Amazonia Taking Shape
By: Import User
Updated: October 4, 2007
A company called Cemrock is giving life to Mesker Park Zoos Amazonia exhibit, creating life like trees, rocks, moss, even riverbanks and mud, using sprayed concrete. The work is giving helping shape the exhibit, which until now was mostly steel and glass.
Zoo officials gave local media a chance to explore the inside of the exhibit, which will open in June of 2008. It is a multi-level display, taking visitors from the canopy of a rain forest where tropical birds live, through the middle of the trees where frogs, bats and cockroaches are plentiful, all the way to the forest floor, where a jaguar, tapirs, and camen will be on exhibit.
Zoo director Dan McGinn says its the only tropical rain forest display of its size and scope in the nation. It also represents a new way of thinking in zoo displays. It represents an entire ecosystem, and helps visitors understand how animals exist in their natural habitat.
