The Habitat

The Visitor Experience

Flaherty Learning Center

Support & Impact

Fast Facts

Fast Facts

Unique Facts About Congo Gorilla Forest

• Congo Gorilla Forest holds the distinction of being the largest African rain forest ever built.
   
• The exhibit focuses on the Central African rain forests, which are the second largest on earth, and are now subject to new deforestation and bushmeat consumption pressures.
   
• Congo Gorilla Forest is a new kind of participatory exhibit. Visitor's exhibit entry fee provides an opportunity to choose how they actually want to save animals' rain forest habitat in Africa. All voted dollars go directly to conservation projects in Africa.
   
• This exhibit directly connects to the largest team of NGO scientists/conservationists currently in Central Africa working to save wildlife. In 1959 WCS's eminent Dr. George Schaller led the first field studies of gorillas in the wild. In 1979 WCS's Drs. Amy Vedder and William Weber, to help the Rwandan government, established local education programs and Mountain Gorilla ecotourism programs that became a primary exchange generator to save this endangered species. Currently, WCS supports over 50 projects in seven countries in Central Africa - saving gorillas, primates, forest elephants, okapi. WCS has helped local governments create 10,000 square miles of reserve in Central Africa since 1959.
   
• Congo Gorilla Forest is BIG — spanning 6.5 acres.  The visitors' exhibit trail is approximately 1/3 mile long.
   
• What animals can be seen in Congo Gorilla Forest? Currently, home to 22 lowland gorillas, including Pattycake, the first gorilla born in New York City; and silverback Timmy, who sired with Patttycake, rare lowland gorilla twins in l995 (19 gorillas on exhibit with three youngsters in an "off exhibit" nursery). Okapis, red river hogs, mandrills Wolf's and DeBrazza monkeys, great pythons, hornbills, jewel fishes, butterfly and electric fishes, giant beetles, millipedes, termites and many more — 75 species in all. Two species of rare fish are extinct in nature.
   
• It's a new kind of interactive learning experience including participatory, high-tech, video, film, and CD-ROM exhibits to amplify the animal experiences for educational impact; "Read my lips" which explains how and African Pythin seeks out its prey; "Find the camouflaged fish"; "Who ate the crocodile eggs?"; "Discover the mandrill mystery"; etc. Congo Gorilla Forest is the first exhibit on wildlife conservation: How is it done? Who does it? Personal involvement — its challenges and successes. Visitors can see the WCS equation:
   
  Discover animal needs
  + Involve local people
  + Protect wild places
  = Saving Wildlife
   
• Unique Flaherty Learning Center: at the heart of the forest with views for teachers and school children from The Charles Hayden Foundation Treetop Lab into an aviary, guenon monkey, and the Judy and Michael Steinhardt Mandrill Forest exhibit. The Bodman Foundation Congo Lab overlooks gorilla habitats with very special encounters. Major funding for exhibition and a broad range of Congo-related material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9614738.
   
• Curricula for children, teachers and parent workshops expands WCS's leadership role in education, reaching nationally and internationally to 15 nations.
   
• 15,000 living plants of more than 400 species — hardy giant bamboos, great leafed magnolias, temperate members of ebony and mahogany families — all seamlessly intertwined among ten miles of fabricated vines, great fabricated trees (epoxy, steel and urethane) replicas of giant Ceiba trees, stilt rooted Uapacas, trees damaged by elephants. Micro-climatic adjustments allow rare plants to survive outdoors in New York winters.
   
• The wood used in Congo Gorilla Forest is all North American sustainable harvest. Interiors of the building are from second growth black cherry and the timbers at the entrance to The Flaherty Learning Center are of red cedar.