Recently I visited Northwest Trek which is a wildlife park for animals that are native to the Pacific Northwest. While there I saw loads of herbivores but all the scary “interesting” animals were hiding. I guess the point of Northwest Trek is to see animals in their real habitat, where they have loads of places to run, play and hide. And they hide very well. So all in all it was a bit disappointing.
So you can imagine my surprise and delight when we went to Woodland Park Zoo and saw some of the carnivores we missed at Northwest Trek. Now a lot of people say that zoos are cruel, that the animal cages are too small, and it’s wrong to cage and display wild animals. Well all that may be true, but you get much better pictures.
Joking aside I feel the same way, you get the impression that all the animals are either “very sad”, or quite mad. There is a lot of pacing up and down and I did feel bad for them. But the Grizzly enclosure was quite large, it had a cave and small stream for the bears. I guess the question is how much work towards conservation and animal safety and rehabilitation does the zoo do. If a number of the animals are rescued I guess it’s better than being injured or worse.
The bear in the picture below was walking back and forth (pacing) between it’s cave and the edge of the enclosure where I captured this shot.
The guys wanted to play Mancala tonight. Master Chief was doing rather well, much to Carters disappointment.
