â–·Seattle. We had a guided walking tour of the Northwest native trail part of the Woodland Park Zoo before opening on a Monday morning.
The Woodland Park Zoo is walkable from my house, but it's a pretty long walk, so we drove, using the complimentary visit parking code from our guide.
Penguin Parking Lot at the Zoo
Labeling parking lots with an animal seems to be a pretty standard zoo thing to help you remember where your car is parked.
The penguin sign at the lot
Our tour guide met us at the Center for Wildlife Conservation before the zoo's public opening time.
Center for Wildlife Conservation
On the way to the Northwest loop and learning center / turtle nursery is a carousel with solar panels on the south-facing roof. The zoo did a study about carousel noise affecting the animals, and added sound baffles to reduce the noise. The zoo is close to the WA-99 expressway, Aurora Avenue, so there's traffic noise anyway.
Solar panels on the zoo carousel
Visitors to the Living Northwest trail are welcomed by a statue of Bear in the Coast Salish style. A sign adds context.
art piece: Bear Invites You Into Her House
sign: Bear Invites You Into Her House
the wolf enclosure on the Northwest part of the zoo
The brown bear enclosure has two North American brown bears. One is a coastal bear, the other an inland bear. Each of them had been orphaned when young, though one had had more time with her mother.
rescued bears, foster sisters, teaching each other
The zoo does not keep a breeding population of brown bears, but acts as a refuge for bears who cannot survive in the wild.
Bears across the pond
Next to the bears are the otters. They think one is pregnant, but they haven't been able to examine her or her scat for the hormonal signs.
River otter in the next enclosure from the bears
Basecamp Northwest has educational materials about the natural ecosystems, including brief notes from local human residents, videos, and a turtle nursery.
Basecamp Northwest learning center at the zoo
bioregional sign inside learning center heal through growing food
The pond turtle nursery lets baby turtles grow until they are too big to fit in a bullfrog's mouth.
Pond turtle nursery, bigger than bullfrog mouth size
Wild eagle nest in the wolf enclosure
bronze raven statue looking like a night heron
Ravens sculpture sign placard credit
The last stop on the Living Northwest Trail was the Canadian Lynx, a distinct relative of the bobcat known in the US.
Lynx bridge between play yard and sleeping refuge
The end of the tour included some red pandas in a temporary enclosure, waiting for their public exhibit to be finished, and another nursery, this one for the Oregon Silverspot butterfly.
Silverspot Butterfly Lab for reintroduction into Oregon
Sunday, April 23, 2023
google map 
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Technical note on assembling the page: My new setup, a Thinkpad with Debian/Gnome/Wayland/Firefox, seems a little iffy for the drag-and-drop, and even keypresses for '6' and '-' in the item editor.
I finished this page using my older HP Tower with Win10/Chrome.