Zoo Review: ZooAmerica North American Wildlife Park, Part I

First Zoo Review of 2021!  Sort of... monthly reviews aren't quite starting back up again.   In fact, I've only visited one new zoo since the pandemic began - this one.  Like most folks, I haven't been traveling much, certainly not outside of my state, and when I do make a trip to another zoo or aquarium for work reasons, it's usually very brief and without visiting with colleagues.  Still, I was on the road towards the end of the last year on a rare trip and, passing by, decided to stop in and see what it was like.  If nothing else, it was also interesting to do a visit to a zoo - as a guest - for the first time during the pandemic.

ZooAmerica is attached to Hershey Park, the theme park associated with the chocolate company for which the town is best known, and it was founded in 1910 by Milton Hershey, the founder of both the company and the town.  In its earlier years, the Hershey Zoo housed a full array of the expected zoo animals, including lions, leopards, monkeys, and, for a brief period, elephants.  Around 1980, the zoo was reimagined as ZooAmerica, focusing exclusively on the animals of North America.  The zoo is divided into five bio-regions, each containing wildlife from different parts of the continent.

Side note: Hershey Park itself features California sea lions as part of an aquatics show.  The sea lions are not part of ZooAmerica.  Also worth noting, admission to Hershey Park includes access to ZooAmerica - a monorail links the two attractions.  However, admission to the zoo does not equal admission to Hershey Park.  On my visit, I only got a ticket for the zoo (I wasn't even sure if the park was open due to COVID).

During my 2020 visit, the biggest impact of COVID-19 was that two of those five sections, each one essentially contained in a separate building, were closed for public health reasons.  These were the areas I was most eager to see; I've seen almost all of the larger American animals many times before, and it is when looking at smaller birds, reptiles, and amphibian collections that I'm most often able to see species that are new, or at least uncommon, to me.  Southern Swamps features marsh birds, snakes, and, of course, American alligators.  Great Southwest is dominated by an aviary that features roadrunners, quails, and other desert birds, with nearby terrariums displaying rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, and other herps of the southwest.  This building also features several small carnivore species - ocelot, white-nosed coati, ringtail, and black-footed ferret - as well as vampire bat (strictly speaking not an animal of the American southwest, but many of the bats that are native to that part of the country are insect-eaters, which are hard to maintain in zoos). 

I wasn't able to see anything of the swamp building, but was able to peer in through a few windows of the Great Southwest.  The aviary looked very handsome, and even from outside I was able to admire the roadrunners skittering about.  I was also able to look in on several of the terrariums, which had outdoor and indoor facing windows.  I was not able to see any of the mammal exhibits, which I was the most curious about.  I felt that it would have been nice if the two larger carnivore species - the ocelot and coati - had outdoor exhibit access (Hershey isn't alone in this - off the top of my head I can only remember seeing one outdoor ocelot exhibit in a US zoo, and many of the coati exhibits that I can think of have been indoor as well).  It would have been especially enjoyable under situations like this, where the building was closed to the public.  Plus, I'm just a big fan out outdoor access whenever possible.  As it was, the only residents of Great Southwest which do have an outdoor enclosure are the endangered thick-billed parrots, which occupy a small flight-cage behind the building.

Tomorrow, we'll go over the rest of the park... being the parts that were open as usual.

ZooAmerica North American Wildlife Park