmation didn't come until after she was euthanized and there could've been other factors that contributed to her death. That zoo omitted any reference to her COVID-19 symptoms or that they tested her for it when they announced her death or that they also had lions that tested positive. I only just found this information tonight.

OIE-WAHIS
 
Here’s a story by the zoo about the Basecamp, with budget of said exhibit now increased to $87 million dollars :eek: this may be singlehandedly the most expensive complex like exhibit for any zoo in the US, not counting aquariums.

Construction of San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Newest...

It seems extremely expensive indeed, but also the construction comes at a time where the price of building materials has gone through the roof, and minimum wage has gone up. For the unique ideas listed in the article, I'm really not that surprised at the current total cost. However, from the sounds of it the new complex sounds to be quite species packed and well done.
 
That was from 2014 at SDZSP, I have no idea why that was reposted in the news.

Thanks for letting me know. That explains why I couldn’t get a straight answer on whether Izu was at SDZSP or SDZ - all I could find was 50 million identical copies of that video (all released in the last 30 minutes as breaking news) and a SDZ website which will tell you anything you wanna know about lions except their names.
 
Thanks for letting me know. That explains why I couldn’t get a straight answer on whether Izu was at SDZSP or SDZ - all I could find was 50 million identical copies of that video (all released in the last 30 minutes as breaking news) and a SDZ website which will tell you anything you wanna know about lions except their names.
That's so absurd, this seems to happen every so often with SDZ and SDZSP. I remember a couple months ago, a video of a GOHR calf born years ago was released as breaking news. Yeah it's annoying that their website lists very little info about the actual individual animals they hold, and the little that it does list is often outdated.
 
I found a link to a possible species list. It says it was last edited on sept 24 so it’s kinda recent. The species are labeled under the basecamp name so it further suggests this is very recent. Some species that were a surprise to me were Chinese hellbenders and short beaked edchinas. Apparently Galahs and Fossas will be there, So I question if they will be moved to the basecamp. Also macaws will be there and the mouse from the closed old children’s zoo seems to be replaced by naked mole-rat. Never saw the old mouse house in person. The link. LibGuides: Fact Sheet Index - San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Library: Wildlife Explorers Basecamp
 
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