Zoo Highlights of 2013!

The Koalafornia exhibit beats the Healesville exhibit by far in terms of user experience. That's just the exhibit itself. In the back they have the koala reserve not accessible to the public. The San Diego staff claims to have a total of 2500 koalas in it.

The LA zoo is small. Even a 6-old kid (my niece) could visit 90% of the exhibits in one afternoon.

Have you visited both places?

 

Mauro, why do you keep making the claim about the LA Zoo being small? It is as big as the San Diego Zoo as several people have told you.

The San Diego Zoo staff does not claim to have 2500 koalas. They have the largest number of koalas outside of Australia, but only a few dozen.

Please stop spreading false information.

 

Have you been to the LA zoo?

Have you talked to San Diego zoo keepers?

San Diego Zoo Opens Koalafornia | Balboa Park

As for the koala count in san Diego it's not 2500 but 250. Just a typo.

I guess they have a three acre facility just for a few dozen as you claim.

 

I saw the Lone Pine koala sanctuary, the Taronga Zoo koala exhibit, and the Alma Park zoo koala exhibit. They were all fine koala exhibits. The San Diego Zoo has several large yards for their koalas surrounding a large koala holding facility with a kitchen, food storage, classroom. The holding area is built to look like a Queensland ranch house. It is a very nice exhibit, certainly the largest outside of Australia, but nothing beats seeing them in their native environment.

The best koala exhibit that I was privileged to see was a group of Eucalyptus trees in a school yard in Australia that had wild koalas in it.

 

Yes. You obviously have not.

The three acres is for the entire Outback complex. The koala exhibit itself is much smaller than that.

 

Please stop trolling. It was a San Diego staffer that told me the San Diego had 250 koalas. 20 of them being on exhibit.

Should I believe you or my lying ears?

 

Have you walked the never ending hills at the San Diego zoo or are you just relying on Wikipedia?

 

I'm not trolling, I'm correcting your falsehoods.

There are many people here who regularly visit the San Diego and Los Angeles Zoos. Check out the photos in the gallery if you want evidence of how big the LA Zoo's collection and geographic size are.

It is possible that the San Diego Zoo has 250 koalas, but not 2500 as you stated. Several of their koalas are at other zoos around the world on loan agreements.

 

Acreage is acreage, not matter if it's flat or not. The hills just provide the illusion that it's larger, even though it really isn't. And I've never known TLD to take Wikipedia as stone.

~Thylo

 

This thread started off as a good read,now its like watching a spolit brat having a temper tantrum because they cannot except that they might be wrong,can we please get back to how the thread started!!!

 

A quick look at ZIMS shows that between the US and Europe there are just over 100 living koalas, which im sure mostly are on loan from San diego. San Diego Zoo only has 22 animals on site (if records are accurate)

 

The highlights of my 2013 zoo year were visiting the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City and the Kansas City Zoo. Both of these zoos have world-class exhibits with a wonderful Asian cat complex at Hogle Zoo and a fantastic chimpanzee exhibit with in a massively impressive Africa exhibit at Kansas City.

The highest highlight was getting a guided tour of the site of the Old Los Angeles Zoo by Michael Dee, the former LA Zoo curator. That was a great treat. Anybody who wants to see a concrete example of how far zoos have come should check out the remnants of the old bear grottos, cat cages, and elephant yard at the old LA Zoo.