The Denver Zoo is an 80-acre (32 ha) facility located in City Park of Denver, Colorado, USA. Founded in 1896, it is owned by the City and County of Denver and funded in part by the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). It was the most popular paid attraction in the Denver metropolitan area in 2005.
The Denver zoo was started with the donation of an orphaned American black bear. With the construction of Bear Mountain, it became the first zoo in the United States to use naturalistic zoo enclosures rather than cages with bars. It expanded on this concept with Primate Panorama with its huge mesh tents and open areas for apes and monkeys, and Predator Ridge, which has three separate areas through which animals are rotated so that their overlapping scents provide environmental enrichment. Toyota Elephant Passage (which opened on June 1, 2012) is divided into five areas for rotating the various species.
The Denver zoo is accredited by the (American) Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and is also a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA). In 2009, the zoo achieved ISO 14001 certification.
Read more about Denver Zoo: Exhibits, Other Facilities, Education and Conservation, Events
Famous quotes containing the word zoo:
“The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)