Forest Trailhead
Find your path in the global movement
ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
Up in the Treetops, Get a New View of Your Zoo
Opening in 2026
What do animals such as Papua New Guinea’s Matschie’s tree kangaroos and Nepal’s red pandas have in common? They are the faces of forests where conservation has become a community movement. We need forests and now, with the health of the world’s forests at risk, forests need us. Only when forests thrive can nature reach its full potential as a climate solution.
Picture the stories of these animals and more in the new Forest Trailhead exhibit experience coming to Woodland Park Zoo in 2026. Following a competitive process, the zoo has selected the Seattle-based LMN Architects as principal architects with CLR Design (Philadelphia and Capistrano Beach, Calif.) as habitat designers for the project, which will be on the site of the former Day and Night Exhibits.
A New Experience
The new Forest Trailhead experience will build on Woodland Park Zoo’s global conservation work, motivate guests to act to conserve forest habitats, and feature vulnerable and endangered animals representing forests of the world, including tree kangaroos. Much-adored red pandas, colorful birds and fascinating reptiles and invertebrates will also make their home in the new forest.
According to the climate action consortium Framing Our Future, of which the zoo is an inaugural partner, protecting forests and nature can provide as much as one-third of the climate action needed to reach global climate goals by 2030. That’s why the exhibit experience will share the empowering story of the Papua New Guinea communities that have been working with Woodland Park Zoo’s Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program for over 25 years to save one of the last intact cloud forests of the world.
Guests will discover their own everyday connections to such communities and animals through the forest-friendly consumer choices they can make daily at home, in the office, at school, during a zoo visit, in their community and at the polls—to make lasting and impactful change.
Plant Your Name
Help protect forests and have your generosity recognized in our new Forest Trailhead exhibit with your gift of $2,500 or more to the Forests for All fund. Honor a loved one or reflect your love of nature for generations to come with a beautiful leaf in the new exhibit.
In 2026, Woodland Park Zoo will open the Forest Trailhead exhibit—a state-of-the-art home for forest icons like red pandas, Matschie’s tree kangaroos and kea parrots. Please consider planting your name alongside powerful forest conservation stories like our Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program that will inspire our 1.2 million annual guests to practice simple, forest-friendly choices in their everyday lives.
The Forests for All campaign and the Forest Trailhead exhibit are a window into the zoo’s next era: a community-led movement to protect, restore, and sustain the world’s forests and the species who call them home. Please join us as we chart a path forward to save forests and reimagine what a zoo can be.
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Exhibit Highlights
Canopy Path
Wander among the treetops where tree kangaroos and red pandas make their home on this two-story elevated pathway offering viewpoints unlike anywhere else in the zoo.
Image provided by LMN Architects
Trailhead Pavilion
Meet the wonders of wildlife at all layers of the forest in the Habitat Gallery featuring boisterous keas, tree-dwelling reptiles, colorful amphibians, and fascinating invertebrates.
Image provided by LMN Architects
Conservation Action
Discover how endangered wildlife is linked to your everyday consumer choices and practice forest-friendly actions at the zoo, from sipping shade-grown coffee to upcycling green materials.
Image provided by LMN Architects
Community Power
Connect to global communities in mountain forests much like the Pacific Northwest who are leading solutions to protect, restore and sustain forests for animals and people.
Image provided by LMN Architects
The Ghost of the Forest
Meet the Tree Kangaroo
A keystone of conservation and the star of our new Forest Trailhead exhibit
With the Forests for All campaign, we are reimagining Woodland Park Zoo—and catalyzing a conservation revolution. While small in stature, the Matschie’s tree kangaroo is a towering figure in our conservation work—a symbol of where we are, where we’re going, and what it looks like when we act together for animals, communities, and the forests that sustain us all.
What is a Tree Kangaroo?
Called the “ghost of the forest” by locals for its elusive nature, the Matschie’s tree kangaroo is endemic to the remote cloud forests of Papua New Guinea. With its long claws, powerful limbs, and sturdy tail, this furry marsupial is an expert climber, spending most of its time nibbling moss, ferns, and orchids high up in the forest canopy.
What is Woodland Park Zoo doing for tree kangaroos?
When Woodland Park Zoo’s Lisa Dabek arrived in Papua New Guinea a quarter century ago, the Matschie’s tree kangaroo had never been studied in the wild. What happened next ignited an entire region’s passion for conservation.
Twenty-five years later, our Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program is a global model for community-led conservation. With our partners in Papua New Guinea helping lead the way, we’ve created a program that helps tree kangaroos and local communities alike. Working together, we’ve established the country’s first conservation area, protected over 400,000 acres, and even sold more than 400,000 pounds of “conservation coffee.”
Why are tree kangaroos important?
Charming, charismatic, and rare in its own right, the Matschie’s tree kangaroo is also considered an umbrella species, which means that protecting it indirectly safeguards many other species that share their habitat. Yet due to habitat destruction and unsustainable hunting practices, only 2,500 mature individuals are believed to survive in the wild.
What’s next for tree kangaroos at Woodland Park Zoo?
Our new Forest Trailhead exhibit will put the Matschie’s tree kangaroo front and center of your experience and our hope for the future.
With a dynamic journey that brings you into the forest and up off the ground, you will come face to face to tree kangaroos all around you. You’ll also be able to dig deeper into the Tree Kangaroo Conservation program while joining with neighbors to shape what community-led conservation looks like here, and even buy conservation coffee from Papua New Guinea.
As we bring this delightful animal and all that it represents closer to our community, we will also elevate our field conservation work by establishing a new International Center for Tree Kangaroo Sustainability.
Learn more about Forests for All and make a gift to spark our movement.