Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by Elizabeth Bacher, Communications Photos by Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo "Hello down there!" The view from the top of the trees in the east gorilla yard includes the Olympic range and the top of Space Needle. On behalf of our gorilla keepers and the gorillas themselves, we’d like to send a heartfelt thank you and shout-out of gratitude to our AMAZING Exhibits team! This talented crew has spent nearly a month refreshing the structures in the east yard where western lowland gorilla Kwame and his family spend much of their time. (The gorillas spent time in their indoor and outdoor behind the scenes areas while the Exhibits team worked their magic.) The exhibit refresh included repairing and repainting two huge trees (25 and 30 feet tall), restringing hundreds of feet of vines and installing new hammocks for the gorillas to lounge on. On the left, a member of our Exhibits crew works on a platform supported by special scaffolding to put the finishing touches on...

Posted by: Bridget Dunn, Communications “Is that a metal detector?” “Does that thing track sound waves? “Are you with Google Earth?” Photo: Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo. These are all questions that have been aimed at Michael Bradshaw in the last few months.  So what is he doing wandering Woodland Park Zoo grounds with a GPS and 7’ pole? You’ll probably never guess: He’s mapping trees! Bradshaw, a forest science grad student at the University of Washington, is part of a project the zoo is very excited to finally tackle: creating a full inventory of the trees around our campus. This project will assess the health of our large urban forest through the evaluation of every tree on our grounds. Bradshaw is mapping trees and taking notes on their health, which is the first of three stages of this project. He does this work with special GPS mapping equipment which is accurate within 4-12”. This information is overlaid with other information about the zoo ...