Staying with the Story
For more than two years, this newspaper has followed plans by the Cincinnati zoo to move its cheetah breeding facilities into Warren County.
We will continue to follow developments as the zoo adds to the programs and amenities available on 650 acres the zoo owns east of I-75 and south of Ohio 63, near the Warren-Butler county line.
WHIO Reports:
Cheetahs in Warren County
Sunday, April 10.
WHIO- TV, 11:30 a.m.
WZLR-FM, 6 a.m.
WHKO-FM, 6:30 a.m.
WHIO FM/AM, 8:30 a.m.
Cheetahs are expected to be breeding in Warren County early this fall.
The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden is about to move its cheetah recovery center from the Loveland area to 650 acres it owns east of Interstate 75, near the Butler-Warren county line.
“Our intent is to be moving dirt in a month,” zoo Vice President Mark Fisher said last week during the taping of a WHIO Reports program at the Cox Innovation Center in Dayton. “Early fall, we anticipate being up and running.”
The $1.5 million cheetah recovery center will be the latest addition to a list of zoo amenities — including a wetlands, organic farm and apiary — on farm land along Mason-Montgomery Road and at Hamilton and Nickel Roads, just south of the Ohio 63 interchange at I-75.
The cheetah breeding center will not be open to the public. But in coming years, the zoo plans to build a public viewing area where people can watch the world’s fastest land animals show off their speed.
Long term, zoo and county officials talk of bigger developments, such as a conference center or botanical garden featuring animals in natural surroundings. Warren County already bills itself as “Ohio’s Largest Playground.”
The zoo's growing presence is seen as another attraction for tourists already in the area for Kings Island Amusement Park, the Great Wolf Lodge, Miami Valley Gaming racino or attractions closer to Cincinnati or Dayton.
“There’s so many possibilities,” Warren County Commissioner Dave Young said. “This could be a very large deal at some point.”
Cheetah recovery center
This week, the zoo is expected to file final construction plans for the recovery center — one of six in a network around the country, including the Columbus Zoo — designed to help repopulate the Earth with cheetahs, an endangered species.
“It’s kind of a big national computer dating system,” said Thane Maynard, director of the zoo.
Over the past 10 years, 50 cheetah cubs were born at the center in Clermont County, including five on March 8.
“We hope to have the same sort of success in Warren County,” Maynard said.
Warren County has already approved a plan for the center, subject to appeal by April 21. Through a public permitting process, the facility was designed to answer questions raised by neighbors concerned about safety, as well as the effect on property values and their rural lifestyles.
The breeding area will be cloaked by woods.
Two sets of 10-foot fences, buried three feet in the ground, are to enclose the five-acre area. Up to 16 cheetahs can be held in the facility. It will be double the size of the Mast Farm breeding center.
The project will be located on a farm donated to the zoo about 20 years ago by Dallas and Helen Bowyer.
“They loved their land. They didn’t want to see it subdivided into housing and such, so they gave it to the zoo,” Maynard said.
The farmhouse will be renovated for caretaker quarters.
Growing zoo presence
Nearby, the zoo already operates an organic farm where native plants and bees are kept near the end of Mason-Montgomery Road. The produce is fed to zoo animals and distributed through the Green Bean Delivery Service.
The zoo then plans to add a run for the cheetahs, but no definite plans have been developed for the rest of the land.
“We’re in the infancy of trying to figure out and work with the zoo on their decision on what they want this to look like over the coming decades,” Young said.
The new location is near the center of the Cincinnati-Dayton corridor along I-75, enabling the zoo to come closer to people in the fast-growing Warren and Butler counties.
“There’s very much a spirit of, ‘Wow, let’s see what we can do out here,’ ” Maynard said.
It also brings the zoo closer to the Dayton area.
“We are the zoo for Dayton, Ohio,” Maynard said. “We draw a lot from the Dayton area.”
While excited about the future, Young emphasized there was no intention of drawing away from the main zoo in downtown Cincinnati.
“The one thing we want to make perfectly clear is we have no intent of luring the zoo away from Hamilton County,” Young said.
Instead, Young said county officials hoped to help the zoo paint “this blank canvas.”
“How do we turn that into a botanical garden? How do we have a conference center there with an indigenous herd?” he mused.
Maynard said the zoo planned to build the cheetah run once the breeding center was in place.
“We’ll go from there,” he said.
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