San Diego Zoo

3 photos · 2011

3 photographs tagged San Diego Zoo, 2011.

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San Diego Zoo parking lot with palm trees and visitor vehicles under blue sky.
The San Diego Zoo sits in Balboa Park, with its parking areas bordered by palm trees near the park's northern edge. The zoo opened in 1916 with animals left over from the Panama-California Exposition. Hills mark San Diego's inland terrain beyond the park's rooflines and tree cover.

Rooftops and Palm Trees Above the San Diego Zoo Parking Lot

Giant panda climbs wooden structure in San Diego Zoo habitat.
The San Diego Zoo partnered with China's Wolong and Chengdu panda centers from 1996 to 2019, hosting giant pandas such as Bai Yun and Gao Gao along with cubs born on-site, including Hua Mei and Su Lin. The zoo built its habitat with climbing logs, bamboo groves, and pools to mimic the bamboo forests of China's Sichuan mountains. The program ended in 2019 when its last pandas returned to China after more than two decades of breeding and research.

A Giant Panda Climbs Among Logs at the San Diego Zoo

Four Asian elephants walk across a sandy enclosure at San Diego Zoo in California.
Elephant Odyssey is an eight acre exhibit at the San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park, built in 2009 to house the zoo's herd of Asian elephants. The habitat was designed with pools, mud wallows, and varied terrain to encourage the walking and foraging elephants do across large home ranges in the wild. Three elephants walk single file along the fence line while a younger one stays near the building behind them.

Elephant Odyssey Herd Walks Their Enclosure at the San Diego Zoo

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