The city’s zoo is exactly three miles into the northwest suburban hills of Phinney Ridge, high above the Puget Sound and the old town Seattle fishermen’s wharves of the salty city piers. Waist-high limestone boulders and an unearthly green abundance of tree and plant species pad the puddle-soaked blacktop edges leading up to the woodsy green ticketing gates. On a daily basis, giddy tribes of elementary students wrapped in rain slickers filter out of school buses and assemble into scattered tour groups led by middle-aged chaperones sipping steaming cups of Seattle’s Best. The crisp and damp Northwest air is inviting, as school groups and families alike flock to the zoo 365 days a year to explore and learn about the exotic and rare animals in a natural, yet captive environment. The Woodland Park Zoo is the pride of its community. Aside from the zoo’s stacked deck of educational and social conservation programs, as well as its recruitment of more than 650 dedicated area participants filling dozens of positions throughout the park as docents, zoo ambassadors, and animal unit workers, the 104-year-old institute has received top honors from the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) for virtually redefining the modern-day animal exhibit. Today, Woodland Park Zoo ticks like a well-oiled environmental machine; constantly bustling with the enthusiastic activity of current and future habitats-in-progress, such as the upcoming summer 2003 jaguar exhibit and the recently added African wild dog pack. Nearly 25 years ago, the zoo surpassed its industry peers and set the standard for a new breed of animal exhibitry; now it’s just waiting for the competition to catch up. Age-Old Plans The Woodland Park Zoo was originally conceived in 1899 by a Massachusetts landscape architectural firm, the Olmsted Brothers, under the direction of the city of Seattle on the lush estate and rose gardens of deceased English aristocrat Guy Phinney. Animals for the new zoo were acquired from Seattle’s first zoo at Leschi Park, and also from a deer park that Phinney had contracted on his estate grounds. Under city management, the Woodland Park Zoo eked by, little by little, through the Great Depression; spawning beaver ponds, a monkey island, and the design of the bear and feline grottoes. By 1975, Woodland Park Zoo was desperate for some structure and creative direction. The Jones & Jones architectural landscape firm, which was hired and completed Woodland Park’s official long-range plan (LRP) in early 1976, was the avant-garde answer to the zoo’s prayers. Specifically, the LRP discussed implementing a cutting-edge design policy that focused on untouched and realistic wildlife exhibits—allowing visitors the opportunity to observe animals as closely to each species’ natural environment as possible, which entailed creating comfortable and extremely convincing habitats for the animals to interact within. From 1976 to 1979, several milestone exhibits were introduced to an unsuspecting Seattle, including the first naturalistic gorilla exhibit in the world, a project on which primatologists Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey served as consultants, and a replica habitat of an African savanna near the zoo’s South Gate entrance. Modern Appeal Currently, Woodland Park’s facility more closely resembles a wildlife refuge or a remote northwest nature center than it does an age-old city-run zoo. Once a visitor is inside its gates, the extensively themed horticulture and deliberate habitat-to-habitat climates awaken the senses, making it easy to forget that visitors are at a zoo located in a notoriously waterlogged Northwest climate and not trekking through the arid African savanna or the exotic South American rain forests—and that is the zoo’s intent. Staffers at the zoo refer to these premeditatedly contrasting milieus as “bioclimatic zones,” and these areas play a huge role in the unfolding of the zoo’s LRP and the end result of creating a more authentic environment for animals and visitors alike. According to John Bierlien, manager of planning and interpretive exhibits at the zoo, bioclimatic zones are simply the zoo’s version of diverse ecosystems that incorporate temperature and precipitation, creating “habitat vignettes” in which the animals and plant life flourish. The design team is often flown to geographic areas that the zoo plans to represent, including the Alaskan tundra at Denali National Park, to observe wildlife in person, take photographs, and interact with the people of the culture to return with a better understanding of the cultural resonance that encompasses the animals’ environments. This, Bierlien says, helps strengthen the realism and landscape immersion in their honored exhibits—specifically in the 1995 AZA Exhibit Achievement award-winning Northern Trail, “a six-acre exhibit that transports visitors to three cold, rugged regions of the far north,” according to the zoo’s web site. During their study of Alaska, the zoo’s design team realized that their hometown climate could successfully support many of the native Alaskan species of trees and plants; an aspect that, Bierlien explains, allowed them to spend more time getting down and dirty with the creative details of the Northern Trail’s aesthetic appeal. “Typically we don’t go down to the level of having a community of mosses, but in this exhibit we were able to,” he says. “We even ground mosses up in a blender with buttermilk and painted that on the tiles of the eagle viewing shelter because in Alaska you typically see roofs that are just wonderful green mats of mosses.” Because the Seattle climate is nowhere near that of South Africa, Southeast