Big roar-out to Grizzly Coast

Article by: Star Tribune
Updated: September 16, 2009 - 9:17 PM

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The Minnesota Zoo's $25 million Russia's Grizzly Coast has been named the best new zoo exhibit in the nation.

The announcement Wednesday in Portland, Ore., during the annual conference of the national Association of Zoos and Aquariums, was a second major triumph for Lee Ehmke, the zoo's director. He also won the award in the 1990s for his highly acclaimed Congo exhibit at the Bronx Zoo, where he worked before moving to Minnesota.

"Zoos work together," he said, "but this is one area in which we do compete for bragging rights."

The new exhibit, which has drawn record attendance and spurred growth in memberships, features the Russian Far East, with sea otters, Amur leopards and wild boars in addition to its centerpiece, three grizzlies who can be seen pawing fish and fighting over the catch.

The Minnesota Zoo also won for its much less ambitious Family Farm exhibit several years ago and placed second last year for its redesigned Minnesota Trail. The zoo won no such awards before his arrival there in 2000, Ehmke said.

This year's competition was the first in which Ehmke competed against his girlfriend, Susan Chin, lead exhibit designer for the New York City-based Wildlife Conservation Society, which oversees the Bronx Zoo and others among the city's zoos. She was up for the award for "Madagascar!" whose special touches include more than 100,000 hissing cockroaches from that distant island.

"We've competed together in the same year," she said, "but never against one another."

DAVID PETERSON