San Diego Zoo San Diego: The Perfect Zoo?

They spent how much on what?

 

Crazy money in San Diego!

rex the lion at san diego zoo - Penelusuran Google

 

Good lord, it’s hideous.

This statue might be the perfect exemplar of everything that’s wrong about American philanthropy. It’s the world’s most powerful developed economy, and yet tens of millions of people live hand-to-mouth or worse. Part of that, I fear, is a giving culture that is generous, but to all the wrong causes. The ‘generous’ philanthropists who inflicted that gilded monstrosity on the good people of San Diego could have provided HPV vaccines for 3400 at-risk teenagers, for instance, or put perhaps 20,000 text books into San Diego’s school libraries. Instead the Zoo has that thing.

I was first struck by this when visiting The Met in New York, which in return for receiving public funds from the City of New York is forbidden from charging a minimum entrance fee. They ‘suggest’ $25. I paid $5. Do I feel guilty? Only, on reflection, for paying that much at all, because wealthy New Yorkers have boosted their name recognition and reduced their tax liabilities to the tune of a $1.7bn endowment - or as it’s now expressed, 1000 awful lion statues.

 

While I may not rank the San Diego Zoo as number 1, I acknowledge that it is in a tier only with the WCS in regards to conservation. San Diego Global spent 23 million in 2017 on research and conservation. The Wildlife Conservation Society spent 112 million on their global programs in 2017 last year. I'm not gonna harp on this difference in funding right now, as they both have similar overall spending per year, but these zoos have put their money where their mouth is unlike many other large zoos in the United States. These 2 zoos also are the leaders within AZA in regards to conservation, guiding where many of the smaller zoos allocate resources and donate money, with an example being 96 elephants.

No other American zoos come anywhere close to this number. Omaha spent $1.7 million in 2016, mostly in Madagascar. Columbus spent less than a million a year according to their 2013 report. The St. Louis Zoo spent 3 million dollars in 2016. But its not just spending for these two zoos that makes them key to global wildlife conservation. These two societies influence collection planning with their key species, such as the iguana focus of San Diego Global or the freshwater turtle focus of the WCS. The conservation focus of these two zoos and the leadership they have are one reason I personally put them in a tier alone as the best zoos in the country.

 

Living somewhere between LA and San Diego, I recognize the potential for others to assume I’m being biased by agreeing that San Diego Zoo is Americas best zoo, so I am posting my approval in the thread that clearly states that from the start.

Is it quantifiable, yes. I am of the opinion that the conflict arises somewhere between how much we individualy value our preferences as oppossed to how much we value statistics. I am lucky because I get the win on both fronts. I think.

Would I be wrong that San Diego, when quantified by statistics in money spent, money earned, conservation(species saved, species endangered, participating in) species (by type and weighted for rarity), individuals(overall volume), attendance, weather, size of retail and exhibits and food service (variance in selection, number if, etc.) that San Diego would win? I am actualing asking because I dont track anything zoo related and dont know where to look for reliable info. My hunch, based on my travels, is some institutions come close in a category, or are a bit better in one, but for the sum total of its parts, San Diego wins this hands down without even getting into quality? I am truly asking and have no issue being wrong, just looking to quantify somethings.

 

I of course think snowleopard makes a good point regarding the respective giraffe exhibits at these two zoos. Obviously the Bronx has the much better outdoor exhibit (I don't think the one in SD is some sort of atrocity though like some make it out to be). However, when considering how much time the giraffes spend in a poor old giraffe house in the Bronx (and like jay said, it might not be a crazy amount of time), that disparity in exhibitry and animal welfare shrinks. And that's just one example. This can be done with several other species as well.

 

That's and strong and comprehensive case for San Diego and one I very much agree with.

San Diego just has more to see than any other zoo and by a decent margin as best I can tell. As I said in the other thread, no other zoo takes up more than 75% or so of the time for me to tour with just seeing everything once.

And while I do think several other zoos best exhibit is better than San Diego's, if you stack up the top 10 or 15 exhibits, I'm not sure that any other zoo wins out on that. A case can certainly be made for a few in that regards, but then they generally lose out on other categories like collection, climate, botanical gardens, amenities, history, conservation, entrance, etc.

 

Since the nominal topic of this thread is the perfect zoo- I'd like to interject a hitherto unmentioned topic -and that is visitor amenities. Snow Leopard did mention eating and rides but I'm talking about something a little more basic.
I feel that not only zoos but virtually all outdoor attractions do a very poor job in regards to shade, sitting benches, COLD water fountains and bathrooms.

All of them have these things -but not enough. Too often the only benches in sight are in full sun right next to a nice shady spot! Or you go to a fountain and out comes hot water. Or you have the urge to go to the bathroom and the map says you have to bypass a number of exhibits faster than you'd like.