Asia, or even Australia, there are always species of plants and trees that the design and horticulture teams struggle to represent in the zoo’s many biomes. For each exhibit, a well-researched list is made of all local “simulator plants” and trees that closely resemble the exotic plants and trees found in other parts of the world. Therefore, as docent Linda Brugalette emphasizes, “It becomes the zoo’s version of what would be growing in Africa, or what would be growing in the rain forest—unless you go on a safari hiking across the savanna, this is as close as you’re going to get.” On a daily basis, guests stop to gaze out across the vast five-acre African Savanna expanse at zebras, giraffes, gazelle, and a patas monkey, seemingly co-inhabiting one all-encompassing display. Looking at this vast exhibit, it seems impossible to house several contrasting species, predators and prey, in the same display. Bierlien says it’s not so impossible—“we create an illusion.” He explains that the Woodland Park Zoo design team deliberately uses overlapping panoramic views of several different exhibits, such as the zebra exhibit and the giraffe field, to generate the feeling of a continuous landscape. Each eye-level or higher section of ground is separated by a variety of camouflaged natural barriers, including a moat, a wall, and a ha-ha—a sloping ditch with a fence or wall at its center. Choosing a specific barrier for an exhibit means knowing the animal’s behavioral tendencies and psychological inhibitions within the environment, according to the LRP. These barriers prevent the animals from getting dangerously close to each other but keep them just close enough that they can smell each other’s scents and communicate back and forth. “We try to make all of the elements of confinement concealed as much as possible,” Bierlien says, “so the beginning of the exhibit and its end are both ambiguous, and so you have a sense that you’re a respectful interloper in the animal’s wild domain as opposed to feeling like you’re looking down on the animals that are confined and you’re the captors and they’re the captives.” Getting Fresh After last year’s successful summer launch of the rare African wild dog exhibit, the zoo has been preparing for this year’s big hit—an aesthetically superior naturalistic jaguar exhibit leading into the 1993 AZA Exhibit Achievement award-winning Tropical Rain Forest zone. The new site will be roughly four times larger than the previous jaguar exhibit, and Woodland Park Zoo hopes that the added space, along with their burgeoning reputation for excellent animal husbandry and exhibitry, will eventually warrant bringing in more jaguars to breed. Because jaguars are comfortable with river watersheds and enjoy swatting down to scoop prey out of the water, a stream filled with live fish leading to a small waterfall will irrigate the exhibit, providing the zoo’s single jaguar, who has been at the facility since birth, what staffers like to refer to as “active enrichment.” The progressive development will follow in the footsteps of the Northern Trail, which offers viewers the first-ever split side view of both above and below the surface of a still body of water within its grizzly bear exhibit. “The jaguar will sometimes actually lie in the water, so having access to both a stream and a pool is a huge improvement,” Bierlien says. A sandy shoreline against a yard of live and artificial trees should provide a lush climate for the jag, and several dead logs and fallen branches will create shady areas for the feline predator to lounge and observe its visitors. Another project that the zoo highly anticipates is the addition of an exciting new species—the Indian one-horn rhino, primarily from the India/Nepal region. In their homeland, one-horn rhinos tend to convene near fertile riverbeds, but in a desolate area that has fallen victim to several devastating floods, it is not the safest place for the rare mammals to loiter—a large portion of the already dwindling species has been wiped out in its native Asian region. Although precise release plans are up in the air, says Gigi Allianic, public relations manager at Woodland Park Zoo, the anticipated rhino exhibit will open in the next few years and is one of the zoo’s next big projects. According to Bret Sellers, curator for mammals, conceptual designs for the Tropical Asia-bound rhino display are, much like the jaguar exhibit, being based on the studied behaviors of the new breed. An Indian one-horn rhino expert was asked to visit the Woodland Park Zoo and consulted with the development teams over the course of several days to educate the staff on trends in the rhino’s needs and reactions. “Indian one-horn rhinos spend more time in the water, so the recommendation is to treat them more like hippos than rhinos by providing pools for them to submerge in and get the weight off their feet,” Sellers says. He explains that each of the rhinos will be housed separately at all times, as well, due to their aggressive natures when pent up together. Sellers discusses with anticipation “the next generation Indian rhino facility,” which will begin to take shape in the next year or so and will add a whole new dimension to the already complex animal world at Woodland Park. For nearly 25 years, the Woodland Park Zoo has been the toast of the town and the country, and it’s not showing signs of stopping anytime soon—or slowing, for that matter. With passionately expanding landscape exhibitry projects that keep the “nature first” zoo at the top of the charts year-round, Woodland Park Zoo seems on an environmental quest for perfection—and at the pace that it’s going, we just might be around to see it.