African Lion Savannah

The African Lion Savannah is a habitat that will help create a year around experience for the lions and the visitors at Roosevelt Park Zoo. The new lion holding building features in floor heat throughout the entire building along with glass viewing into the new “dayroom”, which allows the visitors the see the lions during the winter season. The outdoor exhibit features in floor heat in the concrete patio to accommodate for the colder days in the spring and fall allowing the lions to still enjoy some time outside. Some of the exhibit features for the visitor’s experience include a little lion’s den, which allows children to get face to face with a small cave like glass viewing area and a safari vehicle that has been cut in half with the front hood of the vehicle on the exhibit side for the lions to lay on and the cab of the vehicle is on the visitor’s side so children can pretend to be driving a safari vehicle.

 

The exterior of the building and barrier between the exhibit and patrons has been naturalized with shotcrete to look like kopje rock, which mimics the rock formations that can be found in the lion’s natural habitat. “Pride Rock” is a feature in the middle of the exhibit that includes carefully placed boulders to create a natural perch to get the lions elevated so they can look over their kingdom.

The exterior yard has a total square footage of 12,750 square feet compared to their 1,900 square foot old yard.

 

Extensive training and planning goes into all of the facilities we create at Roosevelt Park Zoo to ensure animal and patron safety and create an environment that promotes education, conservation and a personal connection to nature.

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Amur Tiger River Valley

The Amur Tiger River Valley was created as a new exhibit at Roosevelt Park Zoo and houses three Amur Tigers. The holding building design allows for potential breeding and contains four separate dens, a medical suite, and a dayroom with glass viewing. Visitors will take the Amur Tiger River Valley pathway, which winds around the three separate yards and under two catwalks, allowing the visitor to stop at glass viewing structures at each yard to experience an up-close view of the animals. Two of the yards have streams flowing down from the building into ponds where the tigers can cool off and go for a swim. At the end of the trail is another glass viewing structure with a training door that includes a mesh panel, allowing the keeper to do training exercises with the tigers while the visitors look on. Within the training door is a tiger tug of war feature, giving visitors the chance to test their strength against the tigers in a tug of war match. The total square footage of the three yards is 19,200 square feet compared to their old yard of 1,900 square feet.