Animals No Longer At Your Zoo You'd Like To See There Again

Hate to be predictable, but for me it would be the return of polar bear, Asiatic black bear, sloth bear, brown bear or American black bear at Chester, with a preference for all five!

 

What do you think Bears if the World is going to be?

 

Literally my dream!

 

Kinkajou.

 

Before 2014, Kobe animal kingdom was known as Kobe kachoen (bird place). It had chukars, fan-tailed pigeons, a large-billed crow, and a white backed vulture. After 2014 the secretary bird, white-napped crane, grey crowned crane, and sun conure were slowly gone. It would be great if these birds stayed (don't care much about the diminished owls)

 

how did you come up with this list

 

Henry Vilas Zoo
Reeve's Muntjac; a recent species that left the zoo, I do not remember the zoo having them personally but I have seen photos of them.
Asian Elephant; Henry Vilas Zoo does not have the space for elephants, but if it expanded I would love for them to be added back into the collection.
Mountain Tapir; Vilas Zoo Animals | Photograph | Wisconsin Historical Society ; I am finding many species that I had no idea the zoo had at one time on this website. It would be stunning if the zoo got this species again.
Spotted Hyena; hyenas are incredibly awesome.

 

The Philadelphia Zoo used to have elephants, African wild dogs, and clouded leopards.

 

I believe I have already listed the species I miss at Toronto Zoo so I'll take on Safari Niagara (formally Zooz; Stevensville, Ontario)

-Coatimundi (2015, I believe)
-Striped Hyena (2016? left before I had the chance to see it; didn't settle in well apparently and was too restless)
-North American Porcupine (2016?)
-Addax (2016ish)
-Scimitar Horned Oryx (2016ish; once displayed with the Addax and Eland who still exhibited but no longer with any other species)
-River Otter (left in 2017 I believe)
-Snow Leopard (2015ish)
-Fisher (was listed on the website on 2016 or so, but never saw it and was removed from the website)

African Lion Safari -

-Bengal Tiger (likely not purebred but may have been way back; they left sometime back in the early 2000s after an idiot's incident where she left a window open)
-Striped Hyena (1980s)
-California Sealion (1989s; were once seen on the African Queen Boat Ride)
-Canadian Horse (left in the 1990s, a domestic breed of course but I miss them)
-African Elephant
-Black Rhino

 

Blijdorp Zoo, Rotterdam

* Babirussa
* Thomson's gazelle
* Agile wallaby
* Eastern putty-nosed guenon
* Potto
* Sea otter
* Anoa
* Klipspringer
* Rusty-spotted cat
* Asian golden cat

Soon, maned wolf will leave the collection as well

I know most of these are unlikely to ever return though

 

Dudley Zoo:

• Zebras (Could go into the Bear Ravine paddock where the Guanaco & Rhea currently are)
• Maned Wolf (Because I never got the chance to see this species when it used to be held at the collection)
• Reeves Muntjac (Could do with another deer species)
• Arabian oryx (I remember seeing these as a child in the paddock what now houses the peccaries, I think they disappeared from the collection sometime back in 2006)
• Mountain gazelles (Same as above)
  
• Cassowary (I know, it doesn't sound very likely that this will happen but I do miss seeing this species at Dudley as well)
• Babirusa (Same as above)
• Cape Porcupine (A lot of the time when I saw these animals at the zoo they were always usually sleeping inside their dens and had been moved around twice, I think these could do with a much better enclosure IMO)
• Dwarf mongoose (These were only briefly kept inside the former Monkey Tails building around 2006 and 2007 before they died out and were replaced with Meerkats)
• Llamas (I can understand why they had to remove this species from their collection again, to put the Gelada baboons onto an enclosure on the chairlift hill. But I think they should be added into the farmyard extension once completed)

I would've also added Polar Bears and Elephants onto this list, though this seems like a definite impossibility since DZG has already moved on from those species now.

 

Oh, and I just thought of one more for Dudley!

