Zoos on the Rise

Jana said:
Lodz zoo has already been mentioned but some might not realize yet how Orientarium (their new complex) proves to be popular. They got 150.000 visitors in first month after its opening in April and expect up to 1,5 million at this year end. While pre-covid, the zoo had barely 200k attendance. Even after fall of initial interest of public, I think they will stay above 1 million for years to come.

This success (second after Afrykarium of Wroclaw) will tempt other city zoos in Poland to emulate it one way or another. So watch out for other Polish rising stars!

I dont agree with Prague, its rise culminated almost a decade ago, now its platooing. Yes, we get a few new species or exhibits, but other parts of the zoo start to age. The zoo will probably spend most of its initiative on just replacing the worse parts and keeping overall quality from sliding down.

Zlin is obvious example - on steady rise. I would add Dvur Kralove - its recent investments are well accepted by public and their plans are solid. Ostrava is a question, lets see if positive growth gets prolonged with the new director.
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I very much agree with you @Jana and you know much more about Czech Zoos. I realize that Prague is not a news and they can be good rising star example decade ago. What incline me to mention them here is the high quality of their latest additions and the consistency in their work. Adding Tasmanian Devils, Wombats, Lear’s macaw and especially Pangolins to the collection is also strong recognition and puts them in one sentence with the Europe's front-runners Pairi Daiza and Beauval. I am not sure what is the case with the Cat house, but they tend to recognize their shortcomings and keep improving. I also thing that Prague still set the tone for much of the other Eastern European rising starts.
 
Re: Prague, as someone who hasn't visited maybe my view isn't entirely accurate, but from what I've seen a lot of their newer projects added around the last decade look really mediocre. The hippo enclosure appears incredibly sterile and the Indonesia dome looks extremely unattractive. It's surprising that both of these exhibits are relatively new when they look as if they could be from 40 years ago. Even the new soon-to-be-open gorilla house looks a bit clunky in places, although it looks very nice for the animals themselves.

Of course, this isn't to discount the number of great looking projects added in recent years, as well as the excellence of the zoo as a whole. The salamander house is totally cool and the Asian elephant complex looks really nice as well. The amount of rarities brought in frequently is also fantastic obviously and with the upcoming gorilla pavilion including brush-tailed porcupine and Northern talapoin, it's clear the zoo will not be slowing down in this aspect.
 
Jana said:
This success (second after Afrykarium of Wroclaw) will tempt other city zoos in Poland to emulate it one way or another. So watch out for other Polish rising stars!
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Well, Gdansk city already started building a large aquarium Nautilus. This is not the same as the zoo nor Gdynia aquarium and maritime museum. I am uncertain how far advanced Nautilus is. It was supposed to open in 2022 but I read that Covid stopped the project and cannot find any photos from the building site.

Leaving these mega-attractions aside, most zoos in Poland are growing. Gdansk zoo, Poznan New Zoo, Opole, Krakow etc, open new exhibits and get new species. Warsaw is mixed. It was the first zoo in Poland to modernize all outdated postcommunist exhibits. It did not add any major new exhibit for over a decade, but is changing its species from zoo standard to very rare ones.

Looking now at some EEPs in Europe, it is hard to not to wonder: how some old Western city zoos are allowed to keep breeding groups in barely adequate cramped buildings, but much larger and modern exhibits in Poland or Czechia have only bachelor groups or commoner relatives?
 
Mayki said:
From everything I have heard, YWP seems to be the most recent big success in the UK. It is just over a decade old and already has many world class exhibits and huge draws like polar bears (only one other holder here). I also think it is worth mentioning Bristol/Wild Place... Wild Place is relatively new and has had a lot of praise. With Bristol Zoo fully relocating to the site of Wild Place I think there is great opportunity for it to expand into one of the greatest zoos in the country.
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Also wildplace is very good at animal care building larger than needed habitats and they seem willing to make it look nice as well as at least 2 new large exhibits for 2024 and 5 or more small exhibits for 2024 and great facilities I believe it will be one of the best in the country
 
Though French zoos were mentioned briefly, together with Eastern Europe this is probably where most progress has been made. Expansionist Beauval is a logical one, but several other zoos have come from further and have been making gigantic strides in recent years.

