the Date for the opening of the South East Asian Rainforest Stage 2 Exhibit has been set, the official opening will be on the 7th of April and opened to the public that afternoon. Sear stage 2 is a great achievment for adelaide greatly improving the facilities for the Orang and Sumatran Tiger, These exhibits feature underwater tiger swimming viewing (if Kemiri ever swims) and the orang o-line tahts will allow orangs and tigers in the same exhibit, here is a coup0le of pics from teh building, as soon as i go to the zoo i will take photos of the new stuff the Tiger exhibit without underwater the orang oline
thanx for the pics ben. looks like it'l be great when finished. i'm very excited about the new melb orang exhibit - i called the zoo and unfortunately (but typically) the zoo didn't finish it or the australian refurbishment intime for the games and therfore welcomed international visitors to a worksite with hardly any natives on display!! i have heard a few people say that perths "simutator" exhibit looks revolting. certainly from the photos i've seen its all steel and decking and corrugated iron. i know orangs destroy trees, but that is a complete lack of creativity in my opinion. hows the adelaide exhibit for natural-looks? i'm hoping melb goes for a dead-tree rather than steel pole design. i have no info on whether an o-line will be incorporated, but i would consider it likely as the zoo emailed me some time ago and said they were considering it as part of the finished design. so far it looks like its dry moats and concrete retaining walls to keep the orangs in and raised visitor boardwalks. but what is with that spider sculpture in the meerkat/giraffe exhibit?
as far as i know the orang exhibit the trees will be protected by electricity, and they with make everything you can imaging but in 2 weeks you will all know, the spider sculpture in the giraffe yard is because of teh FRINGE festival they had art on display, and since we have no giraffes at the moment, art was put in there
hey patrick when taronga opened its orang exhibit in 1994 it featured dead trees too but now, as you would have noticed, has telegraph poles because the animals were strong enough to break them. i dont know if you would like this approach aesthetically but it does allow the animals to climb alot higher and they are more durable. personally i think if the exhibit has live vegetation to break up the stark look of the poles then i think they could get away with both a functional enclosure and a good looking one too. melbourne's design concept could actually let them get away with it if they based the design of the climbing structures on those of indonesia's rehab centre. alos im off to perth in a few months so ill be sure to visit the zoo and let you guys know about the orang enclosure. as far as i know its unfinsihed but the unnatural look of it does seem to hark back to the strictly biological approach of the 70's. it hasnt really met with criical acclaim has it???
orang enclosures... melbourne zoo's orangutans currently live is a really nasty enclosure. until a couple of years ago, it didn't even have any climbing frames in it at all!! now at least it has wooden telegraph poles. which at least look much better than steel. taronga's orangutan exhibit i have mentioned many times i'm not impressed with. my dislike of it though is not actually the use of telegraph poles. its much, much better than the current melbourne exhibit. there are some aspects i do like about the exhibit, such as the natural vegetation protected by the stream. why i don't like it is because, for a "new" exhibit, i don't think its up to the standard we should expect for orangutans. its way, way too small. for some reason zoos think orangs need less land area than gorillas (i guess because they use vertical space by climbing) but i think they have underestimated it somewhat. i don't like the concrete base, even though some of it is hidden by plants. that there is not effort to conceal the concrete walls around the exhibit (i think ape exhibits always work best with just deep water moats and vegetation on the other side) is also a big downside. the other big reason i don't like it is because the visitor is not up at eye level with the orangs. it's not really a waste however because the exhibit will work really great if its refurbished a little for another smaller primate species like guenons or mandrills. the chimps at taronga had dead trees (as opposed to poles) instaled in their exhibit. i remember thinking they would eventually destroy them but it looked way better. melbournes exhibit will probably use wooden poles as the newspaper articles said that the exhiibit will be based on a rehab center like you suggested. i just hope they at least use the smooth rounded ones rather than the octagonal cut ones they currently use. and i hope it'll be spacious. i'll be visiting as soon as its finished so i too will report back on my feelings about it. the zoo says they have come up with plenty of ingenious "puzzles" to keep the orangs busy...
tarongas, makes use of existing walls, from when the hipoos were there, i mean the nile hippos, big ones, and the orang exhibit was originnally designed to also house, mixed species, macquaes.
in a recent reply from zoos victoria, both new exhibits orangs @ melbourne hippos @ weribe, will open in the sencond half of this year, september i beleive for the orangs, mayb in co-operation with the new elephants
the zoo told me the orangs will be finshed in april. the bulk of the structures where up when i saw it some months ago..
I went to see SEAR today accompanied by the curator of teh zoo kevin evans, and its awesome pics will come soon, just a few clues there will be siamngs with the orangs, and otters with the tigers
enjoyed the pics ben. the orang exhibit looks massive - nice to see. don't like the climbing frames too much but i'm sre the orangs love em and the exhibit is really well planted - even if the orangs look like they are already hapily destroying it!!!! same with the tiger exhibit -looks nice and big. they have used the same technique as melbourne with the galss wall placed in a water moat below a bridge for visitors.
It's interesting to see some of the original diagrams for the orangutan and sumatran tiger exhibits at the Adelaide Zoo. There is no drawing of the infamous o-line in the plans, and now that large tower is not even in use. The orang enclosure somehow seems as if it's laid out differently from what it was when I visited the zoo in 2007, but the tiger exhibit appears to be accurate. I do realize that quite often what is originally intended can fall by the wayside...
In the plans it says that there will be a dhole, binturong and komodo dragon exhibits. Does anyone know if they are still going to do that and if they are when are they? Also in the old website (before it was revamped) it said that in late 2007 they were getting Komodo dragons.
