Tchentlo Lake Zoo (My Dream Zoo)

Hi, and welcome!
My spec zoo is a rather sizeable institute on the coast of British Columbia’s Tchentlo Lake. The region is mostly conifers, but every now and again some of our outdoor habitats have been planted with more… suitable, shall I say, plant life for the region it’s inhabitants can be found in.
The big ringer at the entrance is a series of eight ticket booths (and a zoo member-only passage) decorated with Native American animal motifs. Now passing through the ticket booths you enter what is called the Concentric Gardens. A round “plaza” of alternating path rings and raised plant beds, which display the many native plants of the area. In the middle of this area is a 100ft^2 enclosure centered by a large pond. This habitat is home to 1.1.0 Muskrat Ondatra zibithecus and 1.0.0 Green Heron Butorides virescens.
To either side of the Concentric Gardens is a large building, each different in building style and materials used. The one to the right, being more of wood, is the Animal Conservation and Education Centre, or ACEC, while the other is the zoo’s mini-museum, the Hall of Extinction, where you visit displays of some of the most famous extinct creatures to walk this planet…
More on the Hall of Extinction and ACEC in the next post, but for now let me know what kind of things you’d maybe like to see!

 

This zoo may be a little slow in terms of posting!
Also, the zoo is going to be divided by mostly geographic region, with various taxonomical sections also to be included!

 

And if anything at all is inaccurate for enclosures (size, enrichments, etc.) I’d appreciate it if anyone would let me know.

 

Animal Conservation and Education Centre

If you’re standing at the entrance of the zoo, the wooden building on your right is the Animal Conservation and Education Centre, or ACEC. This building is dedicated to conservation initiatives across this beautiful planet we call home, not just North American initiatives. Throughout this building are donations boxes and coin vortexes where you can make your donations (big or small) to conservation initiatives.

Of course, no zoo building is complete without the animals. Outside the building is one of North America’s most iconic bird species. In a large, 150m2 aviary lives 1.1.0 Whooping Crane, a bird that needs to be protected.

Upon entering the building, two very different displays welcome you. The first is a display of three terrariums, with one being significantly larger than the other two. The largest terrarium is home to 2.3.0 Western Painted Turtle, while the others are home to 1.1.0 Northern Alligator Lizard and 0.0.7 Amazonian Giant Glass Frog, respectively. The other display houses three skull replicas of extinct mammals from around the world, being the giant kangaroo, short-faced bear, and sabre-toothed cat.

From the end of the hallway, you can go two directions. To the left is a theater room displaying a short film on why conservation is important. To the right, however, are a pair of 40m2 indoor enclosures that house, respectively, 1.2.0 Narrow-striped Mongoose Mungotictis decemlineata and 1.1.0 Silky Anteater Cyclopes didactylus, both of which are in need of conservation.

 

One final note before I continue… most of the actual buildings (not enclosures) do not have measurements for their size. That will probably be a future thing for me to look into.

 

Hall of Extinction

From the entrance and to the left, a large, weathered stone building stands encompassed in forest. This building, though looking like a relic of a time before our own, is actually used as the zoo’s mini-museum, the Hall of Extinction. In three different rooms, guests will view dioramic displays of five extinct species from when they were plentiful in our world, before being shown the last individual of the species, and finally, the hole they’ve left in their ecosystems today now that they’ve been wiped off the face of the Earth for good.

The five extinct species you will see dioramas of are the Quagga, the Passenger Pigeon, the Thylacine, the Great Auk, and, the most popular with younger kids, the Dodo.

Now, to make the learning in this section just a little bit more fun, the first and last rooms in the building each house a living species that was thought to be extinct. The first lives in a 7m2 mountainous mini-exhibit. The small 1.1.0 Mountain Pygmy-Possum Burramys parvus, calls this enclosure home. In the final room, a large false tree stands in the centre of the room, with a small viewing window into the hive of our 0.0.47 Wallace’s Giant Bee Megachile pluto hive.

 

Would it be possible to get one of both species, and to raise successfully these animals ?
I'd rather choose EW (or formerly EW) species being reintroduced like the Tequila fish, the Bali Mynah or the Kihansi Spray Toad.
I haven't examples of species thought to be extinct that have been rediscovered and that are bred in zoos/captivity (except a few species like the Takahe, practically impossible to get out of New Zealand), but they may exist.

 

May be inaccurate a "hive" for 47 "unknown sex" bees in a species that only nests in active termite nests, that nest in aggregations of a maximum of 6 females, and whose males, half the size of the females, are never found inside the colonies?

 

@Kakapo @Haliaeetus thanks for the insights. Probably gonna have to rethink the species so far to be more realistic to what I plan to do.

 

So EW means extinct in the wild… yeah I could probably make some more accurate and realistic decisions about the animals held here. Chances of getting a mountain Pygmy possum are probably super low.

 

You do realise these critters only live for 2 years right... So having 1 pair means they will die within only a matter of a fingersnap. You'd need to have a large population of them that also continuously breeds to sustain the population... Also I don't get why they are in need of conservation when IUCN lists them as Least Concern, sure their habitat is possibly in decline but that'd be about it.

Have you also considered how your zoo is going to cope with the massive news that would be your zoo importing X.X amount of silky anteaters from the wild? Doesn't sound like good media if you ask me if we compare it to say the african pangolins import or the pygmy sloths attempt.

 

Okay with all this advice (thank you for it, I’m not upset that I’m getting advice as a newer member of this community) I’m just curious, if I wanted to keep the exhibit designs the way they were and showcase a similar animal in each, what would be good options to replace the animals that are… unrealistic.

 

I'm not sure to what degree they were once thought to be extinct. But the polynesian tree snails might make a interesting choice of species. There are multiple members of the genus kept in zoos; not sure how common in the States compared to Europe, so perhaps worth to read into them a bit more.

For the anteater, I feel like a tamandua wouldn't be that bad of a replacement. Nothing really indicated a particular theme here.

 

I mean other than somewhat threatened species (it is an Animal Conservation and Education-centred building) there’s no heavy theme like region or biome.

 

So would Samoana attenuata be a species to maybe look at?

 

I was moreso gunning at the members of Partula

 

Ah okay… kinda just generally searched Polynesian tree snails and Samoana attenuata is what was listed first.

 

Found Partula nodosa and taeniata

 

Which St Louis has. Oh and do you have any ideas about something that could (maybe) fit the theme and an enclosure originally intended for a pygmy possum?

 

More like none.

Sugar Glider - easy to get, small, and still a small marsupial.