Speculative Burger's zoo project

A thread to discuss a speculative expansion of Burgers zoo in Arnhem (The Netherlands).

With seven brand new regions and two expansions! Now displaying all seven continents!

We present to you, Burgers zoo 2.0!

 

Please refrain from commenting (for now), as I want to explain the different regions and their species first.

We'll go through Park first, then the first region of islands, then Arctic and Wad, the second islands region, one of the largest regions: Outback, then the Desert expansion, the Night houses, Burgers Congo, the largest new region: Burgers Woods, and finally the Safari expansion

 

Burgers Park


The lemur enclosure has joined Islands, the reindeer moved to Woods and the second Park region and what was left of the aviaries are now replaced by Burgers Outback.

I decided to add some life to three of the empty pathways, including the pathway below the elephant enclosure. Where now is an Asian fishing cat enclosure.

A small part of the playground is gone and replaced by Wad/Arctic

Instead of the reindeers, the enclosure has been given an update, with grass and a small pond, now inhabited by Guanacos and Lesser rheas. Against the side of the Memory Hall, there is now an aviary with three different species of Macaws and Southern screamers

 

Burgers islands - Madagascar and Seychelles


Next to the new lemur enclosure, now resides a small wooden building with a glass roof. Inside, there is a lot of rockwork and foliage, with a small open spot and a pond in the middle.

The fossa enclosure is lined with a large glass wall, and aviary nets on top, similar to the Bobcat enclosure in the Desert.

You go over a small bridge over the Giant tortoises, and then through double gates similar to the ones in Petting zoos, to enter the outside region. The free-roamers also have access to this place, and it's surrounded by a thin mesh "cage" to prevent even the geckos from escaping.

A part of the African Islands house is occupied by a rock cave with two nocturnal enclosure inside. Dark blue lights make sure you can still see the nocturnal animals inside. The cave does not go all the way to the top of the house, and still has foliage on top for the free-roamers.

The giant chameleon enclosure is completely open, lowered into the ground, with the climbing equipment far enough away so the chameleons can't climb out.

 

Burgers Arctic


With a "wear a coat" warning sign, and seperated into three regions just like Burgers Mangrove (Which has flooded mangrove, mudflats, and dry forest), Burgers Arctic has the Basalt pillar river, featuring a single walkthrough enclosure with Puffins, Razorbills, and Common murres. The Frozen coast, featuring a large antarctic penguin enclosure, as well as a crashed crab fishing boat you can walk over, and an igloo informational exhibit. And the Nortic forest, with multiple exhibits and covered with pine and fir trees.

At night, the temperatures in the hall drop to -10 dergrees celcius (14 F), and hot water is sprayed to create snow in the Nortic forest and the Frozen coast. The water area has bubblers at night to prevent it from freezing over.

In daytime, temperatures are around 0 C (32 F) degrees in the early morning, 10 C (50 F) degrees from 13.00 to 17.00 (the busy hours), and 5 C (41 F) in the evening, then dropping back to -10 after the keeper shift (to make sure the keepers don't freeze to death).

The outside has a walkthrough owl aviary, a sunken wolverine enclosure, an outside part for the Siberian Weasel, which is a small norwegian-styled hut with mesh walls, and a hot coacoa stand and a fire pit with benches around it that are open/lit from late October to mid March

 

Burgers Arctic - Ice Caves


From four different points, you can enter the ice caves, with underwater viewing to the Penguins and Puffins, multiple aquariums, and a view into the wolverine den.

The path is drawn black here, so that it won't be confused with the white path on top.

The penguins have a single, huge viewing window, and the pathways next to the penguins are right on top of each other.



The Crab fishing boat in the penguin enclosure is fully accessible. With two crab tanks you can view into (also with open tops to be viewed from the upper level).

The sides have portholes to look through into the Penguin underwater region

The two side paths go into the the ice caves, the middle path is a staircase to the upper level

The name of the boat will be "M.S. Blijdorp", "M.S. Berlin", "M.S. Antwerpen" (etc.), depending on which zoo the majority of the King penguins come from

 

Burgers Wad


If a huge, cooled down hall is too expensive, we have the backup plans for Burgers Arctic: Burgers Wad! (which might be even more expensive, who knows?)

Besides Ecomare and the Wadden aviary in Ouwehands, the Dutch world heritage site is not that appreciated in zoos, despite being one of the Netherland's biggest icons.

Burger's wad is built into three regions

The back-wadden aviary (based on the marshy area behind the dunes), with different shorebirds, spoonbills, and sandpipers. Made walkthrough with boardwalk paths.

