Andean Bear Exhibit

Aug. 8th, 2012.

what were your thoughts on this zoo? just curious

@hudson111 Here is the full review from my Snowleopard's 2012 Road Trip thread:

Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure is an AZA-accredited facility located in Salina, Kansas, and it opened in 1999. There are over 100 species on 65 acres (an additional 80 acres are off limits to the public) and in the 1980’s the establishment used to be home to a Belgian horse breeding operation. The first exotic animals were purchased in 1986, the horses were all gone by 1989, and Rolling Hills Zoo opened to the public in 1999. The Wildlife Museum, a 64,000 square foot facility packed with 1,500 taxidermy animals as well as a conference center, opened in early 2005 and the official name change to Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure took place in 2009.

Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure was a remarkable visit due to the fact that we spent 3 hours at the facility and we only saw 4 other visitors! A family of 4 people travelling around together was the only other people to spend time at the zoo on the Wednesday morning of our tour, and even though the establishment only receives 130,000 annual visitors that is still an incredible fact. We spent close to 2 hours touring the zoo (with many of the animals still locked up) and then a further hour at the outstanding museum.

THE BEST:

Museum – The Great Plains Zoo in South Dakota (the very first review of this seemingly never-ending road trip) had a terrific museum with taxidermy specimens of all shapes and sizes. (I’m not sure where the dead animals come from and I’m not sure that I want to know). Rolling Hills has a far superior museum that has an incredible 1,500 animals from just about everywhere in the world and it opened in 2005. For those that do not like to see dioramas of stuffed animals it would be a waste of time, but I find it fascinating to be able to tour a natural history museum as they can come alive with modern technology. There are animals judiciously placed into every nook and cranny, as on some dioramas there is a focus on a herd but then there are creatures peering over rocks, swinging from vines or hidden in crevices. There are at least 7 animatronic humans who startled my kids; rare specimens such as zebra duiker, giant forest hog and saiga antelope; large groupings such as 4 polar bears together or 9 musk oxen in one diorama; and with more than 1,500 animals there is 10 times the amount to be found here in comparison to Great Plains Zoo. The entire area is 64,000 sq. ft. (including the adjacent Conference Center) and there are 4 crashing waterfalls and about 25 galleries along with a terrific kiddie corner with a tree house and puppet theater. If we didn’t have to embark on a 6 hour drive to Denver, Colorado, then we would have stayed another hour as my children loved every minute of the visit inside the air-conditioned museum.

THE AVERAGE:

The rest of the zoo is filled with basic structures that I would deem all perfectly adequate and thus they will all be lumped into my “average” category. The hoofstock have spacious yards that are very large but also quite barren, while all of the big cats, bears and wolves have chain-link cages that are aesthetically poor but often filled with just enough enrichment items to be enjoyed by the animals.

Big Cats – There are 5 big cat enclosures in one section and a lion enclosure in another section of the zoo. Besides the two male lions (brothers) there are exhibits for these 5: Amur tiger, white tiger (generic mutant), Amur leopard, snow leopard and cougar. All 6 of the big cat exhibits are fairly basic with wooden frames for resting, a small pool in each one, grassy yards with a couple of short trees and while they are all large metal cages there are thankfully glass viewing windows at each one.

Rhino Yards – The zoo has a white rhino as its logo and there are a series of long, narrow yards for a single Indian rhino and 4 white rhinos that I saw in a huge barn. The yards feature small shade structures, pools and are fairly barren but feature more than enough space for the lumbering beasts.

Hoofstock Yards – There are large yards for these species: scimitar-horned oryx, addax, reticulated giraffe, Grant’s gazelle, markhor, dromedary, muntjac, mule deer, white-tailed deer and pronghorn antelope. The last three species have a particularly impressive yard that has many viewing angles. Almost all of the yards are quite scenic but they are also unfortunately a bit on the boring side for an average family as there isn’t any kind of interactive elements but simple paddocks with a few large mammals.

Primates – The 5 chimpanzees have a large metal cage that is Howletts-style, and while it is naturally ugly to some folks and it lacks any outdoor glass viewing areas, there are plenty of climbing frames and the chimps were quite active. There were two outside and three indoors and it appears that there is some separation between the mini-troops going on as the doors were locked to the holding quarters. The Sumatran orangutan exhibit is almost identical in size and scope, again with the Howletts-style black metal, and both species of ape can be seen in their glass-fronted indoor viewing area. Mandrills are found in a metal cage that has a mock-rock corner with a small crashing waterfall; and cotton-top tamarins, brown-tufted capuchins and ring-tailed lemurs all have island habitats that are arguably the most natural-looking exhibits in the entire zoo.

