http://www.iaapa.org/industry/funworld/2007/feb/Departments/industry_notes/images/columbuszoo.jpg http://www.pjarchitects.com/Brochure/CZ_East_Africa_Plains.pdf
Rumor has always been Snowleopards.Hopefully thats what they do as it would be a wonderful addition to Asia Quest. Team Tapir
Columbus already has a amur tiger exhibit and its one of the best around.We are not sure why they would use a outdated lion exhbit to house more amur tigers.Converting this exhibit to house snowleopard would be a much better idea and should be fairly inexpensive to do.Hopefully this is the route the zoo takes on this. Team Tapir
Changes I'd like to see... Changes I'd like to see to the Columbus Zoo Master Plan. I'd like to see the parking lot move North and the Africa exhibit move to the current parking lot.
Nothing wrong with having more than one exhibit for a given species IMO. In fact, to maintain a breeding program, I think it makes a lot of sense. Certainly easier to move a tiger to another exhibit within the same zoo than to move to a different zoo entirely.
Last I heard (which admittedly has been a while ago), the top candidate for the lions' old exhibit was amur leopards. Hopefully after the exhibit has been redesigned a bit. Snow leopards would also be nice though.
The most recent rumors that I've heard have called for either Snow Leopards or Amur Leopards, but I haven't heard anything about it that recently. Earlier on there were rumors that Dholes might be replacing the African Lions. I haven't heard anything about this in a long time, and at this point I don't see them leaving The Wilds.
Considering the current Lion exhibit is actually 2 separate yards sharing a singular support building, could both Amur and Snow Leopards move in once the lions move to the savanna?
Both species could theoretically move into the lion exhibit. However, with both species being endangered I would assume that the zoo would want to establish a breeding program. Wouldn't it be better to devote both areas to one species in order to accommodate a breeding pair and their offspring?
With regards to zooguy5's plans above, I also feel its getting a little more spread out than would be ideal, but I'd sooner see a monorail, shuttle bus(like Cleveland), or cable car sky-ride(like San Diego). Getting between Aus&Islands and the new areas is going to be quite a trek, although several other zoos are still worse in this regard.
Something else on my mind... I'm not in love with the Orangutan exhibit. Here's my idea for an improvement...
Considering leopards and snow leopards are solitary animals, they would have to have space available for both male and female if they were part of a SSP breeding program. 2 species of cats would be problematic because they would need 2 off exhibit spaces for both cats, because they would have to separate genders for management. I do not know if there is off-exhibit space in that building, but from a progressive point of view, it would be better to separate those genders into outdoor, larger holdings.
Asia Quest opened in 2006.ISIS states that Columbus currently holds 1.2 Amur Tigers and while ISIS is not always accurate in this case we believe it to be.Does anyone on here know how many cats the tiger exhibit was built to hold (Behind the scenes holding area) or has any one ever been behind the scenes of this exhibit.One would guess that a modern exhibit for a highly endangered species would have taken a breeding program into consideration. Team Tapir
Inbreeding is the reproduction from the mating of two genetically related parents. Inbreeding results in increased homozygosity, which can increase the chances of offspring being affected by recessive or deleterious traits. This generally leads to a decreased fitness of a population, which is called inbreeding depression.
