Tropical Wonders: Santa Barbara Zoo’s New Exhibit Is an Adventure

Imagine a miniature Jurassic Park-like adventure, an amazing world of discovery, with awesome surprises and new connections – almost as if you’d stepped into another era! Tropical Wonders, the newest exhibit at the Santa Barbara Zoo, definitely transported this California girl into the rainforests of the world! The exhibit is turning heads, opening eyes and raising awareness of the significance and diversity of life forms that seem unfamiliar but are dynamically interconnected with us. Hidden behind the entry lies an experience you won’t believe until you see it!

Within this newly designed space, Tropical Wonders features 15 animal habitats, a sensory tunnel, and a huge tropical aviary. After more than six years of planning and construction (partly due to the COVID pandemic), this exhibit opened to the public in July of this year. The interior of the building has floor-to-ceiling windows, murals mirroring tropical plants and rocks and a sensory tunnel containing rubber frogs and reptiles plus a pair of huge flamingo legs – with no flamingo! – for kids (and me) to touch and feel. The jungle frog, a Jamaican boa, an armadillo, a porcupine, the multicolored Prevost’s Squirrel and so many more rarely seen animals are all there. Along with a variety of tropical birds, the aviary contains a showstopping Headliner, the blue Palawan peacock pheasant, with its feathered crown parading like royalty around its kingdom! 

Some of the animals, such as the Grand Cayman blue iguana, the Fiji island iguana, the Panamanian golden frog and the southern three-banded armadillo, are considered endangered or threatened. These endangered species give the zoo a platform to highlight their plight and motivate others to prevent further loss. The theme of Tropical Wonders is interconnectedness of all living things – regardless of species or environment – and how that interconnectedness affects all life on the planet. 

The Santa Barbara Zoo’s Coordinator of All Animal Experiences, Whitney Roemer, whose personal passion has always been animals who make their homes in the forests of the world, was my tour guide. “Being a Michigan girl who grew up in the woods around wetlands and lakes, I was fully an outdoor feral child!” she revealed. “My dad was a sportsman with a landscaping company in the middle of nowhere, so I found my own world in the acres of my backyard.” Roemer remembers that she was encouraged to be shamelessly nerdy, collecting bugs for the bughouses gifted by her doting grandparents and being fascinated by monarch butterflies. Roemer’s hero and inspiration was Steve Irwin, Australian zookeeper, conservationist and TV personality that she emulated by presenting wildlife ‘Show and Tell’ presentations for her family captured on her mother’s VHS camera. Her dream was to be just like Irwin – surrounded by animal discoveries, conserving wildlife and preserving biodiversity.

Roemer attended Oakland University near Detroit as an integrative studies student with an opportunity to learn about tropical ecology in the rain forests of Costa Rica and Ecuador. “Something about the rain forest is so humbling, so awesome… you realize that you’re just a guest there – there’s so much life everywhere, so many sounds and colors. And you’re so very small!” She added sadly, “To know that the rain forests are disappearing as a result of man, I still wonder… how could that be possible?” Roemer changed her major to Wildlife Biology and World Media: writing, art, and photography to emphasize the importance of preserving biodiversity and ecology became her path going forward. 

On her way to pursuing her dreams, early jobs as zookeeper, teacher, and caregiver for her grandmother were the stepping stones on her way to the Santa Barbara Zoo. “Until I arrived here, I really wasn’t aware of what zoo’s actually do for conservation,” she exclaimed. “When I applied for a job, I told them my goal was to be a female Steve Irwin… and when they actually hired me, I cried happy tears the entire day.” Now, after 16 years she is still at the zoo loving every experience on her way to becoming coordinator: All Animal Experiences. As Roemer’s title suggests, her job obliges the collaboration she loves as she works to incorporate the zoo’s entire exhibit spectrum. And… Roemer still does ‘Show and Tell,’ only now for kids to see and touch with one of her tropical friends on her arm.

“The Santa Barbara Zoo is a very holistic place, a small zoo with lots of opportunities to collaborate with one another,” my guide shared on our way down the hill. “The zoo accepted me with open arms and gave me the flexibility to do what I love. There are so great many role models here, many of them female, and I continue to learn from them. To be honest, the zoo has become my backyard in the present day… all my friends are here. I love my job!”