Reptile House – There is a decent sized yard for a trio of Aldabra tortoises outside, plus a large cage for a rhinoceros iguana and a couple of red-footed tortoises. Inside the small Reptile House are indoor rooms for the two outdoor exhibits, as well as these 19 other species in basic terrariums: Burmese python, green tree python, Vietnamese mossy frog, White’s tree frog, waxy monkey tree frog, strawberry poison dart frog, golden poison dart frog, green-and-bronze poison dart frog, yellow-banded poison dart frog, phantasmal poison dart frog, mimic poison dart frog, Sonoran desert toad, gila monster, crevice spiny lizard, quince monitor, chuckwalla, chameleon forest dragon, desert tortoise and Madagascar hissing cockroach.

Kids Country – The typical farmhouse/barn set-up with zebu, goats, llamas and a couple of aviaries for a turkey vulture and a golden eagle. There is a petting corral and in truth this area is decent for children and features the ubiquitous red barn.

Odds n’ Sods – There is a large chained-link fenced yard for maned wolves; another all-metal cage for gray wolves (with a glass viewing section); Andean bears in two spacious exhibits that are the usual metal cages with a portion set aside for glass viewing; three Chilean flamingos in a large lake; white-nosed coatis in an exhibit that has pop-up bubbles and recently held American black bears; a capybara/black swan pool; a prairie dog town; a giant anteater enclosure; a sandy aardvark exhibit; and a large mob of red kangaroos in a basic chain-link yard.

THE WORST:

Opening Times – Once again I have to begin a rant about animal exhibits not being open at the same time as a zoo’s opening time, and this only occurs at the smaller zoos with struggling attendance. Upon entry at 8:00 a.m. we reached the Big Cat zone at about 8:20 and all 5 of the enclosures in the complex featured nothing but locked-up felines. The keeper apparently starts when the zoo opens and even though we ended up seeing 3 of the 5 species via their tiny holding yards it is obviously not the same experience as seeing the animals in their actual exhibits. At the Primates area we saw the chimps and mandrills but a full half-hour after the zoo opened there was still a keeper in the orangutan exhibit cleaning up the previous day’s mess. The orangs were not even in their indoor viewing area so there is obviously a third, unseen holding zone further back.

Over at the rhino barn all 5 of the rhinos were locked in their barn and while it was pretty cool seeing the creatures from about 10 feet away it was also extremely disappointing to be a full hour at the zoo and the rhinos still were not allowed into their spacious outdoor yards. I was told that the rhinos spend 18 hours a day in their small cement pens (75% of their lifetime) and are only allowed out for 6 hours in their enclosures and sometimes not at all in the winter. Lastly, the trio of giraffes was still locked in their barn at 9:30 and so even though the zoo had been open for an hour and a half their huge yard had a couple of cranes in it and the giraffes could be seen in their indoor stalls. Other than being cheap with finances I can’t figure out why a zoo does not start its keepers an hour before opening time so that when visitors pay hard-earned money to see the establishment there are actually animals on view. It is insane to comprehend the fact that individuals are penalized for visiting a zoo early, when if they want to see all the species on display they need to arrive in the heat of the day with the hordes of regular visitors.

OVERALL:

Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure is a fairly new zoo as it has only been open since 1999. Glancing at its exhibits it is actually impossible to estimate the age of the establishment as the metal cages and hoofstock yards could easily be from the 1980’s or even 1970’s. The enclosures are definitely all perfectly adequate for their inhabitants, but there is not much of a conservation message, or any kind of discussion about the environment, biomes or ecosystems like what is found in many other modern zoos. A visit consists of walking around looking at animals in basic cages and while that is fine with some people and possibly an enjoyable outing for a family I seriously question whether that should be a long-term goal of an AZA-accredited institution. The addition in 2005 of the fantastic museum makes the establishment far more worthy as there are a lot of graphics and signs discussing endangered animals and the various ecosystems of the world. Children will possibly learn more about wildlife analyzing dead specimens than the living ones.