A look at the zoo’s new bear exhibit, Grizzly Ridge

“Visitors can get up within inches of the bears,” the Saint Louis Zoo curator of mammals/carnivores, Steve Bircher, says of the new $11 million renovation and home of orphaned grizzly bear siblings Huckleberry and Finley. The male and female brown bears from Montana are about 2 ½ years old and weigh more than 300 pounds each. Their new home, Grizzly Ridge, is a complete reconstruction of the original bear bluffs, which were built more than 100 years ago. The new construction preserves some of the historic back wall while doubling the habitat size to 7,000 square feet and adding features like a 4-foot-deep pool with large glass viewing and another basin with a waterfall and stream flowing into it, a den, and two enrichment trees. “These gunite trees look like real tree trunks,” says Bircher. “But there are holes for the keepers to put objects and food. It encourages [the bears] to use their natural foraging behaviors.” One hollow gunite tree will be on the outside of the exhibit, allowing kids to crawl in and view the bears through a glass window. “Humans and bears can coexist peacefully,” says Bircher.