The shoreline and sandbanks iconic to anyone who's ever gone swimming in the Dutch seas. With a smaller replica of the Texel lighthouse and a near-walkthrough seal enclosure (minimum rope fencing and a walkover bridge)

And the North sea aquarium, featuring a massive open ocean tank, some tide pool areas, and fake animals that can't be kept in captivity

 

Burgers Wad - North Sea Aquarium

The entire North Sea aquarium is based on the aquariums in Ecomare.

The top floor of the North Sea Aquarium has four tank areas, the tide pool areas, with mostly open-top tanks and a modern look of mainly metal and glass.

The outer ring of the tide pools (1-8) has rock walls along the back, making it only visible form the inner path, and not the outside path.

The central kelp tank (taken straight from Ecomare) has a downward staircase wrapping around it, making for a great side view to all height levels.

The ocean floor-dwellers (9) is another open top tank, being only 1,2 meters high. Allowing taller people to look from the top, and children to get a good side view.

The shark tank is the second tank without an open top, being about three meters high with a rocky backdrop. The wheelchair ramp to the lower floor goes right under this tank, with a glass roof.

The entire right side is a huge balcony, to get an amazing view into the colossal viewing window of the open ocean tank

 

Burgers Wad - North Sea Aquarium (lower floor)


The lower floor of the North Sea aquarium is a lot larger, expanding into larger regions on three occasions.

The kelp tank and Opean Ocean tank are the only two tanks that reach from the top floor to the bottom floor. The only difference is that you can now access the BESO shipwreck. Of course, it's not as large as the real TESO (Texels Eigen Stoomboot Onderneming (Texel's own Steam boat Company)), but it's still rather sizeable (I know the map still says teso, but I just thought of making is BESO (Burger's own steam boat company) instead).
Inside the TESO, there are onceagain portholes to look through, as well as exhibits on the funky skeletons of the blue skate, torpedo ray, lamprey and sunfish.

The oyster reef is similar to a tank in sea life berlin.

Path through the ray tank - ZooChat

Though the glass walls in the mussel reef are higher than that.

After going through the Mussel reef, there is a large viewing window into the seal underwater area. As well as a large floor-to-ceiling tank with a lot of different fish species on the other side of the seals.

Two jellyfish tunnels are on the far left side of the Aquarium. With a jellyfish education wall in the seperated room. The tunnels are similar to the ones in Aquarium de la rochelle

Jellyfish tunnel - ZooChat

There is another small information section on pollution and the environmental effects of the dykes and dams of the Netherlands in the bottom left

The final two tanks are the ray touch pool and the European Eel tank

The touch pool has three ocean-floor-dwelling rays, and are joined by the amazingly named boops boops

The european eel tank is rather simple, and once again similar to the one in Ecomare

The "ceiling-dwellers" of the lower floor are animals that can't be kept in captivity, but are still real representatives of the North Sea. As you might have guessed, this is once again stolen directly from ecomare

The big blue oval on the map is a younger humpback whale, which is the only animal with a set location

Other ceiling-dwellers include Two Harbour porpoises, Three White-beaked dolphins, A Giant oarfish, A basking shark, Two greenland sharks, and a small school of swordfish

 

I'm taking a break for a little bit (because humans require sleep and I need to maintain my cover), so I'll continue Islands to Congo tomorrow

 

Burgers Islands - Carribean and Galapagos


Very similar to the African Islands house, a wooden structure with a glass roof and a mesh outside area. There's also a seperate area for the Netherlands Antilles (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, Saint Eustatius and Saint Maarten).

The inside area for the giant tortoises is sandy and lined with cacti, while the outside area is grassy with a few shrubs and bushes.

You enter with a bridge over the crocodile marsh, with a wood hut to get a closer look to both the crocodiles and the tortoises. The central, two-tiered enclosure for the blue iguanas (or Cuban ground iguanas if Blue iguanas aren't available) is huge, and surrounded by pale, layered rocks. There's a small viewing hut to the upper tier, which is accessable by a wooden walkway.

The cuban tree boa terrarium is embedded into a log. And the open Rhino iguana has volcano-like rockwork behind it.

The Cuban hutia enclosure is similar to the Aye-aye enclosure, except not surrounded by a cave

The outside area of the tortoises is walkthrough again, but here it's more of a picnic area with a few benches

 

Burgers Outback


Burger's Outback is the second largest new region. With three seperate, smaller houses with fauna (and flora) from New Caledonia, the Solomon islands, New Zealand, New Guinea, and Tasmania. As well as a large main hall of Australian animals.

For this comment we'll focus on the main hall, and I'll explain the other ones later on.

