Yes, the chimps were part of the heart of Africa bio dome, Do you think they could retrofit the tropical house for the chimps. fit a new roof, similar to the monsoon forest one and have a large planted indoor area for the chimps. Maybe add off show housing next to the building over the now unused canal. would allow the aye-aye to stay put and the macaw's, plus it would enable access to the island and allow the existing house to stay whilst the work was done.
I suppose that might be feasible - but I don't think an indoor planted area would stay planted for very long. Don't forget that the old chimp indoor dens are still in the Tropical House building, behind the upper and lower level aviaries, so there is some space there. Sooner or later the zoo will have to grasp the nettle of the Tropical House building, because the roof will not last forever and there is the problem of the asbestos in the section of roof over the old reptile corridor beside the canal (and possibly elsewhere?). I don't know whether the walls are worth keeping, it would be wonderful if they could put a roof like the one on Monsoon Forest over them: but as zoogiraffe has said already, it might well be more sensible to demolish everything and start again. The first step would be to build new off-show facilities for all the birds, reptiles and amphibians which are held behind the scenes in that building. A mischievous little voice in my head has suggested a left field alternative. If they had to move the chimps while rebuilding their housing on the existing site, they could put them into the old orang house and even build a Howletts style bridge across the footpath from the old orang paddock (behind the stockade) to the chimp island, which would not be pretty and would need a lot of hot wires, but it might be made to work. Again a fresh start on a new site would be much simpler - and they would then have the perfect site for a new gorilla or bonobo exhibit Alan
New housing could be created when the old orang house is demolished. The chimps could then be housed temporarily indoors while the path between rotra and existing chimps was moved and a new (or new chimp access to) chimp island created.
A small point, but is it not likely that the next time Chester builds a Chimp outdoor enclosure it won't be an island? Neither ROTRA nor Islands had moated enclosures for orangs, and with the list of drowned apes ever growing it just seems bad practice.
Up to a point. RotRA has a peculiar of sort of moat in front of the outdoor viewing point. The smaller outdoor orang enclosure in Islands has a fairly shallow pool between the ape's area and the viewing window. I don't know what a new chimp enclosure at Chester might have. Alan
The other other option is to build a brand new world class exhibit with indoor and e=out door areas on the proposed site of the heart of Africa bio dome, but just do something for chimps, which options to redevelop land used currently for chimps and tropical house for say gorillas or bonobos, or both "Secret forests of the Congo" (just an idea) could also have pygmy Hippo and bongo/Okapi enclosures around it. This option has little impact on the current zoo (no visitor issues) and frees up areas to continue the zoning of the zoo and a much lower cost than the Bio dome Idea.
Dreaming of futures that might be is fine and I welcome all ideas and suggestions. But it seems it is at the moment all hard guess work. BTW: the investments into Islands need to be recouped first before any new grand projects can be implemented. I guess this and next year will be small improvements and maintenance projects first and foremost.
Yea, I figured it out. Hence why I deleted my post but still I couldn't get it to zoom in properly. I shall try again!
