Photo by: Bill Bernard
Construction is underway for Expedition Asia which broke ground in September and features new Malayan tiger, sloth bear and Amur leopard exhibits and ADA-compliant viewing areas.
The roughly $4.3 million project, was approved by the Manhattan City Commission early in September and broke ground later the same month offering crucial updates to existing enclosures, some of which are 50+ years old.
Melissa Kirkwood, Marketing and Development Officer for Sunset Zoo, said that the new facilities will be state of the art and offer patrons the ability to witness up close the interaction between the keepers and animals.
“They’ll be able to experience how we are able to work with our animals for care. We train our animals to be able to show us certain things so that they don’t always have to be anesthetized to receive treatment. So they will show us paws or their tail or different components of them and Expedition Asia will have an up close, front seat view with our keepers,” Kirkwood said.
These new enclosures are part of a larger conservation effort, offering keepers the ability to breed these animals as per the Sunset Zoo’s website, less than 100 Amur leopards, ~3.500 Asian tigers and roughly 6,000-10,000 sloth bears remain in the wild today.
As part of these efforts, the Zoo is making improvements ensuring the entirety of the Zoo will be 100% ADA compliant and will construct a exhibit-viewing deck that has a capacity for 100+ people.
“If you’ve been here currently, or even in the past, you’ve seen what we typically call ‘Tiger Hill’, and you can not go all the way down that that pathway because of its safety issues. With Expedition Asia, you will be able to a hundred percent explore the zoo as well as there will be an overlook deck that will be created within these three exhibits that will give you an overlook to all three of the exhibits and enjoy the animals in their surroundings,” Kirkwood said.
Completion of this addition to the Zoo is projected for next fall and will be dependent upon how these animals acclimate to their new home.
“We’re working through the process of how that will look for opening. We may open those exhibits in the fall, but we do have to consider that we have to place the animals in the exhibit and have them acclimate. So it’s like their new house and we need to make sure that they feel comfortable in their new home,” Kirkwood said. “It’s a great experience for our visitors, but it’s been a long time coming. So this window of time seems to really short to us, and we’re excited to be able to be underway and be under construction and still be able to offer the zoo to the public.”
For more information about Expedition Asia or to donate, visit sunsetzoo.com
