FOCUS: ZOO EXPANSION
Buffalo Zoo unveils $16 million South American rain forest
Unique zoo exhibit will open Wednesday
When planning began four years ago for a $16 million rain forest exhibit that the Buffalo Zoo expects to attract visitors even in winter, the design team pictured a generic South American setting with animals from hot, humid locations near the equator.
Brazil? Ecuador? Colombia? Guyana? It could have been any of those — or all.
Then zoo President Donna M. Fernandes remembered majestic Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall, which she had visited during a 1982 trip to Venezuela.
Fernandes spent the night scouring books and the Internet, then returned to the brainstorming process armed with everything designers needed to know about the falls and the creatures that live nearby.
The result is ambitious even by the resurgent zoo’s eye-pleasing standards — a spacious South American forest exhibit flooded with natural light, beneath a replica of Angel Falls. M&T Bank Rainforest Falls opens to the public Wednesday.
The waterfall cascades two stories from mountaintop to forest floor, where visitors will trek through mist — and the occasional indoor rainbow — past exhibits of rare ocelots, giant anteaters, pacybara, dwarf caiman, vampire bats, tarantulas, poison dart frogs and howler monkeys as well as free-flying exotic birds and a water feature shared by an anaconda and a school of piranha (they get along fine).
Fernandes was starting graduate school in biology 26 years ago when she went to visit her sister, Marcia, then living in Venezuela. The sister’s husband brought up Angel Falls.
“You’ve got to see this place,” he told Fernandes.
They traveled by single-engine plane to a tiny airstrip in remote Canaima National Park. Soon, Fernandes found herself staring up at the natural wonder indigenous people call Kerepakupai — “waterfall of the deepest place.”
The water tumbles more than 3,000 feet — nearly 20 times the height of Niagara Falls — from a broad mountain crest to a basin that feeds the Kerep River. Except that the cascade doesn’t quite reach bottom. The long fall disperses the water, and strong winds at the base turn it to mist.
As she beheld this phenomenon back then, “I never thought I’d be working in zoos,” said Fernandes, now widely regarded as one of the nation’s leading zoologists.
The Venezuela experience came in handy when it was time to address how to boost visitation during Buffalo’s cold winters.
“It was really important to have something indoors so we can have year-round attendance,” said Fernandes, who is directing a $75 million reconstruction of the nation’s third-oldest zoo. The opening of Rainforest Falls, “the most expensive thing we’ll build” during the 14- year overhaul, completes Phase II.
Project funding included $4 million from Erie County, $6.75 million from the state and $5.25 million in private contributions, including the lead gift of $4 million from M&T Bank Chairman Robert G. Wilmers.
The complex was scaled back somewhat, to 18,000 square feet, after cost estimates soared from $11 million to $18 million. A third floor containing a conference room and catering kitchen was eliminated, as was a plan to steer visitors up through the simulated forest and back down in a gradual descent. Instead, views from above are provided by a second-story platform and other strategic overlooks.
The visitors center inside the entryway contains a gift shop and state-of-the-art graphics and touchable models focusing on the South American Rainforest and the animals that live there.
Sixty percent of the complex will be off-limits to visitors, including a greenhouse where plants for the rainforest and the rest of the 23.5-acre park will be grown; animal holding areas; utility rooms; and a kitchen.
The “green” heating system will recirculate and rewarm the air to a steady 80 degrees year-round, drawing in fresh air when necessary. Skylight panels can be opened to ventilate the exhibit during the summer.
The pumping system will filter, disinfect and recycle rainforest water.
Because the indoor walkways are narrow by design, strollers must be left outside the rain forest.
