Planet Zoo 2 Wildlife Reserves: Release Guide

What a Wildlife Reserve is

In the first Planet Zoo, releasing an animal simply earned conservation credits and the animal was gone. In Planet Zoo 2 you follow it into the wild: a Wildlife Reserve is a large, natural space you rewild and look after with only a small staff, and the animals you release live out their lives there, raise young and add to the wild population of their species. Reserves appear in all three game modes (Career, Sandbox and Franchise) and are run from the Planet Hub with the rest of your zoo network.

Where the reserves are

Frontier places Wildlife Reserves in different parts of the world and has named the rainforests of Sumatra and the grasslands of the Great Rift Valley as examples. It has not published the full list yet; we add each reserve and the species it takes once they are confirmed in the released game.

Ecosystems: restoring the land first

Each reserve holds several Ecosystems, and what they can be depends on where the reserve is, for example watering holes in grassland reserves and lowland marshes in broadleaf reserves. You decide which Ecosystems to create for the animals you plan to release. Before an Ecosystem is a good home, it has to be cleaned up: remove the environmental pollution and the invasive plants, then give it the right balance of water, foliage and terrain.

Animals play different roles once they are released, such as rooting through soil, browsing on trees and hunting as predators. Filling every role with a healthy population raises the Ecosystem's biodiversity and with it the reserve's overall rating. The Planet Zoo 2 biomes page shows which animals come from each kind of landscape.

Release groups and their requirements

Animals leave your zoo in release groups, which differ by species: from single animals to breeding pairs and larger groups, depending on the species. Each species and release group has its own requirements, which can include longevity, fertility and genetic diversity; Frontier points out that this makes good animal welfare in your zoos all the more important. Your vets' research on a species is what unlocks the chance to release it at all.

The Research Network

A reserve's Research Network starts with a Research Outpost, which comes with its own Research Vehicle. Around it you place equipment to record how the animals behave: Observation Platforms, Acoustic Monitors and Camera Traps. You can build from ready-made blueprints or design your own, as in your zoo. The network raises the reserve's Biodiversity Rating, and what you learn earns Conservation Credits and unlocks higher levels of species research that help the same animals back in your zoos.

Exploring a reserve

You can drive the Research Vehicle across the reserve or get out and walk. A compass leads you to animals close by, and a camera lets you photograph their behaviour; Frontier asks you to try not to disturb them while you do.

Which animals can be released

Not every species can go into a Wildlife Reserve: Frontier says only species that have a suitable reserve can be released, and it chose each reserve's landscape for a mix of the game's animals. The online Planet Zoo 2 Zoopedia does not say which species go where. Once the game is out and two videos confirm it, each animal's page on this site will list its reserve; until then, the Planet Zoo 2 animal list has every species with its biome and home continent.