Keep, steal, demolish

Home Zoo: Saint Louis Zoo

• Keep: River’s Edge or the Bird House
• Steal: Polk Penguin Conservation Center, Detroit Zoo
• Demolish: Big Cat Country (sorry!)

 

I don't understand what you mean.

Saint Louis doesn't need Polk Penguin Conservation Center, it already has another one of the best penguin houses in North America, and honestly IMO Penguin and Puffin Coast is better than PPCC.

 

London Zoo

Keep: Decimus Burton Giraffe House - beautiful building, still arguably suitable for its inhabitants, though would love to see the addition of ostriches (apparently coming) and maybe guineafowl/gazelles.

Steal: Burgers Zoo Mangrove House - manatees would be a great addition to the zoo.

Demolish: Mappin Terraces - Hard choice between Casson Pavilion and Mappin Terraces. Both iconic structures, both millstones round the neck of the zoo today. Casson probably has more that could be done with it (given money and motivation on the part of ZSL), however.

 

I guess I technically have *two* home zoos, since Brandywine Zoo's 20 minutes from where I live and Philly's an hour away.

Brandywine Zoo

Keep: The Madagascar exhibit. Simple, but highly well done.
Steal: Central Park's snow leopard habitat, for up the hill.
Demolish: The stone cages that hold red pandas, sandhill crane and serval.

Philadelphia Zoo

Keep: Big Cat Falls (and honestly a good chunk of the "newer" exhibits)
Steal: As far as a revamp of Bear Country goes, an amalgamation of Lincoln Park's Arctic Tundra and Nashville's Expedition Peru.
Demolish: I wouldn't demolish the Rare Animal Conservation Center as much as I would completely gut the interior and make it an Annamite Mountains Conservation Center on par with JungleWorld or Madagascar at Bronx.

 

The more I think about it, I don’t even know what I’d steal, as St. Louis doesn’t really have any bad exhibits.

 

You mentioned the cat area as the one you'd demolish. Perhaps replace it with a cat-themed complex you do like, so the zoo still maintains some big cats?

 

Home Zoo: Toronto Zoo

Keep: African Rainforest Pavilion
Steal: Henry Doorly Zoo's Desert Dome because it's amazing.
Demolish: Tundra Trek because it's old, very outdated, and has like two species that you see consistently.

 

Interesting to see you choose Desert Dome, as personally I found it to be one of Omaha’s weakest exhibits. Granted, it exhibits species from a biome that is under-represented at Toronto, but the same could be said about many exhibits that are much better than Omaha’s desert dome (even the exhibit in its basement)

Also, Tundra Trek is one of the newest exhibits at the zoo. Empty exhibits in the area are definitely its biggest problem, but I certainly wouldn’t say it’s “outdated”. The Polar Bear and Wolf exhibits are among Toronto’s best enclosures.

 

I guess I have to say I disagree with this because I don't find the polar bear habitat all that appealing, but I do agree that the wolf one has improved recently though it hasn't always been as good as it is now.

Okay maybe outdated was the wrong term to use, but I picked it to demolish because of the lack of creatures in the area. I think there are maybe three, with the wolf, polar bear, and reindeer? I couldn't really think of anything else that would suffice being demolished.

 

Damn I forgot about the Swamp underneath the Desert dome.

 

Hey, I live in a desert (sometimes) and I’d love to have the Desert Dome at Phoenix. Granted, I’d want it for Kingdoms of the Night because I’m a sucker for nocturnal houses and Phoenix needs a good indoor attraction, IMO.

 

How has the wolf exhibit improved? I'm pretty sure it has looked the same since Tundra Trek opened.

Yeah those are the three species exhibited currently.

For me, the Mayan ruins area would be the easy choice to demolish. Now that the Spider Monkeys are gone there really isn't much on exhibit anymore, and the exhibits are significantly worse than Tundra Trek's.

It's not just a swamp! Kingdoms of the Night also has Potto, Aardvarks, Armadillos and quite a few bats among other interesting things.

 

I'll do the St. Louis Zoo.
Keep: River's Edge
Steal: San Diego Zoo Reptile Walk
Demolish: Outdoor reptile exhibits by Herpetrium
Basically, I really liked the San Diego Zoo Reptile Walk and I think something like that would be a great addition to the St. Louis Zoo. While the outdoor reptile exhibits are by no means bad, I think it would be cool if they took it up a notch.

 

Home Zoo: Oakland zoo
Keep: California trail
Steal: Range of the Jaguar from the Jacksonville Zoo. Oakland zoo desperately needs animals from South America.
Demolish: Wild Australia. It's just two species

 

I guess childhood zoos would count for this, and since I used to visit North Carolina Zoo all the time when I was little, I'll include that as well.

North Carolina Zoo

Keep: It's tough deciding between Rocky Coast and Watani Grasslands Reserve. Both are brilliant as is, but ultimately I'd go with Rocky Coast.
Steal: San Diego Zoo Safari Park's Lion Camp, utilizing an area near the Shani Loop.
Demolish: If the Forest Aviary were to be relocated elsewhere in the zoo and built in a similar manner (but with more robust materials and greater consideration for structural integrity), I would demolish the original one.

 

Home Zoo: Memphis Zoo (okay, we're an hour's drive away, but it was that or Little Rock which needs WAY more work)

Keep: Cat Country
Steal: Penguin exhibit from St. Louis
Demolish: African Veldt (way out of date and needs to be totally revamped)

 

Home zoo: Burgers' Zoo
Keep: The Desert greenhouse (my favourite of the three)

Steal: Beauval's Hippo aviary or Antwerp's Buffalo aviary (a great aviary is the one thing BZ is missing!)

Demolish: the entire Park-2 area (flamingos, wallabies, pheasantry and great apes), the exhibits range from bad to mediocre and knowing BZ, they could build something amazing here

 

Spider monkeys are still there.

 

Cleveland Zoo-
Keep: Tiger Passage
Steal: Columbus Zoo's Polar Bear exhibit
Demolish: Seal and Sea Lion pool

Akron-
Keep: Komodo Kingdom
Steal: Disney's Animal Kingdom's outdoor Komodo Dragon exhibit
Demoish: No exhibit but Frontierland and the rest of Wild Prairie

 

Ross park:
Keep: wolf exhibit
Steal: Philadelphia’s Primate house
Demolish: hard to decide because everything is so small, but probably the rainforest building