It is hard to imagine that only 15 years ago Doue-la-Fontaine was a nice small zoo with green enclosures and some interesting use of old mining pits. But since then it has added the S-American aviary, the okapi aviary, the black rhino valley, a whole new African area and a Himalayan zone, catapulting it to the very top of European zoos out of nowhere.

An additional French trio has also been making gigantic progress in recent years: Parc Animalier d'Auvergne, Parc de Branfere and Parc Animalier de Sainte-Croix. Except Branfere they are hardly covered on zoochat but in their own way they are all very good up-and-coming zoos that seem to have a very bright future.
 
Though the collection has technically been reduced more than expanded, the overall quality of Lincoln Park Zoo has improved substantially in the last two decades, a transformation that has been really driven home by the opening of the Pepper Family Wildlife Center.

The openings of African Journey, Center for African Apes and the Children's Zoo in 2003-05 were all incredible significant achievements for the zoo, adding a tight but effective North American area in the latter as well as transforming the former Large Mammal holding into a surprisingly immersive journey through Africa, and creating a breathtaking exhibit for the apes. While this is all old news for zoochat, they rapidly transformed a third to half of the zoo from simple old style concrete into modern-style exhibits. They later followed this up in the last decade with the opening of Macaque Forest and Penguin Cove, changes to the Seal Pool, as well as the Bear Line grottos being transformed into Walter Family Arctic Tundra and finally and most importantly, taking the Kovler Lion House, a solid cat collection in one of the worst zoo buildings in the country, and managing to transform it into a modern complex for lions while preserving the historic structure.

Nobody is clamoring for renovations to the existing bird houses, the small mammal-reptile building or the farm zoo, the hoofstock yards remain perfectly serviceable, and even the monkey house, while quite dated, doesn't really have a very bad reputation... setting that one aside, there is a consistently high level of modern exhibit design throughout the zoo and even the weakest exhibit is no black eye or albatross around the zoo's neck.

In addition, I had an amazing experience at the Denver Zoo in August (review to be posted soon) and while their recent renovations may not be as ambitious or technically impressive, they similarly have used this new construction to help shed their most out of date exhibits in short order (including another indoor feline building!) leading to a consistently high-quality zoo experience that feels very modern and lacks major weaknesses in exhibit design.
 
I think there are currently a lot of very good zoos that are on the verge between being a rising star or an unfortunate decline, and that the next decade will be pivotal to many of these zoos long-term success. This all has to do with what I'm going to call "ticking time bombs", or ABC species that a zoo is well-known for, but have an uncertain future with. An example would be zoos with all-indoor great ape exhibits. These exhibits are slowly disappearing from zoos, and the AZA has been pressuring those zoos continuing to keep Apes indoors to either build outdoor exhibits, and I would expect pretty soon that pressure turns into a requirement- outdoor access for great apes or phase them out. Some zoos, such as Brookfield or Cleveland (the latter of which is another rising star in its on right), have put out plans for significant, expensive, improvements to the great Apes, while others, such as Franklin Park Zoo, have already undertaken significant improvements to their gorilla exhibits. Others, however, like Buffalo Zoo, haven't indicated any plans for a new great ape exhibit, or to phase them out either. With all of these zoos, how they respond to the need for an outdoor gorilla exhibit is key to their status as a rising or falling zoo. Cleveland, having made many other major improvements in recent years, is a rising Zoo in its own right, and Brookfield is heading in an optimistic direction, with the new expansion to TropicWorld solving possibly the zoo's largest problem. With zoos such as Buffalo, it's going to depend on how they respond to these challenges. Does the zoo build an outdoor gorilla exhibit, of a high quality? Or does the zoo replace gorillas with something else? If the gorillas are replaced, with what? If the gorilla replacement is some sort of innovative, unique habitat, then it may still be a rising star. However, if they just place mandrills in the same exhibit, it'd be a zoo on decline.

This same phenomena is happening with elephants and polar bears as well. Zoos that are rising stars are either building new, impressive habitats for these star animals, or are replacing them with something equally impressive. Zoos that are on the decline, are replacing them with predictable, less popular species, that utilize the same exhibit, such as rhinos or grizzlies.
 
Houston definitely has a lot of momentum. They have completed 2/3 of the “African Forest”, an elephant exhibit, Texas wetlands, and South American pantanal all in the last 15 years.
 