The main hall is, once again, seperated into three regions: The humid forest in the top part. The dry, grassy outback in the middle. And the arid desert of central Australia in the bottom region.

There's two macropod enclosures.
The eastern forest enclosure, with Eastern grey kangaroos, Swamp wallabies, and Black swans.
And the Western Outback enclosure, with Emus, Common wallaroos, Red kangaroos, Agile wallabies, and Yellow-footed rock wallabies. This enclosure is walkthrough, with shack-like entrance and exit points made of dried out wood and rusty metal.

A similar looking building sits at the edge of the Outback macropod enclosure. The "Outback shack" snack bar serves small Australian dishes such as fairy bread, Lamingtons, Small kangaroo burgers, and of course fried prawns. You can also walk around it to get a closer look at the macropods and emus.

The koala enclosure is only semi-walkthrough. Similar to the Grey langur enclosure in Apenheul.
Gray langur aviary, 4/5/14 - ZooChat

The pathway is far enough away that the Koalas can't climb onto the path, with the bottom having protection to prevent them form climbing up from the bottom.

In the bottom desert region, there are two seperate routes you can take. Either over the hill; with desert flora and a small pond. Or through the aboriginal caves. A cavern system with multiple terrariums, an inside view into the dingo den, some aquariums, a nocturnal walkthrough enclosure with tawny frogmouths, sugar gliders and Western Woylies, and a small replica of the glowworm caves. Though I haven't properly mapped these yet.

There's also a crashed train viewing platform (as well as train tracks through the entire outback enclosure) similar to the one at WILDLANDS

The dingo enclosure is netted over to keep the birds out.

I don't know what other Australian birds are kept in the current aviaries at the back of the park, but those will all move into here


(ignore the western woylie still in this image, forgot to take it out)

 

Burgers Outback - New Caledonia and Solomon islands house and New Zealand house


The New Caledonia and Solomon islands house, as well as the New Zealand house, don't have glass walls or roofs. As the C/S house has almost only terrariums and the NZ house is mostly nocturnal.

The solomon islands spiny monitor enclosure is open concept, having bot a vertical part, and a horizontal part


The new zealand house has three nocturnal enclosures, the two tuatara enclosures and the kiwi enclosure.

There's also three day enclosures. A cylindrical terrarium with geckos sits in the middle, and through a back path you can see the inside aviaries for the kaka and kea.

The outside aviaries are lush, rocky enclosures with lots of ferns

 

Burgers Outback - New Guinea and Tasmania house

The New Guinea and Tasmania houses are seperated, but built against each other.

The New Guinea house is once again a wooden building with a glass roof, but with darkened glass. The tasmania house is the same, but with regular glass.

The New Guinea house has heavy tropical flora, and the Tasmania hosue has slightly drier temperate flora and grass.

The New Guinea house has a boardwalk path through it, looping around a large log with a terrarium in the middle

The inside area for the Cassowaries and the Tree kangaroo / Ground cuscus enclosures are seperated from the visitors with glass and logs.

The inside area for the Tasmania house looks similar to the inside of the current aviary house it will be replacing

In the outside enclosure for the tasmanian devils, just like the ones in Tasmania Devil Unzoo.

 

Crap, I forgot about the Oasis of the rainbow serpent and the murals.

There's also aboriginal wall murals and paintings showing some of Australia's interesting history, such as the great emu war and the disasters of invasive species.

As well as an oasis underneath the pond (in the upper region), it has a glass roof to give the illusion of being under water. There's a huge mural painting of the rainbow serpent, every 15 minutes or so, she give a sort of monologue about Australia's unique fauna and the effects of global warming. During the monologue, the rainbow serpent will move around (with projectors) and nature videos of Australia.

Let me explain those projectors better.

During the beginning of the show, projectors will project the mural over the mural (which is barely noticable). Then, the room will gradually darken. Though the mural will say bright, of course.

The rainbow serpent will start moving around the room as she starts talking, and other projectors will show different animations and nature scenes on different rocks, depending on what she's talking about (Australia's seperation from gondwanaland, making the evolution so very unique. Then the introduction of humans and their issues, then the effects of global warming, such as wildfires. And finally what will happen if global warming doesn't get better, etc.)

 

Burgers desert expansion


The path between the desert and the bush has always felt weird and empty. So I decided to fill it up with some extra desert!

Most of the animals here don't come into the desert that often, but neither do the bobcat and collared peccary, so I think it's fine. And I think it would actually be cool to see then in a different environment.

The larger building in the middle is an abandoned saloon, with two spots where you can get a closer view into the enclosure. The middle one is also accessable for the animals if they want.

