Сент-Луис зообағының тарихы мен жетістіктері

Zoo in St. Louis, Missouri, United States

The city purchased its first exhibit, the Flight Cage, from the Smithsonian Institution following the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. After the zoo was established in 1910, new exhibits, areas, and buildings were added through the decades to improve care of the animals, the range of animals and habitats shown, and education and interpretation. The head of the male lesser kudu, with his elegant spiraled horns, is the symbol of the Saint Louis Zoo. In September 2017, the Saint Louis Zoo teamed up with the Missouri Botanical Garden and Washington University in St. Louis in a conservation effort known as the Living Earth Collaborative. The collaborative, run by Washington University scientist Jonathan Losos, seeks to promote further understanding of the ways humans can help to preserve the varied natural environments that allow plants, animals, and microbes to survive and thrive. Some of their other ongoing conservation efforts include the #byetobags movement, encouraging the use of reusable bags, and their turtle tracking program, which tracks location, population, and health of the box turtle population of Forest Park. In 2017 and 2018, the zoo was chosen by USA Today as the best in the United States.

The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair is credited for the birth of the Saint Louis Zoo. The fair brought the world's attention to St. Louis and Forest Park. The Smithsonian Institution constructed a walk through aviary for the World's Fair. Ten days after the World's Fair closed, the citizens of St. Louis chose to buy the 1904 World's Fair Flight Cage for $3,500, rather than have it dismantled and returned to Washington, DC. This was the first piece of what would become the Saint Louis Zoo. By 1910, increased interest in a zoo brought together some concerned citizens, and they organized the Zoological Society of St. Louis. In 1914, it was incorporated as an independent civic organization of people interested in a zoo. Meanwhile, the citizens of St. Louis and surrounding municipalities expressed diverse opinions as to the appropriate location of a zoo if there should be one. Fairground Park, Carondolet Park, the Creve Coeur area, and Tower Grove Park were some of the places suggested in newspaper articles and letters to the editors and to civic groups. Some concerned citizens residing near Oakland Avenue, south of Forest Park, expressed their displeasure with a zoo in the park because of the smell of the animals. The zoo initially held 51 deer and antelope, 11 buffaloes, a sacred cow, a sandhill crane, 20 prairie dogs, a dromedary camel, eagles, ducks, elk, foxes, geese, swans, rabbits, a raccoon, a China sheep, opossums, a buzzard, owls, and peafowl, among other animals. The head of the Parks Department, Dwight Davis, voiced his opinion against Forest Park—that is, until the city set aside in the park in which to establish a zoological park. A five man board was appointed to act as the Zoological Board of Control. The number of board members was increased to nine in 1916, the same year the citizens voted to create a tax for the construction of the Saint Louis Zoo, with a 1/5 mill tax. This was said to have been the first zoo in the world that the citizens of a community supported by passing a millage tax.

Expansion of the zoo started in 1921, when the Bear Pits were built. The zoo continued to expand with construction of the Primate House in 1923 and the Reptile House in 1927. The new Bird House was built in 1930. In 1993, the zoo received a donation of the Sears Lehmann farm, located west of St. Louis. It is to be used for the breeding of endangered species and educational purposes. The most recent update to the zoo is the addition of the Michael and Quirsis Riney Primate Canopy Trails, a $13 million, 35,000 sq ft state of the art outdoor exhibit for the zoo's primates. Primate Canopy Trails opened 12 July 2021 and is connected to the nearby Primate House built in 1925. It replaced some of the outside primate habitats connected to the Primate House. In 2013, the Saint Louis Zoo began a massive expansion of facilities and space for both visitors and staff. Most notable is a new development planned on 13.5 acres on the grounds of the former Forest Park Hospital, across Interstate 64 from the zoo campus. Once completed, the new facility would feature offices and classrooms, year round exhibits, a mixed use development that will link the complex with the adjacent Dogtown neighborhood, and an "iconic" connection of the two sites over Interstate 64. Most importantly, it was to shift all parking to the hospital site, freeing up roughly nine acres currently used as a surface lot for additional exhibits. In June 2022, a five year old eastern black rhinoceros named Moyo was permanently transferred to Alabama's Birmingham Zoo to eventually develop his own family. Unfortunately in late January 2024, Moyo suffered severe complications after a dental procedure. The zookeepers euthanized him afterwards. The St. Louis Zoo is currently developing a second campus in north St. Louis County, with a target opening date of 2027. This $230 million, 425 acre campus will be called the St. Louis Zoo Wildcare Park and focus on endangered ungulate species and enormous habitats.

The Saint Louis Zoo is divided into six zones: Lakeside Crossing, River's Edge, The Wild, Discovery Corner, Historic Hill, and Red Rocks.

Located in the center of the zoo, Lakeside Crossing has a variety of food services and shopping destinations, and a grassy plaza where visitors can sit and relax. Also featured here are Caribbean Cove and Sea Lion Sound. Caribbean Cove is a shallow touch pool underneath a large pavilion that features cownose rays, southern stingrays, bonnethead sharks, and bamboo sharks. Open during the warmer months, it is one of the only parts of the zoo requiring an admission price. Sea Lion Sound provides an underwater viewing tunnel of California sea lions and three harbor seals.

