Yep, Chester again. See, here’s the thing, I mistakenly posted the Chester-Wroclaw match out of sequence, and so I can’t do what I meant to do which is have all zoos with one match left at the same time. Chester is officially out of contention to win, though, which means it’s not being harmed by being the first zoo to close out its account. I’m waiting on the outcome of the Plzen-Zurich match to determine how we’ll proceed from here. In the meantime, let’s talk about ectotherms.
Damn you I don't know too much about the ectotherm collection at Bronx, but my suspicion is that it will be speciose enough to clinch a 2-1 vote against Chester in the end. However, for now, down to a mixture of puckishness and the fact that Chester has quite a few damn nice breedings under it's belt - including Tuatara - I shall vote 2-1 Chester.
Chester has certainly reaped the whirlwind in this finals series. I’m looking forward to seeing an argument in its favour.
It's infuriating on a few levels not only do I think it deserves to beat a number of other collections in the final overall, particularly Plzen and Wroclaw, and isn't going to, but because Chester has been having such poor luck of the draw I've not been able to argue for it as forcefully as I have for those two collections and therefore I've been giving people the wrong impression of my motives!
If they have an insect house it will be small. Based on data from the IZY species numbers are as follows: Bronx Reptiles 161 Amphibians 40 Fish 70 Invertebrates 36 Chester Reptiles 53 Amphibians 29 Fish 88 Invertebrates 113
No Insect house and tbh I don't remember anything about their invert collection. For now though I'm going 2-1 Bronx based on their superior numbers and generally good exhibits for their inhabitants (even though I was a little underwhelmed by their reptile house).
I cannot comment about the figures for the bronx but certainly for Chester the izy figures are out as reptiles is closer to 60 and amphibians is closer to 40, all though some species left last Friday but it was more volume of numbers that left and not species number.
Bronx's numbers are right from their 2016 annual report. https://c532f75abb9c1c021b8c-e46e47...7/06/23/92qyj61oww_2016_WCS_Annual_Report.pdf
Below are just some highlights of the Bronx Zoo’s reptile collection. I do not record amphibian, fish, or insect species so I’ll leave that for others. I have also included an assortment of photos of the exhibits, yet their appears to be few world of reptiles photos in the gallery. I am voting 2-1 Bronx ,because of the Bronx’s larger Reptile and amphibian collection, generally high standard of exhibit, and great breeding efforts (especially with Asian turtles). Their are a few exhibit I do not like at the zoo mainly nile crocodiles in Madagascar and false gharial in WOR, but these are exceptions to a very good standard of exhibitry. Crocodilians: Gharial, false gharial, american alligator, chinese alligator, cuban alligator, nile crocidile, african dwarf crocodile Turtles/Tortoises: Roti island snake-necked turtle, radiated tortoise, spider tortoise, Israeli spur-thiged tortoise, aldabra giant tortoise, black-breasted leaf turtle, mary river turtle, chinese-yellow headed box turtle, chinese big-headed turtle, Sulawesi forest turtle, mccord’s box turtle, fly river turtle, giant snake-necked turtle, pancake tortoise Lizards: Komodo dragon, spiny-tailed monitor, merten's water monitor, blue tree monitor, shield-tailed agama, grand cayman blue iguana, northern caiman lizard, electric blue gecko Snakes: aruba island rattlesnake, mangrove snake, king cobra, copperhead, timber rattlesnake, green anaconda, asiatic cobra, african puff adder, burmese python, southwestern speckled rattlesnake Komodo dragon indoor exhibit (their are 2 outdoor exhibits as well) The exhibit for gharial, several species of turtle, giant gourami, and other fish Roti-island snake-necked turtle and sailfin lizard Fish tank in Congo Gorilla Forest Radiated tortoise, spider tortoise, and lizard exhibit in Madagascar (now holds significantly smaller tortoises, larger ones move across the path to below exhibit) Radiated Tortoise and iguana sp. exhibit (mixed with lemur and birds) False Gharial exhibit (one of the few exhibits in the zoo I personally find to be inadequate)
If everything is OK, I will visit Bronx next week and will see it first hand, but until than will post some pics from my Chester visit. There are much bigger Chester experts here, but I can say that ecotherm collection is very interesting, housed in different parts of the zoo in generally good to great exhibits. There are at least 3 particularly dedicated to ecotherm species buildings plus species in Tropical realm, Giraffe house, SoJ and RoRA. The Butterfly house:¨ Panther Chameleon inside: Spirit of Jaguar Aquarium Realm of the Red Ape have few reptiles, like Boelen's Python and Reticulated python The aquarium building is not very big, but cover Chester's standards and has a well decorated tanks with interesting spices, like Mudskipper Dragons in danger building is world class, I think: Komodo dragon And Mountain chicken exhibits
