Zoo Review: Dickerson Park Zoo, Part I

For our next review, we continue to ramble through the south-central US with another big-town/small-city animal park.  Founded in 1922, the Dickerson Park Zoo is located in Springfield, Missouri.  For the first half of its history, it was a fairly small, ramshackle facility, coming close to closure more than once, before being reinvigorated in the 1980s.  While I don't know if I would have gone too far out of my way to visit this facility, Springfield not being a location I would usually find myself in, I happened to be in the area and decided to make a detour to combine it with Wonders of Wildlife.  I guess Dickerson Park also held some appeal to me simply because I knew very little about it (apart from it being in AZA), so I didn't know what to expect.

The zoo is broadly divided into geographic zones, the first which I encountered being South America.  At many faculties, South America is synonymous with the Amazon, and is usually represented by a rainforest building with the same handful of free-flying birds, some small primates and sloths and turtles, and maybe a side exhibit or two for one of the larger (for South America) species.  The area at this zoo was completely outdoors (as was almost the entirety of the facility).  The trail looped pleasantly around a calm lagoon, fed by a waterfall, meandering through a wooded section of the zoo.  There was an enclosed aviary for Chilean flamingos and other wading birds, yards for maned wolves and Chacoan peccaries, and a series of exhibits of varying size for different primates and parrots.  The exhibits were nice enough, and made a good first-impression for the zoo.

South American gave way to Australia, the smallest of the sections, as it is in most zoos.  Here, it consists of a paddock of kangaroos and emus, as well as a side-aviary of kookaburra.  The area was then tied to a small petting zoo of goats.  I'll admit, I have this area a pretty cursory glance before moving on.

Nearby are the Missouri habitats - decent in quality, but somewhat unsatisfying.  The focus was almost solely on Missouri's larger mammals, and especially the carnivores.  Included among these were black bears and pumas, gray wolves (the Mexican subspecies, not native to the area, but in support of the breeding program for this endangered subspecies) and North American river otters, with underwater viewing.  There was also a paddock of white-tailed deer and wild turkeys.  The exhibits were all nice enough, but I was disappointed at the exclusion of the smaller residents of the Show Me State.  A little building with native herps and invertebrates?  An aviary?  An aquarium of Missouri River fish?  Any of these would have been an excellent addition to the exhibit.

We'll look at the rest of Dickerson Park Zoo tomorrow.