Neil chace said:
This same phenomena is happening with elephants and polar bears as well. Zoos that are rising stars are either building new, impressive habitats for these star animals, or are replacing them with something equally impressive. Zoos that are on the decline, are replacing them with predictable, less popular species, that utilize the same exhibit, such as rhinos or grizzlies.
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It sounds like you’re subtly throwing some shade at RWPZ here, haha. They’ve obviously had polar bears phased out for a while, to the disappointment of many. Now we are nearing a future in which they may have to phase out elephants as well, since it sounds increasingly unlikely that their current trio will be replaced when they eventually pass on.
 
ZooElephantsMan said:
It sounds like you’re subtly throwing some shade at RWPZ here, haha. They’ve obviously had polar bears phased out for a while, to the disappointment of many. Now we are nearing a future in which they may have to phase out elephants as well, since it sounds increasingly unlikely that their current trio will be replaced when they eventually pass on.
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Yes and no. For polar bears, I wasn't thinking about RWPZ at all, but was talking about other zoos that have recently lost polar bears/likely will soon, such as Milwaukee, Maryland, Point Defiance, etc. Elephant-wise, it was one of the zoos I was thinking of, but not in a bad way. There's still time left with the current girls, and there are multiple options for the zoo once they pass. Really, losing the elephants could turn be a bad thing, or it could be a blessing in disguise- depending on their solution is. Building a larger, dynamic elephant habitat, or replacing elephants with an impressive exhibit for something else, may improve the zoo long-term, versus just placing white rhinos in the exhibit once the elephants are gone. It all depends on what their solution is.
 
Look to the directors.
Zoos that hire promising people to be directors signal their commitment to grow and improve.
Many zoos hire professionals for the director position who have not (yet) demonstrated their leadership ability and vision. They may prove to be rising stars or not. Watch, wait and see.

When a zoo hires someone who perhaps has been director of a smaller facility but accomplished more than anyone could expect that person will likely take the zoo to new heights. They may lead an "OK" zoo to become great.
If you pay attention to the sorts of people being offered directorships in the past decade you will see a different focus from the hires of the early 2000s. Zoos are changing and the choice of director signals the change years before Zoochatters might notice anything.
Zoos are very top down organizations. If the director cannot help the governing Board to see an inspiring vision of the future then there will be no inspired future (no funds raised, no talent hired, no impressive exhibits built, no bold conservation initiatives). If the Board is worried about the organization's survival they will not likely hire such a director. Too risky
 
I second @OkapiFan's take on the Greensboro Science Center. It's incredible how fast that facility has grown, expanded, and changed in just the last 10-15 years alone, going from a relative nobody to a serious regional facility. I haven't visited a facility that has changed so much with each visit than GSC has. It's really helping to prop up a state that otherwise has only one other major zoological facility.

Speaking of which, I had previously considered the North Carolina Zoo to be a candidate for the other list (zoos in decline). However, as I emphasized in that thread, that was based on my visits from 2006-2019 and was explicitly a past-tense observation. I believe now, with the Asia expansion underway and other new projects to potentially follow, the NC Zoo could just as well find itself on this list in the near future. Asia is the zoo's first completely new exhibit complex since the North American exhibits opened in the 90s, so it's as big of a first step as you can get.
 
D2K4 said:
Absolutely right about Nashville! We went there recently and it was a downright amazing zoo experience. I hope more zoos use it as a model going forward.
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Loved the Fanalokas!! Fellow Malagasy carnivore enthusiasts rise up!!

On an unrelated note, ZooWorld in Panama City Beach, Florida has been undergoing a renaissance for years now, but the new species have just started being acquired. In the last two years, the zoo acquired Aardwolves, Baird’s tapirs, bat-eared foxes, spot-nosed guenons, and many remnants of the old zoo are currently being bulldozed to make way for the new “African Safari” masterplan.
 
In Belgium, besides the obvious Pairi Daiza, Planckendael is a big zoo that went from a place for surplus Antwerp animals to a full zoo, complete with its own collection.
Also the growth of the small place zooparc vallee de la sure (opened in 2022) is impressive. They already added rarities such as jaguarundis to their zoo. Other smaller places such as the zonnegloed have also seen a remarkable growth. Other bigger collections such as Antwerp and monde sauvage are seeing a bit of a rebound too, with Antwerp building a completely new jubilee complex and monde sauvage getting new, very promising leadership. Overall the future looks quite good :p.
 
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