Woodland Park Zoo - Exhibits at Woodland Park Zoo

Exhibits At Woodland Park Zoo

Woodland Park Zoo has won more Best National Exhibit awards from the Association of Zoos & 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: Woodland Park Zoo created what is generally considered the world's first immersion exhibit, a gorilla habitat, which opened in the late 1970s.

• Zoomazium - Zoomazium (a portmanteau of "zoo" and "gymnasium"), opened in May 2006, 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. With exhibit design done by AldrichPears Associates and architecture by Mithun, Inc, the Zoomazium received a Thea Outstanding Achievement Award from the Themed Entertainment Association in 2007.

• Tropical Rain Forest - 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 rain forest species, including red ruffed lemurs, colobus monkeys, and a rambling gorilla exhibit.

• 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 (0.61 ha) yard complete with a full-depth swimming pool for three female elephants, two Asian and one African. The zoo has recently come under fire from animal-rights groups stemming from two incidents involving its elephants. Hansa, an Asian elephant born at the zoo in 2000, died in her sleep from a previously unidentified herpesvirus on June 8, 2007. To date, Hansa remains the only elephant born in Washington state history (although her mother Chai may become pregnant in 2010). A year earlier, the zoo chose to send another elephant, Bamboo, to Point Defiance Zoo in nearby Tacoma (the move did not ultimately work out and Bamboo is still 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, Indian pythons, and finally large indoor/outdoor habitats for the siamangs and 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. The Northern Trail is home to a variety of North American animal species, including gray wolves, arctic foxes, grizzly bears, mountain goats, bald eagles, and Roosevelt elk (which are actually endemic to Washington).

• African Savanna - This also earned national Best Exhibit honors. The first of its kind when it opened in 1980, WPZ's savanna 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. The main "savanna" houses giraffes, zebras, gazelles, oryxes, and ostriches, while two connected exhibits house hippopotami and patas monkeys. As of May 2007, visitors may hand-feed the giraffes for a small fee. Hidden moats allow these yards to appear to be part of a continuous landscape. In addition to the herbivores, two separate yards are home to lions and African wild dogs.

In summer 2007, Woodland Park Zoo revamped and highlighted its African Savanna exhibit as part of its Maasai Journey program, which featured a mix of cultural and animal-themed programs about the East African grasslands.

• Australasia - Australasia has the fewest animals of all the exhibits in the zoo, but it has one of the most popular exhibits, The Willawong Station. The Willawong Station houses over 100 parrots from Australia, there are Parakeets, Cockatiels and Eastern Rosellas. Other animals in Australasia are Kookaburras, a handful of Wallaroos, a couple of Emus and Snow Leopards. The Wallaroos have an indoor and outdoor area.

• Temperate Forest- The Temperate Forest exhibit is home to a variety of animals from temperate regions of Asia, North America, and South America. It includes an aviary with a number of exotic birds, including hornbills and pheasants, as well as yards for cranes, Japanese Serows, Red Pandas, and a marsh exhibit featuring local waterfowl species. In 2008 a small exhibit was opened in the Temperate Forest area featuring Chilean flamingos and Southern Pudús, which have bred successfully at WPZ. A small alcove features interpretive exhibits on the zoo's efforts to restore the native western pond turtle.

• Other highlight animals at Woodland Park Zoo include Sumatran Tigers (which have bred several times in the past years), a Raptor Center and accompanying flight demonstration, and lowland anoa. Woodland Park Zoo is one of a handful of zoos outside Japan displaying Japanese Serows, a threatened relative of the mountain goat. Woodland Park Zoo also includes a "Family Farm" exhibit, Bug World, snow leopards, and several species of hornbills. In May 2010 the zoo added a new exhibit featuring meerkats to the "Adaptations" building; the exhibit features tunnels, a log den and accommodations for the animals that approximate their natural habitat.

• The zoo also houses a hand-carved carousel, originally built for the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918 by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, head carver John Zalar. In the 1970s, the carousel was moved to Santa Clara, California, where it operated into the 1990s. It was donated to Woodland Park Zoo by the Alleniana Foundation, and opened May 1, 2007 in a new pavilion on the zoo's North Meadow.

• In May 2009, WPZ opened a new 17,000-square-foot (1,600 m2) Humboldt Penguin exhibit. The outdoor enclosure is designed to recreate the penguin's native habitat in Peru, and features cliffs and pools. The exhibit is also designed to use Green energy, such as geothermal power.