Wild Kingdom Train Zoo is a small zoo located in Lagoon Amusement Park

Lagoon Amusement Park

Lagoon is an amusement park in Farmington, Utah, United States located about seventeen miles north of Salt Lake City. It is privately owned...

, Farmington

Farmington, Utah

Farmington is a city in Davis County, Utah, United States. It is part of the Ogden–Clearfield, Utah Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 18,255 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Davis County...

, Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Visible when riding the Wild Kingdom Train, the zoo is located on the banks of a pond. In 1967 the Animaland Train opened, taking guests past the various animal exhibits. The name of the attraction was changed around 1975 to the Wild Kingdom Train. The park has advertised the zoo as the second-largest zoo in Utah.

Animal collection

Big cats exhibited in the zoo include Siberian tigers, a jaguar

Jaguar

The jaguar is a big cat, a feline in the Panthera genus, and is the only Panthera species found in the Americas. The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The jaguar's present range extends from Southern United States and Mexico...

, and cougars. Other species include a Brown Bear

Brown Bear

The brown bear is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America. It can weigh from and its largest subspecies, the Kodiak Bear, rivals the polar bear as the largest member of the bear family and as the largest land-based predator.There are several recognized...

, Grevy's Zebra

Grevy's Zebra

The Grévy's zebra , also known as the Imperial zebra, is the largest extant wild equid and one of three species of zebra, the other two being the plains zebra and the mountain zebra. Named after Jules Grévy, it is the sole extant member of the subgenus Dolichohippus. The Grévy's zebra is found in...

, llama

Llama

The llama is a South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since pre-Hispanic times....

s, Golden Eagle

Golden Eagle

The Golden Eagle is one of the best known birds of prey in the Northern Hemisphere. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae. Once widespread across the Holarctic, it has disappeared from many of the more heavily populated areas...

, camel

Camel

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back. There are two species of camels: the dromedary or Arabian camel has a single hump, and the bactrian has two humps. Dromedaries are native to the dry desert areas of West Asia,...

s, miniature donkey

Donkey

The donkey or ass, Equus africanus asinus, is a domesticated member of the Equidae or horse family. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African Wild Ass, E...

, addax

Addax

The Addax , also known as the screwhorn antelope, is a critically endangered species of antelope that lives in the Sahara desert. As suggested by its alternative name, this pale antelope has long, twisted horns. It is closely related to the oryx, but differs from other antelopes by having large...

, kangaroo

Kangaroo

A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country...

, Fallow Deer

Fallow Deer

The Fallow Deer is a ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. This common species is native to western Eurasia, but has been introduced widely elsewhere. It often includes the rarer Persian Fallow Deer as a subspecies , while others treat it as an entirely different species The Fallow...

, peccary

Peccary

A peccary is a medium-sized mammal of the family Tayassuidae, or New World Pigs. Peccaries are members of the artiodactyl suborder Suina, as are the pig family and possibly the hippopotamus family...

, muntjac

Muntjac

Muntjac, also known as Barking Deer and Mastreani Deer, are small deer of the genus Muntiacus. Muntjac are the oldest known deer, appearing 15–35 million years ago, with remains found in Miocene deposits in France, Germany and Poland....

, Rocky Mountain elk

Elk

The Elk is the large deer, also called Cervus canadensis or wapiti, of North America and eastern Asia.Elk may also refer to:Other antlered mammals:...

, 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...

s, ostrich

Ostrich

The Ostrich is one or two species of large flightless birds native to Africa, the only living member of the genus Struthio. Some analyses indicate that the Somali Ostrich may be better considered a full species apart from the Common Ostrich, but most taxonomists consider it to be a...

 and buffaloes

American Bison

The American bison , also commonly known as the American buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds...

. In addition to the regular exhibits at the zoo, many duck

Duck

Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the Anatidae family of birds, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the Anatidae family; they do not represent a monophyletic group but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered...

s and geese

Goose

The word goose is the English name for a group of waterfowl, belonging to the family Anatidae. This family also includes swans, most of which are larger than true geese, and ducks, which are smaller....

 have made the zoo and the adjacent pond their home.

Wild Kingdom Train

Some of the exhibits such as the Siberian tiger, zebras, Fallow Deer and the kangaroos, can be seen from various paths within the park. The buffaloes currently can only be seen from out side the park along the Lagoon Trail. All of the exhibits except for the buffaloes can be seen from the train.

The ride has three steam powered engines named Houston and Merriweather (although only 2 are operational). Guests board the train at the train station located on the South Midway of the Lagoon Amusement Park. The train travels clockwise around a lagoon. The tracks go through a tunnel, past the various exhibits and the ride ends back at the train station.

Protests

The Utah Animal Rights Coalition (UARC) have stated that they are concerned with the living conditions of the animals in the zoo at Lagoon. They state that the animal cages, especially for the big cats are too small, and that most new amusement park zoos have larger habitats for the big cats. Even though the cages meet or exceed the minimum USDA standards and have passed inspections, the UARC would prefer to see these animals in a more natural and larger habitat. The coalition organized a protest in July 2000 asking patrons of lagoon to boycott the park until the Wild Kingdom ride was shut down.

Lagoon states that the park has met all of the strict regulations and has all of the required permits to run an animal park. Lagoon also disputes that the size of the animal cages are too small. Lagoon has no plans to close the zoo.