Chester's work with rare spices, like Tuatara is well known : Tuatara exhibit, Tropical realm Critically endangered Golden Mantela Parson's chameleon
This one hurts, as we're comparing probably my two favorite zoos! To the best of my knowledge the Bronx figures are more or less accurate, though I think they have slightly more reptiles and slightly less fish at the moment. They do not have an insect house, but do display a variety of invertebrates across the zoo (mainly in JungleWorld but also in CGF and World of Birds). Highlights include Cameroon Red Baboon Spider, Asian weevil beetle, atlas beetle, stag beetle, Red-Eyed Assassin Bug, and goliath beetle. Someone at Bronx really likes odd beetles. In addition to the species mentioned above, Bronx's highlight reptile species include Siamese Crocodile, both species of spider tortoise, Volcan Darwin Giant Tortoise, Egyptian Tortoise, Bog Turtle, Painted Batagur, Golden Coin Turtle, Bourret's Box Turtle, Indochinese Box Turtle, Pan's Box Turtle, Yellow-Headed Temple Turtle, Beal's Four-Eyed Turtle, Indian Roof Turtle, Bornean Pond Turtle, Forsten's Tortoise, Home's Hingeback Tortoise, nominate Asian Brown Tortoise, Big-Headed Amazon River Turtle, Red-Headed Amazon River Turtle, Arrau River Turtle, Alligator Snapping Turtle, Giant Horned Lizard, Philippine Sailfin Lizard, Weber's Sailfin Lizard, Standing's Day Gecko, various leaf-tailed geckos, Mozambique Girdled Lizard, Four-Lined Girdled Lizard, Black Tree Monitor, Gray's Monitor, Solomon Island Spiny Monitor, Calabar Python, Timor Python, African Rock Python, Madagascar Giant Hognose Snake, Snouted Cobra, West African Bush Viper, Ethiopian Mountain Viper, and Santa Catalina Island Rattlesnake. Amphibian-wise the zoo has a solid collection of mantellas and poison dart frogs which they breed bts. Species include (but are not limited to) oddities such as Pleasing PDF, Blessed PDF, Golden PDF, Brazilian PDF, Brown Mantella, and Black-Eared Mantella. Other species include African Bullfrog, La Palma Glass Frog, Borneo Eared Frog, Splendid Treefrog, Sambava Tomato Frog, Panamanian Golden Frog, Evergreen Toad, Tropical Clawed Frog, Eastern Hellbender, and Anderson's Crocodile Newt. The zoo, of course, is renowned for their breeding work with the Kihansi Spray Toad as well. Fish-wise the zoo sort of just has an assortment of different species from all over spread across the zoo in CGF, JW, the Children's Zoo, World of Reptiles, and Madagascar!. Species of interest include Spotted Gar, Peter's Longnose Elephantfish, Filament Barb, Sumatra Barb, Red Madagascar Panchax, Congo Tetra, Blotched Upside-Down Catfish, Iridescent Shark-Catfish, Common Electric Catfish, Bleher's Rainbowfish, Atlantic Mudskipper, Spotted Climbing-Perch, Banded Bushfish, Red Paradisefish, Giant Gourami, Green Pufferfish, and Marbled Lungfish. The also keeps a wide variety of African cichlids which are displayed in various locations across Madagascar! and CGF mainly. I'd imagine many of these species are rather common aquarium fish but they do keep/breed some real endangered species such as Marakely, Kotsovato, Spotted Damba, Pinstripe Damba, Juba Cichlid, Saro Cichlid, and Ishmael's Lake Victoria Cichlid. When talking about Bronx and ectotherms it's natural to mention their extensive conservation work. Fish-wise, the WCS is involved in a lot of programs across the globe. Their main initiatives involve tackling overfishing in South Asia/South America, raising awareness of endangered shark populations across the globe and in the Long Island Sound, and establishing new marine protected areas in the Indian Ocean to conserve species such as mantas. An argument can be made, though, that a good chunk of this work can be attributed more to the aquarium than the zoo itself, though, so from here on out I'll stick to talking about herps. It's fairly well known that they zoo has a huge presence in South Asia working with crocodiles and freshwater turtles in particular. This work has translated into the larger zoo world with the zoo having imported and distributed much of the North American population of Indian Gharial and all of the population of Northern River Terrapin. The WCS has had a huge hand in reintroducing CR Puerto Rican Crested Toads back into the wild as well. More regionally, the zoo helps monitor CR Bog Turtle populations in Massachusetts and New York and reintroduces captive born Hellbenders into the Appalachians. The zoo