 

I know the "how iconic is San Diego?" thing has been done to death, but I found something interesting yesterday and thought it might be worth noting.

Anyways, yesterday I was at a bookshop when I saw a travel book for California (I think it was a Fodor's, which are quite good, much better than Lonely Planet). I had his thread on my mind, and so I looked into the guidebook to see how well San Diego was represented. On one of the first pages of the book, there was a list of the top 10 things to do in Southern California, the zoo was on there. Intrigued, I looked at the San Diego portion of the book, the zoo had a 6-page spread, no other San Diego attraction had more than 1. I think this shows just how popular the San Diego Zoo is.

 

How does everyone define “perfect”? Is it based on the exhibits, the animals, the climate, or something else? I don’t think San Diego is perfect just because people know more about the zoo than others.

 

Moving forward, a new local architecture firm is working on the new Children Zoo and Komodo exhibit and Deneen Powell Atelier is the landscape architect.

 

Just checked out Deneen Powell Atelier's website and its so interesting to see that they created Tiger Trail (one of my favorite exhibits ever from a landscaping perspective), Monkey Trails and Elephant Odyssey (an exhibit that while fine for elephants, definitely lacks natural features and plants). I hope the Children's zoo ends up like the former two exhibits. I hope this design stays away from the having so much exposed-obvious metal, which I realized was a defining characteristic of many of the zoos newer exhibits.

Edit: The childrens zoo has some nice trees, so I hope all attempts are made to save them.

 

I believe that Deneen Powell Atelier had a much larger role in the development of Tiger Trail than they did with the design of Elephant Odyssey. On DPA's webpage about Elephant Odyssey they wrote, "DPA assisted the Zoo with the master planning of the exhibit, exhibit design and designed all the interpretive elements".

 

The initial question was : is SDZ the perfect zoo?
First of all everyone should define for itself what would be a perfect zoo.

Now the debate seems to be whose better ? Bronx or SDZ? Whose number 1 in the US?

Tbh it looks just like when you ask New York ppl about LA ppl and vice versa.

 

San Diego Zoo is a very enjoyable zoo to visit, but for a zoo with such a strong reputation I didn't feel awed or moved as much as I would have liked. They have such an incredible quantity of exhibits and animals, but the occurrence of exceptional experiences felt low. The San Diego Zoo Safari Park has much fewer exhibits and animals, but left me with more powerful impressions of animals and landscapes. I would like to see the San Diego Zoo create more exceptional experiences, not just an impressive quantity of good experiences.

 

I respectfully disagree with your comment. For me the exceptional experiences were, Kopje, Gharial River, Geladas in Africa Rocks, both Scripps and Owens Aviaries, those mixed species Monkey/Red River Hog enclosures near the Hippos, California Condors, Diving Duck aviary and those exceptional hidden aviaries behind Polar Frontier. This is well above any other zoo I've visited, before or since.

 

Birds​

In the hope that we can all move on now and get back to what this thread’s topic actually is, here are the birds!

