Big animals on the move as Sedgwick County Zoo begins 25-year expansion project
Milkdud is moving in with his African cousin, and Mrs. Bates and Snuggles will be living next door.
Call it redevelopment, zoo style.
The next few weeks will bring moving day for animals large and small at the Sedgwick County Zoo as the state’s largest outdoor family attraction begins a 25-year process of rebuilding and expansion.
The first noticeable change will be the demolition of the second-oldest building at the zoo, a 47-year-old Asian-themed barn with a corrugated steel roof. It will be torn down to make way for a temporary entrance while the main entrance is rebuilt at twice its current size.
That will be followed by a new home for the Amur leopards and new office space for zoo staff. And a solar-powered train.
The changes will mean that Milkdud, a 1,400-pound Zebu bull native to south Asia, will be leaving the Asian barn, the only home he’s known since he was born at the zoo in 2010. He’ll be bunking with the Watusi cattle at the African Barn.
Mrs. Bates and Snuggles, water buffalo, are headed for a new space adjacent to the African Barn. Mrs. Bates, by the way, is the longest living resident of the Asian Barn, having come to the zoo in 1999.
Then there are the three yaks, Yaffa and Elena, residents of the Asian Barn since 2007 and Gus, class of 2010. They’ll move into new digs across the trail from the American Barn.
Twinkie and Wilbur, the zoo’s two Asian pot-bellied pigs, have already moved in with their porcine relatives in the American Barn. Various Asiatic sheep, chickens, geese and ducks have also been migrated to new habitats, or are about to.
Zoo staff isn’t too worried about all the moving around.
“Once they get there and get over the initial confusion, they’ll be like ‘It’s the new normal,’” said Callene Rapp, senior farm keeper.
It’s all part of the beginning of the implementation of a 25-year master plan announced last year by the county and the Zoological Society.
That blueprint calls for the eventual transformation of the zoo from a day trip for locals into a full-scale, multi-day vacation destination including an African safari theme hotel and waterpark, said David Dennis, chairman of the county commission and a member of the zoo board.
The entryway was selected as one of the first projects because the lines are too long to wait in the summer sun, he said.
The current zoo entry, circa 1971, only has enough space for four entry lanes for customers. The new entry will have eight lanes and a separate entrance for people who want to buy a zoo membership, Dennis said.
The zoo headquarters, in a remote and inadequate building north of the main zoo, will be relocated as part of the entry project and consolidated with other office space scattered around the grounds, he said.
The Amur leopards, native to southeastern Russia and northern China, are a critically endangered species that are nearly extinct in the wild.
Their zoo habitat was state of the art in 1973, but “the existing exhibit definitely needs to be replaced,” Dennis said.
And, “everybody wants a train,” so the zoo is working with Chance Rides, the Wichita-based maker of carnival rides and various types of people movers, to build a mini-railway that will be fun for the guests and help generate additional revenue for the zoo, Dennis said.
The train will resemble an 1800s locomotive, but will actually have a state-of-the-art electric drive with lithium batteries recharged by solar panels, he said.
Dennis said the zoo hopes to have those first-phase improvements done in time for a ribbon cutting to celebrate the zoo’s 50th year in the summer of 2021.
This story was originally published September 6, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
