The Visitor Experience
Upon entering Congo Gorilla Forest, visitors come upon a Colobus Monkey Forest, then a Mbuti hunting camp with ancient potshards. The pathway leads visitors through a giant fallen Ceiba forest tree for a glimpse of rare okapi and other wildlife.
 Next, a tented camp places visitors in the Ituri Forest of Zaire. The Rain Forest Trail surrounds them with a splendid horticultural showcase of tropical plants and special sound effects to enhance the rain forest ambiance. Visitors encounter clues and queries along the trail and are encouraged to use their senses, much as a WCS field scientist would when looking for animal tracks and other signs of wildlife.
The next encounter is the Judy and Michael Steinhardt Mandrill Forest and Joan O.L. Tweedy Treasures of the Rain Forest Gallery. Here, visitors are surrounded by a spectacular panorama of the forest world of mandrills, exotic Wolf's and DeBrazza's monkeys, and red river hogs. The exhibit integrates both real and man-made trees to create a canopy habitat. The gallery is a storehouse of knowledge featuring information on the diversity of rain forest animals, their adaptations to their environments; their interrelations; how scientists study them; and how local people relate to them. Some 21 interactive "learning bays" allow visitors access to try new technology, including thermal imaging, biotelemetry, and other sophisticated devices. The entire trail through Congo Gorilla Forest extends about 1,600 lineal feet of public walkway.
The Conservation Showcase encircles a huge rain forest tree nearly felled with a chain saw. Here conservation dilemmas — deforestation, resource depletion, and overpopulation — are juxtaposed with positive examples of ongoing success stories to conserve Central Africa's richest forests in ways beneficial to both animals and local people.
 In the large-screen C.V. Starr Conservation Theater, a seven minute film transports visitors to the central African rain forest, where WCS scientists are hard at work saving the African rain forest and the magnificent animals that live there. At the conclusion, the screen disappears, revealing an expansive view of live gorillas in their large outdoor habitat.
Visitors then move on to the Lila Acheson Wallace Great Gorilla Forest, the heart of the Congo Gorilla Forest. Here tall glass windows provide the closest possible views of lowland gorillas, surrounding visitors on all sides. Interactive exhibits focusing on the anatomy and behavior of gorillas and exploring their evolutionary links with humans offer enhanced learning experiences.
A glass tunnel passing through the gorillas' habitat provides a dramatic culmination to the visitors' forest exploration and leads them to the Conservation Choices Pavilion. Here, visitors for the first time ever can make a conservation choice by voting their exhibit entry fee of $3 to support a WCS project dedicated to a wildlife species and wild habitat in the Congo basin region. How can one individual actually help save a rain forest? The visitor will see in action WCS's equation: DISCOVER animal needs + INVOLVE local people + PROTECT wild places = SAVING WILDLIFE.
This is the first such endeavor of its kind at any zoo in the U.S. or abroad and reinforces the Bronx Zoo's reputation as a precedent-setting institution.
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