Woodland Park Zoo

The Woodland Park Zoo, which occupies the western half of Seattle, USA's Woodland Park on Green Lake, began as a small menagerie on the Woodland Park estate of Guy C. Phinney, Canadian-born lumber mill owner and real estate developer. Opened in 1889, the 188-acre Woodland Park was sold to the city for $5,000 in cash and the assumption of a $95,000 mortgage on December 28, 1899, by Phinney's wife (Phinney had died six years earlier, in 1893). The sum was so large that the Seattle mayor vetoed the acquisition, only to be over-ruled by the city council. In 1902, the Olmsted Brothers firm of Boston was hired to design the city's parks, including Woodland Park, and the next year the collection of the private Leschi Park menagerie was moved to Phinney Ridge.

As of 2004, the zoo includes 65 acres (263,000 m²) of exhibits and public spaces. It is open to the public daily, and an entrance fee is required. Its collection includes:

• 1,145 animal specimens
• 290 animal species
• 22 arthropod colonies
• 7,000 trees
• 50,000+ shrubs and herbs
• 1,000+ plant species

Woodland Park Zoo had 1,085,868 visitors in 2003.

Exhibits at Woodland Park Zoo

The Woodland Park Zoo has won more Best National Exhibit awards from the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums than any other zoological institution except the Bronx Zoo in New York. It has long been a pioneer in the field of immersion exhibits, creating what is generally considered the world's first immersion exhibit - it's gorilla habitat, which opened in the late 1970s.

• Zoomazium - the zoo's newest exhibit, opened in May 2006. Zoomazium (a combination of "zoo" and "gymnasium") is an interactive playspace for children. It includes nature-themed playspaces as well as a Nature Exchange desk and open areas for interactive programs. It was built to be extremely energy-efficient and even includes a "green roof", with a full-scale garden of native plants growing on the top of the building.

• Tropical Rainforest - this exhibit won a Best Exhibit award when opened in 1992. A walkway leads up to the building with viewing into a habitat for jaguars (opened in 2003), complete with underwater viewing. Nearby is a jungle researcher's tent. Inside the building is a myriad of animals from Central and South America, including ocelots, poison arrow frogs, bushmasters, tamarins, toucans, and a wide variety of tropical birds. An outdoor loop houses several African rainforest species, including red-ruffed lemurs, guenons, colobus monkeys, and the aforementioned gorilla enclosure.

• Tropical Asia - this consists of two components. The first, Elephant Forest, won a national exhibit award when it opened in 1990. It features a 1.5-acre yard complete with a full-depth swimming pool for four female elephants, three Asian and one African. Hansa, the youngest, was born in 2000. Recently the zoo has come under fire from animal-rights groups for its care regarding its elephants. Anger arose when the zoo chose to send one elephant, Bamboo, to the nearby Point Defiance Zoo rather than to an elephant sanctuary [1]in Tennessee(the move did not ultimately work out and now Bamboo is currently at WPZ). The second part of the exhibit, Trail of Vines, takes the visitor on a journey through several different Southeast Asian rainforest habitats, featuring numerous endangered species. Beginning with Malayan tapirs, it moves on to lion-tailed macaques, siamangs, Indian pythons, and finally a large indoor/outdoor habitat for orangutans.

• Northern Trail - this exhibit also won a national Best Exhibit award when opened in 1994. It carries the visitor through the northern habitats of Tundra, Taiga, and Montane. It is landscaped to resemble an actual trail in Alaska's Denali National Park. Northern Trail is home to a variety of North American animal species, including gray wolves, artic foxes, grizzly bears, mountain goats, bald eagles, and Roosevelt elk (which are actually endemic to Washington).

• African Savannah - This also earned national Best Exhibit honors. The first of its kind when it opened in 1980, WPZ's savannah inspired the building of similar exhibits across the country. The visitor enters through a model African village, which blends in elements of African culture as well as important messages about the human/animal balance in conservation. A main yard houses giraffes, zebras, gazelle, and oryx, while two connected exhibits house hippopotami and patas monkeys. Hidden moats make these yards appear to be part of a continuous landscape. In addition to the herbivores, two separate yards are home to lions and African wild dogs.

• Other highlight animals at Woodland Park Zoo include Sumatran tigers (which breed regularly), a Raptor Center and accompanying flight demonstration, Japanese serows, a Family Farm exhibit, Bug World, snow leopards, and several species of hornbills (with which the zoo does considerable conservation work in Thailand).

External links

• Woodland Park Zoo