Original Tiger River

Sumatran tiger, copied from a slide taken in the mid 1990s.

This was when the exhibit was still fairly new and quite nice. (It has gone downhill since then, sadly).

This view is from the main overlook in the middle. The tiger is going down from the far left, which is the lower viewing window, into the bottom pool. Originally the lower left viewing window had a pool which flowed via this waterfall to the bottom, as did the upper right viewing window.

The upper window still has the pool but many years ago the lower pool was filled with sand and the waterfall shown here disappeared. You can also see grass on the upper slope which once filled the entire exhibit but now is completely gone. Most recently, the exhibit was cut in half with a huge fence across the middle.

Thanks for this reminder of what was once a beautiful habitat in an excellent exhibit complex. If only that level of quality had been maintained--not just for Tiger River but for nearly everything that has been built at the zoo since that time. Sounds like the new tiger exhibit at the Safari Park might signal a return to design excellence--we can only hope Africa Rocks continues the trend when it opens next year....

Yes I agree wholeheartedly. The Safari Park tiger complex is indeed excellent. As a cat lover, however, I am decidedly underwhelmed with the new cat exhibits at the zoo (puma, snow leopard, amur leopard). They are no larger than the WPA era exhibits they replaced and only mildly more pleasing aesthetically. Fingers crossed for Africa Rocks and particularly (for me) the leopard exhibit.

I agree about all the cat exhibits.

Will the leopard in African Rocks be a true African leopard? If so, where is it coming from (if anyone knows)?

No one knows, not even the leopard keeper at the zoo. When I visited the zoo a couple months ago, I spoke with a keeper at the Asian leopards exhibit and asked this exact question. She said it was undecided and in fact she was not even sure what the new exhibit will be like, but suspected it would be similar to the recent Asian leopard and puma exhibits (none of which are that great IMO).

Now that I've thought about it for a while, I think the Asian leopard exhibits are probably the best for their species that I've seen. That's mostly because a lot of the exhibits for them are bad, however.

On the African Rocks promotion site, it does say African leopard. I suppose if that's true, the SDZ needs to hurry up and get an import permit, or otherwise they may not have time to get one. I only know of one African leopard in the US currently, at the Columbus Zoo.