also breeds both species bts. The zoo's largest accomplishment, however, is their saving the Kihansi Spray Toad from extinction. Back in 2001, following the construction of the Kihansi Dam in 1999 which doomed the toads in the wild, the zoo singlehandedly captured and transported 500 toads into the US. Together with Toledo, the zoo cracked the captive management requirements when less than 70 toads were left in existence and today maintains multiple colonies numbering in the thousands! Since 2010, the zoo has been actively working in Tanzania to attempt to recreate suitable habitat for the toad to be reintroduced back into, with several hundred animals already having been sent from the zoo to facilities in-situ. All in all, while I do think Chester beats Bronx in terms of invertebrates and fishes (Chester keeps/breeds a larger variety of endangered South Asian Cyprinidae afaik), Bronx clearly dominates when it comes to herps. While Chester certainly has some major accomplishments under their belt (namely the repeatedly tuatara breeding), in general the zoo seems to have an increasing lack of interest in herps and I've noticed they've been reducing the overall collection size quite substantially since my initial 2016 visit, whereas Bronx has been steadily increasing their collection as well as taking on more complicated and endangered species in the past few years. This, combined with their unmatched conservation programs, lead to a clear 2-1 victory as far as I'm concerned. ~Thylo
@ThylacineAlive and I forgot to mention the Butterfly Garden. Don't know how I forgot it, but this exhibit holds a collection of butterflies during warm months and also has several additional tanks for other types of insects. It is a greenhouse, yet also includes an outdoor butterfly garden.
How did we forget the Butterfly Garden!! I actually made an effort to record the species I could find in this exhibit back in Spring 2019 and noted the following: Atala Butterfly, Gulf Fritillary, White Peacock, Monarch Butterfly, Julia Butterfly, Zebra Longwing, Common Buckeye, Malachite Butterfly, Pipevine Swallowtail, American Giant Swallowtail, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, and Checkered White Butterfly. A fairly extensive collection of New World species imo. I've always been a big fan of the window into the caterpillar cocoon room, too! I know the zoo does not usually report its butterfly species on ZIMS but I don't know if this is the case with IZY as well. In it is, the zoos total species count will increase a bit. ~Thylo
The reptile and amphibian collections at Chester may be smaller, but they are pretty damn choice and the standards of exhibitry are excellent. For instance: Tuatara This exhibit is large and well-vegetated, and provides plenty of space for the 1,5 individuals within. The enclosure contains several artificial burrows, and the substrate extends for a few feet I believe. The collection was the first collection outside of the native range to successfully breed the species some years ago, a feat which the collection has repeated a few times since. Komodo Dragon The exhibits for this species are located within the Dragons In Danger house, and comprise a large indoor exhibit, a pretty good outdoor exhibit - which the dragons do regularly use in the summer months - and at least one offshow enclosure. Ploughshare Tortoise and Cuvier's Madagascar Swift Golden Mantella This vivarium is rather larger than it perhaps looks in this photograph, being perhaps 5 feet long and three feet high. Parsons Chameleon and Southeastern Girdled Lizard This isn't a great photo of what is a reasonably large and well-vegetated exhibit, so I may look through my own shots to see what I can add.
Radiated Tortoise Something of a new development - the species was until recently held in an open-topped exhibit within Tropical Realm, but a dedicated covered house with integrated heating has been constructed for them in another area of the main hall - partially to better suit their husbandry needs, and partially to allow tortoise species rendered temporarily homeless by the Monsoon Forest fire to occupy the old exhibit. Mountain Chicken and Haitian Galliwasp This image shows approximately half the exhibit, as best as I can tell: Caiman Lizard in Tropical Realm Examples of exhibits for South American amphibians and anoles in Tropical Realm Western Gaboon Viper Spectacled Caiman Sand Lizard and Northern Adder Note that this exhibit has recently been divided to allow the latter species to go on-show; no photographs of the refurbished exhibit are in the gallery so the following comprise an image of the exhibit prior to work starting, and during. I think the plan is for the final Adder exhibit to resemble the original condition of that half of the exhibit.
