Revision 6

Wildlife Reserves are a brand-new feature in Planet Zoo 2 that push play beyond the boundaries of the zoo itself. By taking on global conservation projects and meeting their requirements, players release animals into large, customisable protected spaces, returning them to a wild setting. Frontier describes a reserve as a network of entirely natural homes that runs with a minimal staff presence, rather than a second zoo.

Named Reserves

Two settings have been shown so far, each tailored to the animals it is meant to support, so the landscape, planting, and water reflect the region the released species come from.

The Scottish Highland reserve was given its own extended look in a World Conservation Day feature in July 2026, presented as a tranquil, largely unmanaged landscape rather than a built environment.

How Reserves Fit In

Reserves are designed to run with minimal staff and to host research and conservation projects whose benefits feed back into a player’s zoos, producing better habitats and stronger conservation outcomes. Together, a player’s zoos and reserves form an interconnected international network rather than a single isolated park, and that network is managed from the Planet Hub described under Game Modes.

Reserves are not a Career-only feature. Sandbox lets players build a reserve as readily as a zoo, and Franchise networks span both. Releasing an animal is the end of a chain that starts with breeding and welfare in the zoo, covered under Animals and Welfare.

Not every animal can be rewilded. Frontier has said that only species with an appropriate reserve to go to can be released, because each reserve is designed around a particular landscape and a set of animals chosen to suit it. The studio frames the roster of releasable species as something that grows alongside the reserves themselves, so which animals can be returned to the wild depends on which reserves exist rather than on the zoo alone.

Building a Reserve

Reserves use the same creative toolset as zoos, described under Building and Construction, with the emphasis on terrain, water, and planting rather than paths and facilities. Frontier frames the goal as designing, rewilding, and then observing a living ecosystem, so much of the work is landscape shaping followed by watching what the released animals do with it.

The reserves give the sequel’s conservation theme a concrete destination: animals raised and bred in a zoo can ultimately be rewilded, completing the journey from enclosure to open reserve.