Pittsburgh Zoo - Polar Bear Exhibit

I live in Pittsburgh and love are polar bear exhibit. In fact, I think it's the 2nd best exhibit for polar bears in the U.S. behind Detroit's Arctic Ring of Life.

While it certainly is better than all of the early 20th century grottoes that alot of zoo polar bears still reside in ,there is no way we can call it the second best around.Just off the top of our heads a few that we have visited that are better would be Columbus,Kansas City,North Carolina,Maryland and Louisville.

Team Tapir

K. I will give you columbus ive been at that zoo and that is nice exhibit. Ive seen polar bears in 3 other zoos erie,cleveland,cincinnati. I didnt care for those exhibits.would you say maryland zoo polar bear exhibit is better than pittsburgh? And another zoo that looks like it has a nice polar bear exhibit is memphis zoo.

Well for one thing, Baltimore provides plenty of grass for its bears; not concrete.

I agree with the fact that it is nice and people are judging way too much (not agreeing with the second part though). I know the earlier comments were from 2009 but right now it's getting old. People constantly pointing out the negative more than the positive (Like pointing out that an exhibit is considered a 'grotto' because the word just sounds like it has a bad taste to it rather than realizing it's an enclosure that happens to be surrounded by walls. I never judge an exhibit unless I'm absolutely sure the zoo didn't try their best on constructing it. I know this because you have to think about space, dimensions, and most importantly, budget. With all the space I see from here and Google Earth, what did you expect, a multi-acre bear exhibit that will change the way people think about animals? I love this exhibit and I've never seen it in person and I believe that it does it's job for the bears.

You live in Pittsburgh and so you admire your local zoo, but like so many other ZooChatters I feel that you have too much praise for your beloved zoological park. Everyone loves the zoo that they grew up visiting, and there are people on this forum who think that Toronto is the greatest zoo on the planet, or that Phoenix is the #1 zoo in the nation, or Cleveland is just brilliant, or that Philadelphia is world-class when in fact it has very few great exhibits whatsoever. All laughable ideas to zoo enthusiasts who do not live in those particular cities, but on the other hand I do think that it is wonderful for folks to be supportive of their local community.

Water's Edge opened in 2006 and I visited the zoo in 2008 and the Polar Bear exhibit is essentially a modern-day bear grotto. There is an awful lot of mock-rock, very little natural substrate, and a deep pool with great underwater viewing options. Northern Sea Otters have a small, boring pool and Sand Tiger Sharks are a poor alternative for Walruses. The entire area is a huge disappointment over what it could have become, and looking at photos of the 1.3 acre, grassy, spacious Polar Bear habitat at Columbus Zoo makes me think that Detroit finally has some competition from Jack Hanna's stomping ground.

@ snowleopard: I would not call the sea otter pool small. Granted width wise, they are quite small. However one of the tank is deep enough that it goes down to the bottom level where the polar bear's underwater tunnel.