As I stated earlier, at around 330 species San Diego is home to the largest collection of birds in the country according to the IZY and they have a fantastic series of exhibits for them as well. There are very large individual aviaries and rows of large bird cages scattered throughout the zoo grounds, showcasing an incredible variety of mostly rarely exhibited species. While I do love solid geographically organized exhibits, taxonomically organized exhibits offer more opportunities to exhibit similar species and often times more rare species than a geographical exhibit would have space for. The Aviary Trail is a perfect example of this and, as a zoo nerd, it’s very hard not to smile at enclosure after enclosure of rarities such as Superb Bird-of-Paradise, Leclancher’s Fruit-Dove, Purple-Tailed Imperial-Pigeon, Horned Parakeet, and Mount Goliath Lorikeet, all of which were lifers for me. I even found myself feeling disappointed when I reached the end of the path. I think my only complaint, and this really is a nitpick, is that some of these aviaries are a little overgrown which made the enclosures a little dark and hard to see into. Perhaps I just visited that area at the wrong time of day, though. Another semi-nitpicky complaint would be that some of the enclosures are very easy to miss, such as the aviary by the bus tour loading and those behind Northern Frontier. There are some real treasures in them such as Kagu, Pompadour Cotinga, Tongan Scrubfowl, Blyth’s Tragopan, Fire-Tufted Barbet, and Northern White-Crowned Shrike and had I not known about them prior to visiting, I would have almost certainly completely bypassed them. The well-known hummingbird aviary is even surprisingly easy to miss, though at least that one is present on the map. I can’t really talk about the birds-of-prey aviaries very well simply because they were quite unfortunately under construction during my visit, but if they’re all of the same quality as the African Crowned Eagle, Bataleur Eagle, and California Condor enclosures, then this zoo is definitely in the running for best zoo for raptors. The Secretarybird enclosure is a bit skinny- a common theme at the zoo- but is otherwise fine. I think the only bird enclosures I didn’t like were the ones in the Outback. They’re perfectly fine size-wise, but personally I found them to be extremely dark and they’re shaped really bizarrely, which makes viewing into them more difficult than it should be. This wasn’t as big of an issue for the larger species they hold such as the Southern Squatter Pigeon and Wompoo Fruit-Dove, but the majority of the birds are smaller finches and I found it quite difficult to actually differentiate between them all. Now for the pièce de résistance: the zoo’s giant walk-through aviaries. I’ll start with the one I found a little underwhelming first: Parker Aviary. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this walk-through, it’s very large, lush, and features fun species such as Golden Lion Tamarin, Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, and Blue-Headed Macaw but I think it just pales in comparison to the other walk-throughs at the zoo and is the one I spent the least amount of time in. I think part of that may be that it’s not all one enclosure like the other aviaries are; some birds are mixed in with the visitors while others are enclosed behind a mesh wall, splitting the entire aviary in two. The Africa Rocks aviary was fine, though I think I’d like it a lot more in a year. It’s certainly large enough and has great species like Stone Partridge, Collared Pratincole, African Jacana, and Yellow-Mantled Widowbird but not all the species are added yet and the foliage hasn’t had time to set in, so it all looked rather empty. There are plans to add the White-Fronted Bee-Eater and White-Throated Bee-Eater already found elsewhere in the zoo if this has not been done already, which will bring some life to the back “rock” wall. This aviary brings up my major problem with all the remaining walk-throughs, though the issue is a lot less present here: I hate how you have to exit the aviaries and then walk further along the path to another entrance just to get to the different viewpoints. Don’t get me wrong, I love how the aviaries have paths at different elevations to give different viewpoints, but for both Scripps and especially Owens you’re required to do what can sometimes add up to several minutes of walking up/down stairs and along paths leading to different exhibits just to get to each new section of the aviary. Going back and forth like this can be very tiresome imo, especially if you’re trying to spot multiple different species and have to keep moving between levels like I did in Owens. That said the aviary is still pretty fantastic. As I discussed earlier, the size of this aviary (or any of SDZ’s aviaries for that matter) isn’t as remarkable or unique as many people make them out to be, but the fact that this one, along with Scripps, is situated on a hill means that it just gets taller and taller the further down you go. These last two aviaries are also ridiculously lush in vegetation which is great for the birds but can also be frustrating as it means a lot of the rarer species are incredibly hard to spot. I probably spent nearly one fifth of my overall time at the zoo in Owens just searching for four main species: Metallic Pigeon, Papuan Mountain-Pigeon, Phillipine Collared Dove, and White-Eared Catbird. Of these, only the first was easy to spot and I only saw the final two about 20 minutes before the zoo closed on my second day there. The mountain-pigeon, as it turns out, has been removed and placed unsigned along the Aviary Trail. In total I believe there are around 40 species in this aviary, same with Scripps. Scripps was by far my favorite of the four main walk-through aviaries. It suffers from the same criticism as the others for having very split apart viewpoint, but I found the abundance of life in here to be a lot easier to spot and a lot more diverse in the kinds of birds being exhibited. This aviary also has a canopy viewpoint, something the others do not and something Owens would be greatly improved by I think. By far the highlight species in here for me were the African Darter, White-Headed Lapwing, African Olive Pigeon, and African Golden Oriole. Other highlight species around the zoo include Milky Stork, Blue-Winged Pitta, Guianan Toucanet, Yellow-Rumped Tinkerbird, Greater Yellownape Woodpecker, Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock, Blue-Winged Leafbird, Spotted Tanager, and Oriole Warbler.

~Thylo

 

The OP may have been clear, but it also featured some strawman arguments.

For instance, people haven't been seriously claiming that San Diego is a perfect zoo on this forum.

 

Regarding conservation, I agree that it's an incredibly important role of zoos; however, I don't consider it that strongly in my rankings of zoos. I base my rankings primarily off the experience of visitors and animals within the zoo. Now part of that visitor experience is how much they're exposed to a conservation message and how effective that message is. I do think that is part of what makes Congo Gorilla Forest excellent.

I also think the San Diego Zoo does a great job in that regard.

