Zoo Review: WCS Prospect Park Zoo

Often overshadowed by the massive Bronx Zoo, or from the famously-located Central Park Zoo, the smaller zoos of the Big Apple often slip under the public radar.  Today, we'll look at the Prospect Park Zoo located in Brooklyn, New York.   Like the Central Park and Queens Zoo, the facility, reimagined after coming under management of WCS, lacks many large animals.  Whereas Central Park is themed around climatic zones and Queens is focused on animals of the Americas, Prospect Park is loosely themed around animal lifestyles.

Visitors coming in off the Flatbush Avenue entrance will find themselves in the central courtyard of the zoo which, like its WCS sibling facilities, is dominated by a pool of California sea lions.  The sea lions are the largest wild animals at the zoo, and the feeding and training demonstrations that take place here are among the most popular memories made at the zoo.  The courtyard is surrounded by buildings which, historically, held a variety of large animals.  Some of those buildings still stand as animal houses.  Others have administrative or educational functions.

The meandering Discovery Trail loops off of the courtyard and holds most of the outdoor exhibits.  Emphasis is placed on smaller animals which can be observed outdoors year round, such as red panda, North American porcupine, and North American river otter.  Emus and dingoes hint at a previous attempt to establish an Australian theme for the area, since abandoned, while a former prairie dog exhibit, complete with pop up bubbles, houses southern pudu.  Birds are represented on the trail both on an open waterfowl pond, which attracts wild birds as well as zoo residents, as well as a small walk-through aviary.

A variety of reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, and small mammals can be seen in two buildings off of the central courtyard, Animal Lifestyles and Hall of Animals.  I feel like the theming of these buildings was a little weak, despite occasional attempts to group animals together under umbrellas, such as nocturnal, or different habitat types, or social groups.  Still, the buildings present an interesting cross-section of animals in attractive exhibits.  Occupants include small primates, mongooses, hornbills, dart frogs, bats, and lizards and snakes.  The largest habitat is the outdoor rocky yard for a troop of hamadryas baboons, viewed from inside the Animal Lifestyles building in a hallway decorated with mural scenes of life in a baboon troop.

Outside is a barnyard area, which also features a small pond patrolled by trumpeter swans.

Prospect Park might not be the most exciting facility for many visitors, especially when one considers that the Big Apple contains one of the world's largest and most celebrate zoos just a few miles away.  It could be said to be more of a children's zoo, both in terms of its design and collection.  Still, I found it to be a peaceful, pleasant, enjoyable facility, and would probably have found it even better-suited to my needs if I was looking at it as a parent rather than as a zoo enthusiast.  It has some handsome old architecture, including some elegant friezes, and a collection of animals that is diverse, interesting, and much better-suited to the limitations of the buildings than big cats, apes, and bears of yore were.

Overall, a fun, pleasant little zoo - and if you're looking for something a bit... bigger, well, the Bronx isn't that far away.

WCS Prospect Park Zoo