Visited the zoo today for the first time in years. I was rather impressed with the new additions, as the snow monkey exhibit is excellent and the Polar bear exhibit is above average. I am also excited to see the redevelopment of the lion house ongoing, as it was sad to see animals in those conditions during my last visit. Sadly the puerto rican parrots are temporarily off display today It was snowing out, but surprisingly both species of zebra were on display. Got a few lifers such as the Kagu which was rather active in the bird house. A baby black and white colobus was born last week and is on display in the monkey house. Their was a lot of noise in the lion house that sounded like demolition. Posters were teasing the redevelopment of the building with a large habitat viewed through glass on the North side of the building for the lions. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the interior and south side. Lastly one thing that struck me about the zoo is wasted potential in regards to the collection. The zoo has a great primate collection for its size, but besides that has relatively few species for the site. Even when there are animals, they feel like placeholders (alpaca, bactrian camel (2 exhibits), peccary). The reptile collection on the website is 28 species, and in person its not much more than that. The mammal collection is rather small as well, except for primates. The bird collection is about 65 species. I hope the zoo focuses more on growing its collection, rather than simply housing megafauna as has been the recent trend.
Poster for Lion House Redevlopment by nczoofan posted 2 Jan 2019 at 9:05 PM Here is the picture, with a gingerbreadman saying hello.
One thing that has to be said for Lincoln Park - for all of the subpar former exhibits, once they commit to a renovation, they seem to knock it out of the park. I'm very curious to see the plans for Lion House. The poster concept is interesting but doesn't feel clear to me. Thank you for uploading the image all the same. I'm hopeful some of the small species - particularly servals, which still fit the habitat - may return. Most of the recent renovations (Great Ape House, Penguin-Seabird House, Bear Line, now Lion House) all involved axing larger collections of species to focus on providing the best possible care for fewer species, as often happens. The old Bear Line often held five or six unique predator species, including hyenas and wolves as well as multiple bear species, but the shoddy Polar Bear enclosure desperately needed a renovation and now we have a better habitat and fewer species. Many will be pleased to see the big cats having more space at Kovler Lion House, but I think many of the smaller species - the serval, the pallas cat, the red pandas - were doing fine and I'm sad to see them go, even if lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars deserve better. All of these exhibits needed renovation to provide better animal care, but the species collection suffered some; we lost fifteen or so species in those renovations for five keystone animals. I think the Children's Zoo and African Journey ratios were much kinder, but even the latter has deteriorated - the elephants have died, and I believe on my last visit only giraffes and ostrich had access to the outdoor yard, which once also had gazelles and a secretary bird, I think. I want to say the waterbuck might've been there once, too, but I could be flat-out wrong there. The Antelope-Zebra area feels much, much more old school, with interesting species showing up from time to time and no common theme, but as an expense the habitats themselves feel like generic holding paddocks for whatever animals happen to be there on a given day - the Takin have made for an interesting addition, but the camels and ostriches have jumped around here and there, and the kangaroos are nice to have but stick out quite a bit. I miss the oryx but they're ancient history now. (I didn't even realize they currently had both zebra species; knew it had happened in the past.)
It's been very cool seeing how Lincoln Park has changed over the four years I've lived in Chicago, I really can't wait to see how the new lion house is. I do hope some of the smaller cat species come back, I'd also like to maybe see a little more variety added to the overall collection. Will probably be making my first visit of the year soon, I haven't been since October.
The Kovler Lion House never closed, except for the indoor cat exhibits of course. They are probably saying that the gift shop in there is reopening, since it was formerly a guest services area while the main entrance was under construction.
The Lion House has always been home to a surprising number of visitor amnesties - in addition to a rather nice Gift Shop, and being used as an event venue as mentioned, the second floor is full of some of the main public restrooms at the zoo. Between that and it's status as a historic building, I don't imagine they'll close it any longer than absolutely necessary.
Had my first visit to Lincoln Park of the year today ahead of the snowstorm that's about to hit. The gift shop building is still closed and the store is set up in the lion house. They're also having some sort of clearance sale with some items being 70% off. Speaking of the lion house, only the Eurasian lynx and snow leopard seem to remain in the small outdoor cages. Saw the lynx but not the snowleo. Signage is up for the red pandas still but the exhibit was empty and they're no longer listed on the zoo website. Lions had access to both large yards outside the lion house. Various species were temporarily off exhibit including the Bolivian grey titis, Puerto Rican amazons, beavers, and the birds at the entrance of the Regenstein African Journey. A sign indicated that the black bears are currently denning.
If anyone was wondering, it turns out that the Red Pandas went to Western North Carolina Nature Center.
Very interesting! I remember that facility being geared exclusively towards native wildlife. I wonder what prompted acquiring an Asian species.
Chicago’s been enjoying some nice weather the last couple days so I decided to visit before class (something I do a lot when the weather isn’t garbage). Uhh yeah a downpour happened and like half of Illinois is under a tornado watch now. Mud Season is definitely upon us here. As for the zoo itself a few things have changed since my last visit. The back half of the Small Mammal & Reptile house (the area with the crocodilians, otters, monkeys etc) was closed for renovations. Not sure how long that area will be closed off. The indoor gibbon enclosure had paper covering the glass, the outdoor exhibit was still visible but appeared unoccupied. Saw a couple species I hadn’t seen on exhibit for about a year which was nice (Guam kingfisher and Asian fairy bluebird). Some paths ended up flooded due to the downpour, rendering some areas of the zoo inaccessible. Most of the animals still outside when the rain started seemed unhappy but the polar bears were absolutely loving it. I haven’t seen them so active before.
