Vancouver Tourism: Greater Vancouver Zoo

Need something to do on a sunny day in the Metro Vancouver area? How about head out towards Aldergrove and visit the Greater Vancouver Zoo? A great place to take the family for the day, or even to venture on a photowalk. The Greater Vancouver Zoo is home to a variety of local and remote animals such as the African Lion, Siberian Tiger, Roosevelt Elk, to even Robyn’s favorite critters; the Cappabera.

If you are looking to go to the Greater Vancouver Zoo, head East on the #1 (Trans Canada) Highway until you hit Exit 73 or 264th Street. From there it is roughly 5 minutes south and on your left hand side.

Robyn, her Mum and I headed over to the Greater Vancouver Zoo on Sunday. We left first thing in the morning to get to the park by the 9:00 AM opening. The skies were overcast with a forecast of sunny breaks. We arrived with very little cars in the parking lot and went pretty much right on into the park after paying out $20 entrance fees along with the $4 parking fee.

Now I could go into all the different aspects of the zoo itself, such as the concession stand, the amphitheater, and all the various wildlife you can see in their respected enclosures, but you can just head over to their website for more information. I just want to share some of my photos along with my thoughts about the Greater Vancouver Zoo.

There are a few peacocks on the property, including an albino one. I miss the days where heading to the Vancouver Aquarium and seeing the peacocks everywhere though. Pretty loud birds actually, but the male’s display of feathers is pretty amazing. So colourful and large! How do they keep them up when they walk around without tipping over, the World may never know!

Some people might not know the significance of the above photo, but I do. My Dad, older sister and myself attended Expo ‘86 and seeing the various bits and pieces of Expo in various locations around Vancouver makes me smile. They have a few of these wire-mesh benches around the park.

There are two Cappabara’s in the Zoo and these are also Robyn’s favorite animal (or should I say rodent?) to see. They are truly massive critters but they weren’t very entertaining that day. We came back later to find them no where in sight. Perhaps, if we go back we will see them walking among the Mara that share the same enclosure.

There seems to be two hippopotamuses at the Zoo now, well we only saw two. The zoo also has recently (well not sure how recent) updated their enclosure to better suit these gigantic water mammals. When they float in the water, they look pretty fake. You can see though how they can be dangerous in the water. They are quite good swimmers and have a massive mouth!  It’s too bad that they have had some bad luck at the Zoo though, but these two that we saw seemed to be in much better health than the one I remember seeing a few years back.

These little pigs are currently the Zoo’s best escape artists. They can squeeze through the fence to where the grass is greener. They didn’t seem to venture too far away and would wiggle themselves back through. According to one of the Zoo Keepers, they won’t be able to fit through the fence in a week or two. They sure were cute, but smelly little things.

I am a big fan of raptors. There was a handful of volunteers walking around with various birds of prey. The Greater Vancouver Zoo has a Bird of Prey demonstration a few times throughout the day at their amphitheater that help educate families about what they do as well as ways to ensure their survive as we encroach upon their lands.

Now I remember the last time I went to the Zoo that the Arctic Wolves were in temporary chain-link fenced enclosures. It is nice to see them in their new larger, open enclosure. Unfortunately, with them not being in their natural habitat, they don’t look all too impressive. To me, they just look like big white dogs.

Now the Arctic Foxes are cute; these guys were currently loosing their winter coat which is pure white. They become brown as the season changes to summer too. I forgot how small foxes were, but the ones we saw were pretty playful and looked happy.

Now one of the bigger attractions to the Greater Vancouver Zoo is probably the large cats. Here a lioness paces back and forth along the fence during the public feeding display. There are currently 3 lionesses and one male lion. The mother lioness was put away as she tends to steal the food from the others. The male lion was pretty lazy and just was hand-fed at the fence. The zoo keeper would toss chucks of raw beef into the enclosure and the lionesses would chase after it.

They put the meat up to the fence in front of the gathered crowd at the same time each day. They also do this for the Siberian Tiger, but it seems he has become lazy and knows he get’s fed either way so he doesn’t seem to come out during the public feeding time. I remember when he would pose like the lionesses in the above photo. The lions were just not as impressive as the tiger is.

Overall the experience walking around and seeing the various animals is pretty good. I personally don’t like the chain-link fence enclosures but I guess it is less expensive than using glass or building the enclosure lower into the ground. It definitely makes it harder to photograph the larger animals such as the big cats as the fence gets in the way; safety first huh?

You cannot get close enough to the chain-link fence to make it ‘disappear’ in the photograph. In the above photo you can still see the chain-link but it is almost completely gone. I would love to do an African Safari, though I would have to invest in some serious glass to get close enough for in the wild shots similar to the above photo.

Now I am sure there are pros/cons on city Zoos. There are numerous aspects of the Greater Vancouver Zoo I do not agree with, but at the same time, they can also provide educational services to people who would typically not see these great creatures in their natural habitat. How often do little kids get to go to Africa to see lions? At the same time though, when do African lions see snow?

There is another facility nearby that some people confuse with the Greater Vancouver Zoo and that is the Mountain View Conservation Centre. It too is an extremely cool place but is not accessible to the public unless you book a tour with them. Too bad when I was there, I didn’t have a camera with me as there are some really interesting species.

As always, you can check out my Vancouver Zoo photoset on Flickr as well for more photos.

If you have been to the Greater Vancouver Zoo, what do you think about it? What is your favorite animal to see? If you have not been to the Vancouver Zoo, which zoo(s) have you been too? Robyn and I are looking forward to venturing south of the boarder to visit the Woodland Zoo in Seattle sometime this year.