 

Large Mammals- One of San Diego Zoo's Strength and A Pressing Weakness

The San Diego Zoo has a very complete collection of charismatic megafauna. This makes the zoo popular with the public and gives the Zoo high ratings in rankings that consider collections. However, that same strength is also the San Diego Zoo’s biggest weakness. They do a fairly good job exhibiting charismatic animals with low or moderate space requirements but struggle to provide consistently good exhibits for mammals that are typically housed in 5,000 square foot plus exhibits at zoos. There are some good exhibits for these animals at the Zoo, but many poor ones as well. Overall, the viewing tends to be quite good, but many of the exhibits are unattractive, small, or barren.

I don’t think the San Diego Zoo will ever be able to adequately improve all the exhibits for their large megafauna and keep such a comprehensive collection. I predict that they will start decreasing their collection and concentrate more on smaller animals and developing better exhibits for the smaller variety of large animals that they keep.

Carnivores

Lions- It’s startling to compare the small unattractive lion exhibit in Elephant Odyssey at the San Diego Zoo to the exceptional lion exhibit at the Safari Park. Lion Camp is just so much better. Elephant Odyssey is a new exhibit complex. The lion exhibit in Elephant Odyssey is already outdated and will not hold up well in 20-30 years.

Tigers- The tiger exhibit at Tiger River is a great exhibit. It’s very structurally complex and has a variety of viewing areas. It’s easily one of the best large mammal exhibits at the San Diego Zoo.

Large social canids- Urban Jungle has an exhibit for a gray wolf animal ambassador and his dog companion. They get a lot of exercise and stimulation as animal ambassadors, so their exhibit in Urban Jungle is fine for their needs. As a display of large social canids is not very compelling though.

Polar bear- I’ve heard some praise for this exhibit, but don’t agree with those assessments. American zoos with polar bears have prioritized providing natural substrate and varied terrain. Polar Bear Plunge does have some softer natural substrates areas, but they’re quite limited. The terrain isn’t very varied either. The polar bear I saw at the San Diego Zoo was pacing with repetitive head swaying motions. Stereotypical behavior is not a perfect indicator of welfare, and may reflect poor conditions in the past, but it was distressing to see the polar bear behave like that.

Grizzly bear- There are a few small grottoes for bears along Center Street. I believe that the couple of rescued grizzly bears could move between two grottoes. Regardless, the space is still limited and there are a lot of better grizzly bear exhibits in American zoos.

Andean bear- Another small grotto exhibit along Center Street.

Sun bear- In addition to the grotto exhibit along Center Street there is a much larger and better exhibit in Sun Bear Forest with lots of climbing logs. The bears tore apart the exhibit on their first day there and the Zoo has never successfully replanted it. It would be great to see the bears in a greener exhibit.

Giant pandas- I thought that this was the most appealing exhibit for bears at the Zoo. Trees provide lots of shade and there was a lot of climbing structures. The viewing is great and has two tiers to accommodate crowds of visitors. The giant panda exhibits are less than 5,000 square feet each, so I debated whether to include them here. Overall, the giant panda exhibits are good, but not as good as the outdoor panda exhibits at the Calgary Zoo or Smithsonian National Zoo.

Apes

Gorillas- This is one of the better exhibits for large mammals at the San Diego Zoo. It’s not as natural and inspirational as the best American gorilla exhibits though.

Bonobo- Not bad, but It has far too much artificial rockwork and not enough plantings.

Orangutan- There are many worse American orangutan exhibits, but Absolutely Apes fails to satisfactorily showcase the arboreal nature of orangutans.

Other Large Mammals

African elephants and Asian elephants- Elephants have the biggest of all the exhibits at the San Diego Zoo. There is built in enrichment with the utili-trees and a deep pool for swimming. The elephant barn is built well to care for the elephants. However, the elephant exhibit is unattractive. When I remember this exhibit, I see clashing images of steel, and dust and simulated mudbanks.

Giraffe- the giraffes have a barren exhibit in Urban Jungle. Thankfully, they can be outside almost year-round which is great. If it wasn’t for that, this exhibit would be far inferior to most of the giraffe exhibits in American zoos.

Okapi- A good exhibit with lots of shade for these forest dwellers. It would be better if it was larger, and the fencing was less visible.

River hippopotamus- Great underwater viewing, but this exhibit has the same shortcomings of many American hippo exhibits; it isn’t big enough for larger groups of hippos (a very social species) and there isn’t any grass for grazing.

Rhinoceros- There’s a barren exhibit for Indian rhinoceros in Urban Jungle. Urban Jungle is the poorest complex at the San Diego Zoo in part because of the shared road that travels around the exhibits.

Other Ungulates- many of the ungulate exhibits at the San Diego Zoo are on the small side (easily under 10,000 square feet) and have very limited to no grazing opportunities. The exhibits for takin and reindeer were crowded and dusty.