Toronto Zoo - Snow Leopard Exhibit

July 2008.

they have a nice looking exhibit,its just the size and it lacks a bit inside

A brand new snow leopard/stellars sea eagle complex has been build in the new Eurasian Wilds. Im not certain of the exact location but it will be much closer to the red pandas, far from their old home. If I remember correctly there are three yards (two on exhibit, one off) to accomodate Tiga, Kota and any mature cubs. The sea eagles have a number of flight pens and are brand new additions.

You might be confused because the old exhibit will likely be converted when construction begins on the Canadian Wilderness which will be located from early suggestions between the old Przewalskis horse exhibit to Tundra Trek. But thats all theoretical right now because a new master plan is being developed this year. Should they stick with their former plans I would guess the new Canadian section would open in 2019 when the pandas go. It would make sense that the horse yard would be converted for bison and elk. The dhole exhibit would go likely with conversions to the cougars. The snow leopard exhibit to the lynx. And then the Barbary Apes exhibits could possibly be converted for the grizzlies or destroyed all together for other exhibits. THere was also to be a new beaver and otter complex. And considering the Americas pavilion is to go totally tropical one day (far in the future) possibly a new pavilion for the canadian reptiles, birds and smaller animals. But a pavilion is just a guess and never mentioned.

You can see the new Snow leopard and sea eagle exhibits sometime in may when Euraisa offically opens to the public. Likely a little before the long weekend but no later than that.

I must say, I did LOL at my comment on this upon re-reading it today. Please, if you're going to creep back to the beginnings of ZooChat, just disregard pretty well all my old posts . I was twelve or so when I started, so many are riddled with awful writing/grammar/spelling, not to mention some flip-flop arguments and interesting opinions/reasoning...

As for the (now old) snow leopard exhibit, it could be better, but it also could be much worse. I've never seen the inside of the holding (although I suspect it is rather small, judging on the size of the building), but the exhibit itself isn't too bad. In my opinion, there is adequate room, nicely varied terrain, and the exhibit does allow the leopards to gain a lot of privacy. Hopefully, the new exhibit will allow for easier management of several leopards in a breeding situation, as I know there were some capacity/holding space issues when our female had cubs. It also appears that there will be much more vertical space in the new exhibit as well.

The inside is fairly small but they spend most of their time outside anyway, year round, and their outside area seemed adequate. The plans for the new one look good. I hope the landscaping is well developed for them by the time they move there.