Unspecified/General

The largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, the Bronx Zoo opened in November 1899 on 265 acres of hardwood forest in Bronx Park, starting with 843 animals and an explicit mission to promote wildlife conservation. It is the flagship of the Wildlife Conservation Society, formerly the New York Zoological Society, and its first director, William Temple Hornaday, ran it for three decades and helped lead early efforts to save the American bison from extinction. From the start the zoo pushed to move animals out of bare cages and into more naturalistic settings, a shift visible in landmark exhibits added over the years. The African Plains habitat arrived in 1940, the Wild Asia Monorail in the late 1970s, the climate-zoned Congo Gorilla Forest in 1999 and the eye-level Tiger Mountain in 2003, while Madagascar! reopened a historic lion house in 2008. JungleWorld, the World of Birds and a butterfly garden round out a collection that now numbers in the thousands of animals across hundreds of species. Beyond the exhibits, the zoo functions as a working conservation institution, with breeding programmes that have returned species such as the Chinese alligator to the wild and research missions that feed back into its displays. The ornate Rainey Memorial Gate, crowned with sculpted animals, marks one of the historic entrances and recalls the zoo's Beaux-Arts origins. For visitors it is large enough to fill a full day, and the scale can be a challenge: most people pick a handful of headline habitats plus a ride on the monorail or the aerial tram rather than attempting everything. Run as part of a five-park city network, it draws more than two million visitors a year, and its quieter mornings and shoulder seasons tend to make for the calmest visits. Some marquee exhibits carry an extra charge on top of general admission. Seasonal events, from a summer dinosaur trail to a winter holiday lights walk, give returning visitors a reason to come back through the year. The zoo sits next to the New York Botanical Garden, so the two can be combined into a long day out, and a children's zoo, camel rides and a 4-D theatre give younger visitors extra ways to break up the walking.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: 2300 Southern Boulevard, New York City, NY, United States

Telephone: (800) 433-4149

Website: https://bronxzoo.com/

Opening Date: 08/11/1899