I will re-post what i said a few months ago: My town of Grand Junction, Colorado will be getting one in a few years. A group called the Grand Valley Zoological Quest have been behind it for the past couple of years. They wanted to start with 3 phases. Phase 1 is a 1.5 acre bi-level indoor rain forest that would include 4 different rain forests from across the world. Phase 2 is a western Colorado section featuring western Colorado wildlife that included brown bears, mountain lions, bobcats, jack rabbits, beaver, and herds of deer and elk. Phase 3 is an aquarium. From there they would have future plans of expanding. The estimated cost for all of this was $16 million. They don't say how much they have made so far from donations and grants/funds they have received from local businesses. Lately the plan is to have an indoor zoological center. They have recently said that the plans are all finished. the proposed sketches have been drawn for the center and all the animals have already been selected. All they have left is to get the rest of the funds to start building. I'm not sure where they are putting this. I have heard several different locations. I have also heard that they are just trying to buy a certain building and remodel it into the zoological center. Here is their website if anybody is interested and wants to learn more, perhaps donate them some more money so you can have a new zoo to visit here in my town Grand Valley Zoological Quest
Plenty of areas of Europe would easily support major zoos that close - I certainly think Glasgow would if someone opened one. Possibly the most extreme case is the Ruhr Valley - where roughly-central Wuppertal is about 50-60km (31-37 miles) from a major zoo in almost every direction - Cologne, Duisburg, Dortmund, Krefeld and Gelsenkirchen all sit in that kind of range (though these are admittedly goverment-subsidised, which a putative new Glasgow zoo wouldn't be).
To us in the U.S., we find you over saturation of zoos a thing to marvel at in utter confusion. I admittedly live in a high density zoo area with 2 zoos and 3 aquariums, but that is for nearly 7 million people. Past that zoos are spaced apart every few hundred miles. In the time it would take me to get to the next minor zoo, someone in the center of England (say Birmingham) could get to every collection in their country (and Wales). For me to go to Houston, the next major zoo in the state, someone could easily go from London to Paris.
H'mm. Unfortunately Southern England is crowded; travel isn't that quick. I live some sixty miles away from Central London, but I very much doubt if I could get there in much less than two and a half hours, by any form of transport.
Or you could live where I do and have the Hogle Zoo two and a half hours away and the zoos on the Front Range Corridor five or more hours away. Let's just say I'm glad to have wildlife viewing in my own backyard or three hours away.
I had the exact inverse of that confusion recently. I'm in the process of planning a US trip next year, and part of the plan is a stopover in Atlanta for some Whale Shark/Giant Panda action. I was looking at Atlanta on the map and it suddenly occurred to me I'd never heard of there being a single other zoo in Georgia besides Atlanta's two collections. And I couldn't name more than one zoo in any of its neighbouring states (with the notable exception of Florida, of course). Now, I'm no massive expert on US zoos - are there zoos I haven't heard of in Georgia? That seems very slim pickings for the area concerned. It seems that certain states are 'zoo-rich' - Florida, California, Texas, New York, for example (all high-population and/or high-tourism states) - and others have very few. Is that a fair assessment?
I'm reasonably central - I worked out that (given no significant road delays) I could be at any animal collection in mainland Britain within 7hr 15min or so (Black Isle would be the longest journey, I think). Everywhere except the Scottish Highlands and Cornwall is within a theoretical 4hr 30min drive (one-way) - unless it involves driving within the M25 (i.e. London) in which case all bets are off!
That honestly astounds me. It's a midsized state in area and an above-average one in terms of population. Two animal collections - even two very well-regarded ones - seems such a small number, particularly as they're so close together (which last at least is helpful for your foreign zoo nerd visitors, of course!).
Most major cities in the US have zoos in them. New York, Florida, California, and Texas are the most "saturated" you might say but Ohio has Cleveland, Cincinatti, and Columbus which are pretty well-known and a little one in Akron and The Front Range Corridor (Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo) also each have zoos. Chicago has two zoos and Minneapolis, which is probably not a huge tourist draw also has two zoos. As far as states bordering Georgia there are zoos in Memphis and Nashville in Tennessee (although not a quick drive from Atlanta). I'm not sure if Athens or Savannah, two of the other major cities in Georgia have zoos or not. You are also right that the tourist states have some of the more well-known zoos but some that are famous and not in major tourist destinations are Henry Doorly in Omaha and the zoos in Ohio.
In looking at Georgia, there really is only one region in the state that could support a zoo, and that's the general Atlanta area. While there's lots of land area, the population density is far lower than in the UK.
I can't dispute your second point, but I'm not sure about the first - the space and cities both increase in scale in rough proportion between continents. A quick google suggests the Savannah and Augusta metropolitan areas each have a comparable population to Frankfurt or Stuttgart (Germany's 5th and 6th largest cities, to stick with a German comparison). Probably we need to know how many visitors to Frankfurt and Stuttgart's zoos come from outside the city to make a fair judgment, but I'd have though those regions would support at least a small zoo.
Nashville Knoxville North Carolina and Birmingham are within 3 hours of Atlanta. Nashville is a newer zoo (at its location) Knoxville is a zoo with no Bad exhibits North Carolina is an open range zoo (North America and Africa) Birmingham is worth a visit if your trip has you head west from Atlanta. The new all male bachelor herd of African Elephants is worth a visit (especially on a Tuesday when its just 7 dollars admission). In 2000 this zoo lost AZA accreditation (got it back) but is under the leadership of Bill Foster former head of the entire AZA.
Georgia has three AZA accredited facilities. Zoo Atlanta, Georgia Aquarium (relatively new), and Chehaw Wild Animal Park. Georgia is similar to Alabama outside of Atlanta. For the most part Zoo founding is a relic of the twentieth century and Atlanta really boomed to what it was in the last 40 years or so. In the 60s, Alabama and Georgia were roughly the same size by population. After Birmingham's unfortunate association with the civil rights movement, Atlanta marketed itself as the City to busy to hate. Since then Alabama's population has grown but only to nearly 5 million. Now Georgia is nearly 10 million.
Fixed it. African Bush Elephant. They have four, Bulwagi, Ajani, Callee, and Tamani (Bulwagi's son). They are exhibited with red river hog, lion, cape hunting dog, giraffe, various african birds, zebra, grants gazelle, hippo, ostrich, and a trio of white rhino. No they don't all share the same space. They branded all their african animals that are outside as Trails. The elephant, hippo, rhino, giraffe, and hoofstock do however have the ability to rotate onto the main "flex" exhibit.
There are 3 decent zoos in Georgia (Atlanta, Savannah, Albany) and 2 aquariums (Atlanta, Albany). There is also a semi-decent theme park/zoo hybrid in Valdosta.
Thanks gerenuk - that seems a bit of a better spread. (as to our trip, the main focus is Florida so Georgia will just be Atlanta for us, but it's good to know there's more out there)
It should be noted that both Frankfurt and Stuttgart are part of large metropolitan regions themselves, numbering more than 5 million each. These two are essentially connected by the 2.4 million Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region (they're the three essentially connected dots in southwest Germany, almost exactly in the center of this nighttime map). While I guess both Savannah and Augusta metropolitan areas would be able to support good small-medium zoos, direct comparison with Frankfurt or Stuttgart, situated in one of the most densely populated regions of central Europe, is likely to mislead. Regardless, the nominal GDP per capita in Georgia is between that of France and the UK. There should be widespread buying power in Georgia, even though their Gini coefficient is high (higher than in any West European country). You'd expect more zoos in Georgia based on that.
