Taking advantage of New Mexico's climate, the Albquerque BioPark Zoo has an especially impressive collection of animals from the plains of East Africa. Along a winding trail, visitors will pass by giraffes, mountain zebras, and white rhinoceros in spacious paddocks. Separate enclosures house the predators of East Africa - cheetahs, spotted hyenas, and African wild dogs - the later two being visible through Plexiglas windows at eye-level. The most popular exhibit with most visitors is the chimpanzee habitat, where a large troop of the apes races around a grassy yard full of climbing structures. As far as I was concerned, however, there were two star exhibits. One was the hippopotamus habitat - nothing remarkable in terms of the new hippo exhibits cropping up around the country - this one didn't have underwater viewing, for instance - but I see hippos so seldom these days that it was a treat to stand on the bridge crossing their pool and watch the family group sink and rise. Secondly, I loved the African vulture aviary, where a tunnel passed through the exhibit that a few species of vultures shared with ravens and marabou storks It's a bit disconcerting to enter the aviary, not see a bird anywhere... and then look up and see that it's directly above you, poking a beak down and trying to nip the top of your head.
If Albuquerque does well with Africa, then they excel at Australia. Located near the zoo's central lake Australia features rarely-seen Aussies, such as Tasmanian devils (do yourself a favor and wait to hit this exhibit until there's a keeper presentation) and wombats. Of course, there are more familiar Australian animals as well - red kangaroos, kookaburras, emus, and an aviary-load of friendly rainbow lorikeets, eager for a drink of nectar. A small building nearby was designed for koalas, but at the time of my visit, there were none - Matschie's tree kangaroos were holding down the fort.
Apart from those in residence on the African loop, most of the zoo's carnivores can be seen along the Cat Walk. Open-air habitats display tigers and lions, while a row of meshed-in habitats features snow leopards, binturongs, jaguars, and fossas. There are two special exhibits of note. One belongs to the polar bears, mostly because it's especially surprising to see polar bears in New Mexico. The bears have a deep, cooled pool, lined with rocky outcrops that give them a commanding view of the zoo. Nearby is a habitat for Mexican gray wolves, which pad silently through a patch of woodland. One of my few disappointments with this zoo was how little emphasis it puts on native wildlife - the wolf exhibit was one of my favorite, but I would have loved to have seen pronghorn, bighorns, and more creatures of the Southwest grouped together.
Past a pool of American flamingos lies the zoo's Tropics area, a small loop with black howler monkeys and Wolf guenons, along with a series of small aviaries. Hyacinth macaws, ground hornbills, and wattled cranes are among the many birds featured here (as are roadrunners, the state bird of New Mexico, and the highly endangered Socorro dove, currently the subject of a planned future reintroduction program). The anchor of this end of the zoo, however, is the Reptile House. The building contains a highly impressive collection of species, including several venomous snakes. Crowd-pleasers such as Komodo dragons, king cobras, and Chinese alligators share gallery spacer with rarely-seen reptiles, including horned lizards, ringed pythons, and New Guinea crocodile skinks. Outside are habitats for Aldabra tortoises and American alligators. A separate building displays a massive saltwater crocodile (in a rather plain, dull exhibit for such a magnificent animal - I felt like I was seeing a crown jewel presented in a cardboard box). Amphibians occupy a small building elsewhere on zoo grounds.
Other attractions at the zoo include a herd of Asian elephants, including a handsome bull (due to the small amount of the exhibit that has viewing areas attached to it, it's easy to think of the exhibit as much smaller than it is), Bactrian camels, and an ape trail that features gorillas, orangutans, and siamangs. Of course, no zoo visit would be complete without a stop at the zoo's iconic seal and sea lion pool, with underwater viewing, right alongside the central lake (looking back at it, the zoo has a lot of aquatic exhibits for a desert zoo - hippos, polar bears, seals and sea lions, a lot of crocodilians,,,). Near the elephants, a small train awaits to ferry visitors back and forth between the zoo and the aquarium and botanic garden.
I'd never really thought of Albuquerque as an especially big down, but I must admit that it does have one of the more surprisingly large zoos I've ever seen. And it continues to grow - penguins are slated to make an appearance in the near future, their exhibit already being under construction during my visit. I'm not sure how I feel about the inclusion of so many water-demanding species in the American Southwest, and wonder how sustainable that would prove in the long-run. Albuquerque's climate is already so well suited to so many African, Asian, Australian, and, yes, native New Mexican species, I wonder if there isn't enough animal life to keep them busy and expanding on those fronts (for one thing, I was surprised at the diversity of their East Africa collection... in all regards except antelope).
Maybe I'm needling needlessly. I'll be the first to admit I don't know what the water situation down there really is. They are right on a river, after all I do know, however, that I immensely enjoyed this facility and would certainly swing back again if in the area.
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