On the plateau at the highest areas of the zoo, you will find vast enclosures with herds of large herbivores. Several of the species kept here were once on the brink of extinction, and their survival depends on dedicated conservation efforts.

The American and European bison, and their last-minute rescue, are particularly well-known conservation success stories. Also worth your attention are the unusual relatives of pigs—the Chacoan peccaries from South America, once thought to be prehistoric, extinct creatures until their rediscovery in the 1970s. Wild camels, on the other hand, are so critically endangered that you won’t see them in zoos at all; instead, their domesticated Bactrian counterparts serve as ambassadors for the species in the Prague Zoo’s Plains.

Other animals within the zoo’s Plains are no less interesting, whether it is the tropical brow-antlered deer—with fawns typically born in autumn here in Central Europe—or the mountain-dwelling takins, animals that appear to be somewhere halfway between goats, sheep and musk oxen. Smaller inhabitants of the Plains include the ever-popular prairie dogs, found in the enclosure next to the American bison, and the graceful Canada geese.

Some of the Plains species are also supported in the wild by Prague Zoo. Zoo-born European bison have repeatedly been released to bolster wild populations in Poland’s Bieszczady Mountains and in the Caucasus in Azerbaijan. Wild camels are supported through conservation efforts in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. Prague Zoo has also become involved in the protection of Chacoan peccaries in Paraguay.

History enthusiasts may be interested in the Plague Column standing near the bison enclosure. Erected in September 1680, it commemorates the devastating plague outbreak of that spring and summer, which claimed the lives of between one fifth and a quarter of Prague’s entire population.