The category: primates. That means just what it says on the tin. We have two newcomers in today’s tie, along with last Cup’s second round finisher Dresden. I suspect the two German zoos will have seen more ZooChat visitors than the Polish capital, though maybe @LaughingDove can provide a local report. I haven’t been to any of the three, so I shall await your arguments. The rules, in case you’ve forgotten: - You may choose whatever criteria you like to decide how to vote, as long as it only relates to the category in question. - You can use whatever resources you like to inform your vote, including Zoolex, Zootierliste, the ZooChat gallery, trip reviews, zoo maps, books and wherever else. You don't have to have visited all the zoos to vote. - Votes are public and can be changed at any time before the poll closes. - The aim of the game is to provoke debate. Post explaining why you voted the way you did, and why others should join you. - Voting closes in two days, and an absolute majority is required to advance. - The one thing you can't do is vote based on anything other than the given category.
Based on number of species alone, I'm voting for Warsaw, unless anyone can sway me to vote for the other options.
This might be useful information for anyone wishing to vote in the competition: In the Summer 2015 edition of Zoo Grapevine, John Tuson (who has visited almost 400 different zoos in his lifetime) has a 5-page, fairly comprehensive review of Warsaw Zoo. He is quite complementary in regards to the Polish facility, but here are some snippets of writing where he discusses primates. Tuson praises the Ape House and mentions how the gorillas and chimpanzees "moved into their new home in September 2008. Each species has an island - not enormous, by any means, but nicely done - and crucially, given the severity and the length of Central European winters, a really very large and very varied indoor area. The building is well presented, and the animals within look very good." However, Tuson is critical of the Monkey House: "Not terrible. But not lovely, either, and possibly a little over-stocked, given its size and its resources. The outdoor runs are well-furnished but small, and the viewing they offer is sub-optimal. The interior house is tiled, ugly, and a little bit grubby. A radio plays, loudly, in the background. It is not the zoo's finest area. An ageing pair of Allen's Swamp Monkey provides the undoubted zoological highlight here, but there are much better ways to display primates, and to maintain them as well." It seems to me that unless things have dramatically changed in the past 3 years, Warsaw Zoo should perhaps NOT be the winner of this round if the Monkey House really is as bad as described by a veteran zoo enthusiast. Can anyone provide a mini-review of ZOOM or Dresden?
I was going to vote for Dresden, but then I remembered their Orangutan house.... Dresden has 10 species according to zootierliste. Mandrill have a fine indoor + outdoor enclosure in the newly renovated Africa house. Ring-tailed lemur and Black lemur are on a nice green walkthrough island and I think the Crowned lemurs will be there too, they are new from after my visit. The other monkeys are kept in the nicely done Prof. Brandeshaus with spacious indoor and outdoor enclosures for Lion-tailed macaque, Woolly monkey, Kikuyu guereza, White-faced saki and Emperor tamarin. The problem is that the Sumatran orangutan house + outdoor cage is badly outdated and is too small, especially with regards to vertical space. So overall it would probably be a better choice than Warsaw, but my vote goes to ZOOM. ZOOM only keeps 8 primate species, but all are in ok to good enclosures. The highlight is probably the Sumatran orangutan enclosure, which is shared with Hanuman langurs and indoors with Small-clawed otters. The Asian area also has a good (though maybe slightly overthemed) enclosure for Pig-tailed macaque. In the African area is an ok island for a large group of Olive baboons, a walkthrough with Red-ruffed lemurs and a spacious, but rather ugly enclosure for Chimpanzees. The nerdy highlight are Red-tailed moustached monkeys, which are kept in an ok enclosure in the Africa house, which from memory was slightly on the small side, but otherwise nice.
A few things worth noting about Warsaw's primate collection. A lot of it is as described above, but I'll just break down the current situation: Ape house: gorillas and chimpanzees, each with a decent outdoor enclosure and quite a spacious indoor area, I would say bigger than average but certainly not world class. Warsaw Zoo does not have tremendous amounts of money to spend on world class exhibits, but the ape enclosures are pretty good. Monkey house: this area isn't the best, largely because it's too small, however there have been substantial improvements in the last few years, mainly with a few species moving out. The baboons have a new indoor enclosure which is larger and significantly better, and the outdoor enclosure which was already decent has been improved. There have also been a few movements of species to different parts of the zoo, ringtailed lemurs are no longer in there and now have their own new enclosure: quite a large island with an indoor house attached. In the past, lemurs used to be moved to islands in the lake in the summer and be moved back to the monkey house for winter. I believe this is still the case with the B+W ruffed lemurs, but of course there is more space in the house now with the ringtaileds out. There's also a new enclosure attached to the newly rebuilt aquarium for squirrel monkeys just across from the main monkey house. This may or may not have been new since the review above. So overall still not the best and fairly old, but there's been a reduction in the number of species in there. Primate islands: Warsaw also has a lake with islands for primates with gibbons and ring-tailed lemurs there year round with indoor housing attached to the islands as well. I've seen ruffed lemurs on one of the islands as well with a non-heated box present and used as shelter in the summer but not sufficient for winter. I don't know how long exactly they got on the island though rather than being in the monkey house. These are perfectly decent Callitrichids: In the giraffe house there is a row of enclosures for four different species. These have indoor enclosures attached to outdoor enclosures for the summer and are perfectly good and reasonably large for the species held. The overall primate collection across these four areas is decently large at Warsaw with 17 species. Many of the enclosures are on the smaller side but most are decent and some of them could fairly be described as quite good.
I’m not usually swayed by a large collection, but what I’m liking about LaughingDove’s post is that it sounds like Warsaw has been proactive about dealing with its legacy issues, and that gives me the license I need to take their higher species numbers into consideration. I’m parking my vote with them on that basis. Open to being reconvinced though.
I was parking my vote with Gelsenkirchen (because all their species are housed more than decent in generally nice exhibits), but this makes me doubt my choice. It is very difficult but interesting to compare this two ways of dealing with legacy: Gelsenkirchen was completely rebuild while Warsaw seems to make things better while preserving some of its history. The question then is: how large is the gap between the two from a welfare point of view? By the way, I only visited Gelsenkirchen so I'm counting on others to convince me!
In Warsaw the old monkey house and aquarium (pre-WW2 bird house) are indeed listed. This means the zoo cannot alter the general construction nor dimensions of the buildings. So it is impossible to enlarge or pull down the buildings (as Gelserkirchen did with the entire old zoo). The monkey house is currently OK for its animals, with natural ground, grass and branches in outside exhibits. Most primates have moved to modern exhibits in other places (lemurs, squirrel monkeys and gibbons on islands on the large pond, tamarins and marmosets in the giraffe house, chimps and gorillas in the new ape house with outside islands).