River's Edge is home to a variety of animals represented from four continents: North America, South America, Africa (Savannah and Nile), and Asia. The North America exhibit features fish and wildlife from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers containing crayfish, American bullfrog, channel catfish, gar, and bluegill. The South America exhibit displays spectacled bears, bush dogs, capybaras, giant anteaters, and scarlet macaws. The African Savanna exhibit displays eastern black rhinoceroses, African wild dogs, African sacred ibis, bat eared foxes, red river hogs, and a colony of Southern carmine bee eaters. The African Nile exhibit features hippopotamuses, tilapia, cheetahs, spotted hyenas, and a colony of dwarf mongoose. The Asia exhibit features adult Asian elephants and sun bears.

Discovery Corner is home to Emerson Dinoroarus and the Bayer Insectarium. Prior to its replacement with Dinoroarus in 2021, the Emerson Children's Zoo had many educational features, such as the see through slide through the otter pool and many birds, snakes, frogs, and other animals that volunteers and staff bring out for the kids to see up close. Dinoroarus is one of the only exhibits at the Zoo that requires an admittance fee. As of March 2016, the zoo has Tasmanian devils in this section. Most of the zoo's invertebrates are found in the Bayer Insectarium. Represented species include leafcutter ant, flower mantis, Vietnamese walking stick, Atlas beetle, American burying beetle, sunburst diving beetle, water scorpion, brown widow spider, brown recluse spider, yellow garden spiders, Platymeris biguttatus, cobalt blue tarantula, Texas brown tarantula, and Egyptian fattail scorpion.

The Wild is home to Grizzly Ridge, Polar Bear Point, Conservation Carousel, Fragile Forest, Jungle of the Apes, and Penguin and Puffin Coast. Polar Bear Point features a polar bear called Kali. Two grizzly bears named Huck and Finn arrived for the opening of Grizzly Ridge in 2017. The Fragile Forest and Jungle of the Apes features western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees and Sumatran orangutans in a naturalized outdoor setting. Penguin and Puffin Coast displays a variety of water birds including Magellanic penguins, king penguins, southern rockhopper penguins, gentoo penguins, horned puffins, tufted puffins, and king eiders. Individual habitats for red pandas and black tailed prairie dogs are also in The Wild.

Historic Hill contains Bird House, Bird Garden, Herpetarium, Chain of Lakes, Flight Cage and Cypress Swamp, Primate House, and Primate Canopy Trails. The Bird House features birds as varied as bald eagle, rhinoceros hornbill, hyacinth macaw, burrowing owl, toco toucan, Cape thick knee, golden pheasant, kookaburra, Mariana fruit dove, king vulture, horned guan, superb starling, tawny frogmouth, congo peafowl, and the Guam kingfisher, which is extinct in the wild. The Bird Garden contains outdoor bird enclosures. The Herpetarium houses most of the zoo's reptiles and amphibians, including the critically endangered Jamaican iguana, Chinese alligator, McCord's box turtle, Panamanian golden frog, and Arakan forest turtle. Other species include the Komodo dragon, green anaconda, mountain chicken, spotted turtle, false gharial, king cobra, Gila monster, frill necked lizard, Aldabra giant tortoise, tuatara, reticulated python, tiger salamander, three toed amphiuma, pancake tortoise, and over two dozen species of pit vipers from around the world. The Chain of Lakes is a series of small enclosures between the Bird House and the Herpetarium and Primate House, where the zoo's North American river otters and alligator snapping turtles reside. In 1904, the Flight Cage was the largest bird cage ever built, and is still one of the world's largest free flight aviaries at 228 feet (69 m) long, 84 feet (26 m) wide, and 50 feet (15 m) high. The Cypress Swamp is dedicated to North American birds found it the cypress swamps of the southern Mississippi River. Among the birds in the aviary are black crowned night heron, blue winged teal, bufflehead duck, cattle egret, double crested cormorant, great egret, wood duck, northern bobwhite, roseate spoonbill, snowy egret, and American white ibis. Primate House and Primate Canopy Trails is home to the zoo's monkeys and lemurs. Species included are Allen's swamp monkey, Coquerel's sifaka, cotton top tamarin, black and white colobus monkey, mongoose lemur, ring tailed lemur, spectacled langur, and white faced saki.

Red Rocks features Big Cat Country and Antelope House. Big Cat Country is home to several species of big cats. The represented species are the African lion, Amur leopard, Amur tiger, jaguar, puma, and snow leopard. The species present at Antelope House are the addax, babirusa, Bactrian camel, Banteng, Central Chinese goral, gerenuk, Grevy's zebra, lesser kudu, Nile lechwe, okapi, reticulated giraffe, Sichuan takin, Soemmerring's gazelle, Somali wild ass, Speke's gazelle, and Transcapsian urial. Non ungulates found in the Red Rocks include the marsupials red kangaroo and tammar wallaby, as well as several birds in mixed exhibits with the ungulates, such as the East African crowned crane, ostrich, saddle billed stork and Sarus Crane.