Sunda Gharial This exhibit is something of a special case; although it *is* currently off-display due to being located in the Monsoon Forest house, which is currently closed due to the fire which damaged and destroyed a decent chunk of the building (and, incidentally, is responsible for at least some of the reduction in amphibian and reptile numbers at the zoo since 2016 which Thylo mentioned) the exhibit is still entirely intact and occupied, with the inhabitants remaining in the exhibit for the duration of the repair/refurbishment work. As such I think it is fair to present images of this exhibit as a current (rather than upcoming) exhibit. Asian Brown Tortoise One of several species which have been relocated due to the Monsoon Forest fire - this photograph shows the front third of the exhibit and was taken when the enclosure held Galapagos Tortoise. Emerald Tree Boa Jaguar House Aquarium This massive and very pleasant tank contains around 30 species of South American fish. --- On-show species which I cannot find decent enclosure shots for include the following notable species: Mangrove Snake Crocodile Monitor Green Tree Monitor Red-tailed Racer Boelen's Python Reticulated Python Moellendorff's Ratsnake Lake Pátzcuaro Salamander Chinese Three-striped Box Turtle Indochinese Box Turtle South-east Asian Box Turtle Spiny Hill Turtle Other notable points: Chester is the EAZA studbook holder for the following category species: Mountain Chicken, Black-eyed Leaf Frog, Lake Patzcuaro Salamander, Komodo Dragon. Other EAZA studbook programmes which Chester is involved in are as follows: Partula Snail, Montseny Brook Newt, Radiated Tortoise, Ploughshare Tortoise, Spiny Hill Turtle, Giant Asian Pond Turtle, Malayan Box Turtle, Malaysian Giant Turtle, Sunda Gharial, Green Tree Monitor. The collection is also working alongside Manchester Museum in their ongoing in-situ and ex-situ programmes for endangered Central American and South American amphibians, and is also working both in-situ and ex-situ with a number of species native to the Caribbean and immediate environs such as Bermuda Skink. Closer to home, Chester is heavily involved in the captive breeding and reintroduction programme for the Sand Lizard, which is a threatened species in northwest England, and is one of only two collections in the world to keep and breed the Montseny Brook Newt, one of the most critically endangered amphibians in the world and native to a tiny fragment of upland stream in Catalonia. Along with Bristol, ZSL and Edinburgh Zoo, Chester is one of the keystone members of the breeding programme for Partula Snails, breeding a number of species offshow and also - I believe - being heavily involved in the genetics work required for continued management of the programme throughout the participating collections. One aspect of Chester's endotherm collection which probably merits further discussion is the fact that - as noted - a fair amount of the exhibits which were recently present at the collection were destroyed in the Monsoon Forest fire, and others are presumably still present but currently unoccupied whilst the refurbishment/rebuilding work takes place. It has been noted elsewhere that although discussion of old exhibits at a collection is not valid in terms of direct exhibit-for-exhibit comparison, such discussions could be deemed valid (on a case by case basis) in more broad terms of discussing historical significance, the way a collection has developed and the direction it is heading. As such, given that these exhibits were the most recent ones built at the collection (and thus are notable in terms of the style of theming Chester is using) and I suspect that insurance reasons would require Chester to restore Monsoon Forest to the original state, what follows are a handful of shots of these historical exhibits. I won't note what they were used for, to avoid any possibility of them being taken as direct representations of the current status quo for a given species, but I *will* note whether they are known to have been destroyed or not. These were certainly destroyed, as they are located at the epicentre of the fire. These I believe are intact but unoccupied:
Hmm, this is a very tough one. On one hand you have Chester, they seem to have mostly excellent exhibits, albeit a bit smaller collection to go along with some fantastic conservation work. On the other hand you have Bronx, which has mostly very good exhibits (although a few bad ones), a huge collection and some fantastic conservation work. In this case I'm going to give a very close 2-1 win to Bronx as while I think Chester has a little bit better exhibitry it doesn't quite make up for the species gap.
