Niabi Zoo
Encyclopedia
Coal Valley, Illinois
The Village of Coal Valley is in both Rock Island County and Henry County in the U.S. state of Illinois. The population was 3,743 at the 2010 census, up from 3,606 at the 2000 census. It is mostly residential, housing families that work in or out of the greater Quad Cities Area...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, USA. It is home to over 200 species including lories and lorikeets, wallabies
Wallaby
A wallaby is any of about thirty species of macropod . It is an informal designation generally used for any macropod that is smaller than a kangaroo or wallaroo that has not been given some other name.-Overview:...
, African lions
Lion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
, Asiatic elephants and White-Handed Gibbons. One of the main attractions of the zoo is its section of the zoo called Passport to Africa. The newest addition to Passport to Africa is the Giraffe
Giraffe
The giraffe is an African even-toed ungulate mammal, the tallest of all extant land-living animal species, and the largest ruminant...
exhibit which houses 1 male and 2 female giraffes. Inside the giraffe house there are also other smaller exhibits featuring birds, tortoise
Tortoise
Tortoises are a family of land-dwelling reptiles of the order of turtles . Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise...
s, Rock Hyrax, and a Fennec Fox. The other exhibits in Passport to Africa are the zebra and ostrich yard, the aviary, the black and white colobus monkeys, and the African lions. Another area of the zoo called the Australian Walkabout which lets visitors walk inside an exhibit that features wallaby
Wallaby
A wallaby is any of about thirty species of macropod . It is an informal designation generally used for any macropod that is smaller than a kangaroo or wallaroo that has not been given some other name.-Overview:...
and emu
Emu
The Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae) is the largest bird native to Australia and the only extant member of the genus Dromaius. It is the second-largest extant bird in the world by height, after its ratite relative, the ostrich. There are three subspecies of Emus in Australia...
, the Australian Walkabout also features an exhibit called Lorikeet Landing which lets the visitors feed and interact with lorikeets.
History
In 1957, Gordon McLain purchased land located just off Route 6Illinois Route 6
Illinois Route 6 is a 4-lane freeway in central Illinois. It begins as a northern extension of Interstate 474 at Interstate 74 west of Peoria, and ends at Illinois Route 29 in Mossville, south of Chillicothe...
in Coal Valley, Illinois
Coal Valley, Illinois
The Village of Coal Valley is in both Rock Island County and Henry County in the U.S. state of Illinois. The population was 3,743 at the 2010 census, up from 3,606 at the 2000 census. It is mostly residential, housing families that work in or out of the greater Quad Cities Area...
. It took almost two years to clear the ground and construct the first building.
In 1959, Mr. McLain, a masonry contractor with an interest in exotic animals, opened the gates to the public. The McLain’s Wild Animal Farm, later named The McLain Zoo, was a family owned and operated venture.
Mrs. Charles Deere Wiman purchased the farm and additional land in January 1963. In May 1963, she deeded the farm to Rock Island County. The zoo was named Niabi, which means "young deer spared by the hunter" in the Osage language
Osage language
Osage is a Siouan language spoken by the Osage people of Oklahoma. The last native speaker, Lucille Roubedeaux, died ca. 2005.Osage has an inventory of sounds very similar to that of Dakota, plus vowel length, preaspirated obstruents, and an interdental fricative...
.
The zoo grounds cover 40 acres (161,874.4 m²), and an additional 200 acre (0.809372 km²) is set aside for native flora and fauna preservation. Niabi Zoo is home to over 900 animals representing more than 160 species. Approximately 250,000 visitors a year make Niabi Zoo one of the largest attractions in the Quad Cities
Quad Cities
The Quad Cities is a group of five cities straddling the Mississippi River on the Iowa–Illinois boundary. These cities, Davenport and Bettendorf and Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline , are the center of the Quad Cities Metropolitan Area, which, as of 2010, had an estimated population of...
. The zoo grounds also offers a playground, a train ride, picnic areas and concession stands.