Well after seeing the outdoor exhibit, there was almost no point on creating it. If you stay on the gallery for the next 5 minutes I'll post a photo of it but to answer your question, they do have more space than this.
This looks to be quite a reasonable indoor exhibit, but the outdoor one is shocking! Are there any plans to build a proper outdoor enclosure?
Milwaukee County Zoo obtained 7 bonobos from a Dutch zoo in 1986 and now Milwaukee has 21 bonobos and the largest captive population of the species in the world. The indoor exhibit is of a reasonable size (although perhaps not large enough considering the sheer size of the group) but the outdoor enclosure is essentially a basic cage. There are no more plans to add on to the bonobo's exhibit as the outdoor cage is brand-new and was just opened in 2011. Yikes! The photo of it on this site does not show the extent of the cage, as it goes from being 4 feet off the ground to 26-feet in height with a metal tower section. I'm not impressed at all but this is a zoo that has not really built anything notable for animals in probably 25 years. A large chunk of the zoo from the 1960's still stands today, and there have been many visitor amenities added as well as the renovation of older structures, but it is one of the more outdated zoos in America. A vast animal collection, impressive visitor numbers (1.3 million annually) and a nice wooded pathway in places but it has been a long time since a new, shiny exhibit complex has opened to the public. The pachyderm house would shock you and the elephant paddock is just about the smallest one in North America.
