Woodland Park Zoo Banyan Wilds Exhibit

Photo courtesy Ryan Hawk / Woodland Park Zoo

Since opening in 2015, Woodland Park Zoo’s Banyan Wilds has immersed more than 1 million guests in the sights, sounds, and smells of the tropical forests of Asia and brought them up close with critically endangered Malayan tigers, sloth bears, and Asian small-clawed otters. This 2-acre exhibit replaced and tripled the size of the outdated exhibits that tigers and sloth bears previously inhabited at the zoo. Evoking the setting of a conservation fieldwork site, Banyan Wilds brings to life the places where the boundaries between human settlement and untamed nature collide, making the need to share the forests urgent, hopeful, and clear. Through hands-on activities and digital media, the Field House within the exhibit shares stories of the dangerous yet heroic work of our field conservation partners saving wildlife and habitats in Malaysia’s Taman Negara National Park and surrounding forest reserves.

Note: The Miller Foundation provided funding in 2013 and the exhibit opened in 2015.