The San Diego wild animal park has revealed plans for their new tiger trails exhibit featuring, Sumatran tigers, hornbills, green peafowl, milky storks and binturongs amongst the featured exhibits. Tiger Trails
It looks interesting but they could have included more species although i suppose they don't want to compete with the zoo and have sun bears, orangs, clouded leopards etc. BTW, is it just me or is practically every new tiger enclosure based around an abandoned temple.
Yeah, apparently the natural habitat of both tigers and jaguars is abandoned stone buildings. I also was wondering, the park has leaf monkeys, gibbons, and dholes, so why aren't they a part of this as well?
This thing - "architectural theming" - is a new concept at San Diego Wild Park, is it not? Not sure that I like it. As big as possible open enclosures has been the "theme" before, has it not?
It will be nice to get more of San Diego's large hornbill and stork collection on display. From the pictures it looks like Tiger Trail will be built in one of the park's large cat exhibits and not both? Does anyone have an exact location for the new exhibit? Architectural theming has been a part of the park since it opened. The park's entrance, restaurants, gift shops, and the Congo Fishing Village are all based of of African architecture. I believe San Diego wants to the zoo and park to complement each other. This seems to be the rule of thumb for all tiger exhibits built in the last 30 years.
There is also the issue of climate. The San Diego Wild Animal Park is further inland and considerable warmer than the zoo. The climate at the park would be difficult on orangutans and possibly sun bears because it is too hot.
There are Orangutans in hotter cities than Escondido. for example there are Orangs in Fort Worth where the summer temperatures average in the upper 90's to the 100's. In Escondido the average summer high is the upper 80's to low 90's. I don't really think its a climate issue.
In Phoenix, the orangs stay indoors if it's over 95. I've spoken with a keeper at the WAP who says that they would not bring orangs to the park because of the heat.
This may answer more questions: SignOnSanDiego.com > News > North County -- Wild Animal Park plans view den for Sumatran tigers Looks like an opening for 2011.
Yes, some animals will not be housed at the Wild Animal Park because of the heat. But another important factor is that the Park and San Diego Zoo do complement each other. While there are some animals that both parks have in common part of the draw of each park is to have species that are unique to each. Why house animals that the Zoo does so well? There is still talk of having the dholes near Tiger Trails, perhaps in the old lion exhibit but that is still being worked out as plans for Tiger Trails are finalized.
I did notice that there are no siteplans for tiger trail posted, unlike when they announced Elephant Odyssey. I assume much is still to be finalized in the plans.
Yes, like how the WAP shows 3 species of rhino very well where as the SDZ houses one specie in an okay exhibit.
Originally the wild animal park was built to serve as a breeding facility for the zoo's large mammal collection...the zoo was then to exhibit the surplus or small breeding groups of those animals. Today the park has evolved into a seperate entity of its own.
This is definitely true. I might just be overly nostalgic, but I can't like that this has changed. I loved how the Wild Animal Park was about seeing large groups of animals in large spaces, and the Zoo was where you went for up close encounters. Unfortunately I suppose they feel that to compete for people's time and money everything has to be "up-close and personal." The monorail was chosen because it was silent so as to not disturb the animals, and it was placed back away from the fences so to provide the animals with that much more privacy. I see this "bio-diesel" tram that is "closer to the animals" as a step back. Now, I suppose I'll get off my soapbox and back on track. The reason I was wondering why leaf monkeys and gibbons were left out is that those are two animals that are already in the park collection.
The latest Zoonooz has some interesting details of the Tiger Trails exhibit. Apparently the trail will begin over by the elephant exhibit and head north. I'm getting the impression that the exhibit will be between the current tiger exhibit and where the suspension bridge is. The trail will continue on past the tigers and go along the old monorail bridge over the old tiger/lion exhibits and lead to views of the Przewalski's horses and the Asian Plains. Also it talks a little about a path being put along the old monorail route between elephant exhibits, but it doesn't mention how the elephants are to get back and forth between the two yards. Honestly, I'm quite excited about this development, if nothing else to put the gaur and Indian rhinos back on display in a way that's included with park admission.
