Zoo Review: Oakland Zoo, Part I

A tricky decision - only time to hit one zoo on a visit to the Bay Area, so which one to do?  After a bit of hemming and hawing between the three options (none of which I'd been to before), I decided to visit the Oakland Zoo.  It was a close call, I admit, but I'd heard some pretty exciting news about this once easily-overlooked zoo, especially their signature new exhibit, and decided to check it out.  While I'm always prone to major FOMO, and will definitely be back to check out San Francisco and Sacramento, I'm glad that I did take the chance to see this excellent mid-sized zoo.

Like many zoos, Oakland originated as a children's zoo - it actually was once called the "Baby Zoo" - being the pet project of two big game hunters who liked to catch their own animals for the exhibits.  As with many zoos, it squandered and sank into mediocrity until, like so many other city zoos, it found itself on an "America's Worst Zoo" list put out by the Humane Society of the United States.  And, as was the case with so many of the zoos that were similarly named and shamed, Oakland pulled itself together and rebuilt itself as an excellent zoo.  Now sprawling over 100 acres in Knowland Park, the zoo occupies a towering location over the city, providing sweeping views of the Bay Area.

The quality of the exhibits is set immediately upon entry with the flamingo exhibit.  Many zoos have a flamingo exhibit as their opening act - a display of activity, color, and noise with a recognizable species to get visitors excited about their journey.  Oakland's exhibit differs from many in being a completely enclosed aviary, which, while perhaps not as aesthetically pleasing as an open pond, allows their birds to be fully-flighted.  The lesser flamingos share their lagoon with African spoonbills in an attractive, bustling, if slightly malodorous (as flamingos tend to be) scene that will delight visitors as they get their bearings and decided where to set off to next.

Much of the recent growth has come from the opening of the 2018 California Trail.  This massive expansion is accessible via a sky gondola, with visitors riding cable areas across a vast, grassy valley to the entrance of the trail.  (The gondola ride is free for visitors - there is actually a separate skyride within the zoo that does charge admission, but is not required in order to see animals).  The animal experience begins before visitors even touch the ground - from the gondolas, they are given an excellent view of a large herd of American bison which grazes the valley below them.  Upon landing, they can embark on a looping trail that passes a series of enormous habitats, most of them the largest I've seen for animals of their species.  

Two giant aviaries hold two iconic raptor species of California, the bald eagle and the California condor.  This is the fourth zoo that I've seen California condors at, and this aviary was easily the most spectacular.  Adjacent to the aviary was a viewing pavilion that featured excellent exhibits on the conservation of America's largest (and perhaps most endangered) bird, including how zoos have been involved in its conservation.   There are open habitats for gray wolves (surprisingly to me, not of the Mexican subspecies), American black bears, and grizzly bears, the later being especially impressive when seen eye to eye through the viewing windows of their pool, towering over visitors.  Covered habitats feature puma and jaguar.  The jaguar habitat was especially beautiful, a recreation of the chaparral habitat that these big cats once inhabited in the land that Oakland now sits on.  The puma exhibit also caught my interest, even though I didn't actually see one out.  Oakland serves as sort of a clearing hour for orphaned mountain lion cubs, which are brought to the zoo for emergency medical care and rearing, then dispersed to other zoos for permanent housing.  The trail ends with a gorgeous overlook of the bison and the Bay Area, before gondolas sweep visitors back to the main zoo.

I was a bit surprised to see that this is all that California Trail offered, and as incredible as they exhibits were, I think that they could have stood to be complemented by some of the Golden State's smaller inhabitants.  It would have been great to have had a walk-through aviary of California's smaller birds, such as quail, passerines, and waterfowl, or a reptile house/aquarium/invertebrate house, or maybe a small nocturnal building.  Something that would make the exhibit a little more along the lines of Oklahoma City Zoo's Oklahoma Trails. I love native exhibits, but I think they work best when they also include the smaller species that call a region home.  California Trail features a grand total of eight species - three of which are extinct in California (except for the odd vagrant) and one of which was extinct, was reintroduced, and is now found only in very limited patches of the state.  Still, the quality of the exhibits was incredible and the scenery was gorgeous.

The main zoo may lack the panache of California Trail, but still features some excellent exhibits (as well as a few less excellent ones).  It's divided roughly into four regions - Africa, Tropical Rainforest, Australia, and the Children's Zoo.  The Australia area I was forced to miss out on - it was actually closed at the time of my visit, because it was only accessible via a train ride.  I'm been told that it houses emus and wallaroos.  Tomorrow, I'll recap the other three regions of the zoo.

Oakland Zoo