The virginia opossums are viewable from both inside and outside the saloon

Of course there's also the obligatory prairie dog walkthrough, a part of which also goes underground to show some underground tunnels with glass walls, and eventually comes up into a big hole similar to the ones in the prairie dog walkthrough in Dierenpark Amersfoort, which opens up in a smaller, seperated area

Prairiedog-enclosure - ZooChat

Finally there's a small kit fox enclosure, which you can walk under to get another view to the seperated area.

It ends in a small walkover enclosure with wild turkeys, which transitions the desert into an arid forest

Inside the desert hall, there are now Mojave desert tortoises in the empty enclosure

 

Burgers Night - South America


Finally on to my favourite region in any zoo, the night house! I've sadly only even been able to visit the nighthouse in Amersfoort (As I didn't know Ouwehands has one and I don't believe the Netherlands has any others). So this will be heavily inspired by it, as it is the most beautiful night house in my opinion (based only on ZooChat searches).

Both Night houses will have dark blue lights similar to the ones in Zoo Plzn, along with some other zoos
general view in the nocturnal house - Zoo Plzen - ZooChat
opossum exhibit zoomat nocturnal house - ZooChat

This nighthouse will have a large walkthrough section, consisting of boardwalks. The tapir and anteater enclosure also has a pier-like boardwalk over the water.

Two things can happen to the tamandua enclosure, as I recently found out they can also go in walkthroughs safely. They will either:
- get a seperate walkthrough enclosure, and some of the animals from the larger walkthrough will move in here too, together with some new nocturnal animals.
- move into the larger walkthrough area, and the water of the tapirs and anteaters will expand to create a seperate area for arapaimas and turtles

- move into the larger walkthrough area, and the walkthrough would expand to a larger section of the Night house, also allowing the sloths, kinkajous and tamanduas to get into the tapir/anteater enclosure


The final area, with the ocelot and the smaller terrariums goes upwards to match the path on the other side (For those who don't know, the bush exits into a lower section of the zoo, and the circular pathway slopes into the higher section). There's also a scorpion terrarium with blacklights, though it's difficult to researsch South American scorpions in captivity.

There's a last room with pictures of sunrises over the pampas, to allow your eyes to ajust to normal lighting again

 

Burgers Night - Central Africa


The African night house sits against the congo dome, and opens into a similar boardwalk walkthrough. The aardvarks are seperated into two enclosures at both sides of the path, though given the illusion that they're in the same enclosure. The springhares, galagos, and porcupines can go under and over the path as they please. Though, if deemed possible, the aardvarks will go in a full walkthrough and only have one enclosure (keeping the other pair behind the scenes).

The pangolins are planned for a distant future where America (and maybe other facilities by then) has become successful enough to breed at least five or seven tree pangolins. Keeping two in a breeding enclosure, one in the seperation, and two more in the main enclosure (in case of seven, two will be kept completely privately behind the scenes). The main enclosure will also be used for the family in case of births

The three pangolin enclosures all have different viewing experiences, the breeding enclosure has minimal viewing. With only a few, small windows that look into the barely lit enclosure. Similar to the pangolin enclosure in brookfield zoo while it was still adjusting
Changes with the pangolin exhibit - ZooChat

The seperation enclosure will have two larger viewing windows, though still not enormous. Being about half a meter tall, and two meters wide

The main enclosure will have a huge viewing window like the one in Taipei zoo
leopard Cat exhibition - ZooChat
(I know it's leopard cat, but the viewing windows are the same)

The sitatunga enclosure is fully walkthrough (which has been done multiple times before), but for safety reasons, the males are kept in the seperation enclosures for breeding. Most of the females will live in a sort-of bachelor group in the walkthrough area together with the pottos. There's a fence around the lowered soft shelled turtle enclosure, to prevent them getting stuck in there and trampling the turtles

In the sitatunga enclosure, there's a crashed jeep with it's headlights still on, to give a stream of light to see the silhouettes of the sitatungas

 

Burgers Congo


Burgers Congo is yet another tropical dome, similar to pongoland in zoo Leipzig, with natural inside enclosures for the apes and monkeys. The night exits into here too

The pygmy hippos have a (relatively) small underwater viewing window, where you can also spot some of the rarer river fish with some luck.

You walk over the pygmy hippo enclosure with a bridge if you come through night

There's a raised viewing platform to see the Okapis properly, with a lowered porcupine and mongoose exhibti behind it. You can view the apes from the other side of the river at almost any point on the path apart from the pouched rat enclosure and the spot where you walk off the okapi platform

 

You're free to comment and ask questions now, as the final two regions are still not fully translated and described