We appreciate your patience as we continue working on the main entrance bridge. During repairs, we discovered additional issues that required more extensive work than originally anticipated. Unfortunately, this means the timeline for reopening has been extended into the fall. While this isn’t ideal, safety is our top priority, and we want to ensure the repairs are done to the highest standards. In the meantime, all guests will continue to enter and exit through our West Gate.

 

Our crews have officially started putting up the fencing around the worksite for the William S. Smith African Wilds complex. For the next few weeks, the guest pathways from Lost Kingdom to African Plains will be temporarily blocked off. The animals in this area, including giraffes and rhinos, will be inaccessible to guests and our giraffe feeding experience is temporarily unavailable. We’re setting up a new guest pathway, and once it’s complete, guests will have access to this area again. We’ll provide another update when the construction pathway is open for guests and our giraffe feeding experience resumes. Our team has worked very hard to minimize the impact of construction on guest experience. Once the new pathway is open only two species will be off exhibit due to construction — meerkats and southern ground hornbills.

 

Last but not least, we’re excited to announce that the construction of our Clayton and Gina Hughes Family Giant Anteater Habitat has officially begun! Kingsford, our Dexter cow, moved from his home in the Children’s Zoo to the yard behind our WildLIFE Trek Cold building. Guests can still catch glimpses of him while entering the zoo from our west entrance, on the bridge between the Trek Cold and Desert buildings and on the ONEOK Safari Train. We plan to share photos of Kingsford settling into his new space soon!

 

As always, thank you for your continued support and patience as we work building a bigger, better Tulsa Zoo!