• Red squirrels (Incase none of you have noticed, the last remaining Red Squirrel at DZG left the collection at the end of 2017 and was transferred to Welsh Mountain Zoo in Wales to make way for a brand new Prevost's squirrel exhibit which is due to open sometime this half-term. I know Red Squirrels aren't exactly as common in big zoos as such, but I loved the ones they had at Dudley and I will miss the days when they were a part of the zoo's collection)

 

I could weep remembering some of the creatures I saw as a youngster. In 1965 I first visited the Bronx Zoo (while taking in the World’s Fair with my family), and saw a Philippines Monkey-eating eagle in the old Bird House.
In the Baltimore Zoo, the old Mansion House bird collection had a kagu as well as picathartes (sadly I no longer recall which species) in the 1970’s.

 

I'm happy to say the Sacramento Zoo once again has a rhinoceros iguana

 

Detroit Zoo:

Mountain lion.
Snow leopard.
Hippos.
African dwarf crocodiles.

I'd like to say elephants, but our zoo director decided some years back that we didn't have sufficient room for them, especially since in Michigan winters they had to spend a lot of time indoors. So they expanded the rhino exhibit into where the elephants used to be.

 

The Philadelphia Zoo has been phasing out species for more than a decade. A decade ago I was devastated at the loss of both African and Asian elephants when the Zoo closed its elephant exhibit. A year or so later, the last Asian rhinoceros left in the Zoo died and that species has not been replaced. From that point forward, the Zoo has lost all of the following species I wish would be brought back:

okapi
polar bear
African wild dogs
panther chameleon
Geoffroy's marmoset
spectacled langurs
bearded pigs
baboons
crowned cranes
secretary birds
fishing cats
Waldrapp ibises
curassow
buff-crested bustard
magpie shrikes
giant anteater
capybara
douc langur (recently - no hope of bringing this species back to any North American zoo)

Fortunately, the Zoo has a new bird curator and a new mammal curator, and both have brought in a few new species. Among those are a francois langur, a fossa, and quite a few fascinating bird species such as a crested caracara, an argus pheasant, white-winged wood ducks, golden weavers, vulturine guinea fowl, and many beautiful Asian bird species (all in the Wings of Asia exhibit which used to be the lorikeet visitor feeding area)

But, overall the Zoo has a net reduction in the number of animals and species it exhibits compared to a decade ago. My hope is that the trend will reverse. It is America's First Zoo ... And it continues to be the Zoo I have the most interest in, and the one I most want to be the best zoo in the world.

 

That is shocking! When I first started looking up American collections (about 2004) Philly had a superb collection, and was high on my wishlist. Nowadays I don't think it would crack my top 30 to visit in the USA!

 

I have visited the zoo twice, once in 2014 and once in 2017. During that time the contents of the mammal house drastically shrunk by at least half, including the loss of the entire nocturnal section (Sugar Glider, Pygmy Slow Loris, Asian Garden Dormouse, Short-Beaked Echidna, Lesser Egyptian Jerboa, Greater Egyptian Jerboa, Feathertail Glider, and Striped Possum) minus the vampire bats because they built their new enclosure over the entrance to the nocturnal wing. They also lost some unique birds, most notably the Hawaiian Amakihi. The bird row where the penguins used to be had also been dramatically declined and my understanding is both this and some of the mammal sections are due for the bulldozer at some point in the near future, hence their increased emptiness. Other oddities such as the mangabey and Mhorr Gazelle (the last in the AZA) will die off soon as well. Things will most certainly get worse before they get better at Philly.

That said, I've been happy to hear that several new odd bird species have popped up in the bird house and in the aviary since my last visit, so at the least the zoo still has plenty of unique birds and reptiles for us zoo nerds.

ps. Is Philly really America's first zoo?

~Thylo

 

Phily does not keep the only Mhorr Gazelles in the AZA. St. Louis keeps some.

Interesting to know Philadelphia once kept Hawaii Amakihi. Do any zoos in the world currently keep any type of Hawaiian Honeycreeper?

 

Hopefully the zoo has "bottomed out", and the new bird species, new penguin exhibit and soon to be future construction are signs of its improvement.