Zoo Hopes Expansion Will Be a Howling Success : Wildlife: A plan has been unveiled to transform the Santa Ana facility into a South American zoological theme park, beginning with an island habitat for howler monkeys.

When millionaire businessman J. E. Prentice--who kept pet monkeys in a two-story cage on the back porch of his Santa Ana home--donated 12 acres of his back yard to the city for a zoo in 1949, he stipulated that the facility provide a permanent home for at least 50 monkeys.

The recently unveiled, 10-year, $10-million expansion plan for the Santa Ana Zoo in Prentice Park aims to be successful in honoring that stipulation--howlingly successful, in fact, with the creation of a lush tropical-island habitat for black howler monkeys. The $800,000 primate center is the first phase of the transformation of the small urban zoo into a compact South American zoological theme park.

“We want visitors to come in and forget they’re in Orange County,” said Claudia Collier, the zoo’s director.

Also on tap are plans to make the zoo, which attracted 240,000 visitors last year, more visible via marketing and advertising.

“A lot of people don’t know there is a zoo here,” Collier said. “We’ve had kind of a low profile.”

The expansion plan was developed over a 14-month period by a task force that included zoo officials; Friends of the Santa Ana Zoo; and city planners, engineers and department heads, as well as local firms and national zoo consultants.

Ultimately, the plan calls for phased construction of a series of South American habitats--called “biomes”--ranging from a steamy, Amazonian rain forest to a frigid Patagonian desert, linked by waterways, according to zoo officials. Other biomes on the drawing board are different types of tropical rain forests and savanna areas.

The Santa Ana City Council will consider the expansion plan at its regular meeting Monday. The city, which has expanded the park to 20.5 acres over the years, maintains and operates the zoo, just off the Santa Ana Freeway at 1st Street.

Most of the funding for the transformation will come from private sources and government and foundation grants, backers say, but the city will face increased costs as the park expands and moves away from its current setup of corrals and rows of metal cages.

The zoo was built in the 1950s, Collier said, and “since then, we’ve learned that there are more important things than keeping (the animals in) a sterile environment.”

The new habitat design, she said, is aimed at “making the animals feel more at home.”

Joining the howler monkeys, who will make their homes on braced dead tree branches on the 34,000-square-foot island, will be capybaras, 100-pound South American rodents that look like Gargantuan guinea pigs, who will swim in the 20-foot-wide moat surrounding the island. Groundbreaking for the island is set for late 1991, zoo officials said.

The next phase calls for a $1.7-million Patagonian desert shoreline, featuring llamas and penguins from southern Argentina and Chile.

While the zoo hopes to more than double the number of animals it has--to about 1,000--as part of the transformation, some of the zoo’s existing animals will be eliminated. The animals from Asia, Africa and Australia--gibbons, macaques, swamp wallabies, dik-diks and emus--will be sold or traded to other zoos. The popular weekend elephant rides “will probably go eventually,” Collier said, although they will be “one of the last holdouts.”

Some of the exhibits will be modified, according to Collier. The petting area, which now features such farm animals as rabbits, sheep and goats, will be replaced by a South American village area with domesticated species like llamas. The children’s playground area, now located near the gift shop, may be integrated with zoo exhibits, Collier said. For example, a cargo net for climbing may be placed near a spider exhibit.

Before he died in 1959, founder Prentice became so disenchanted with the zoo’s lack of growth that he took the institution out of his will.

“I believe the master-planned improvements will make Mr. Prentice’s dreams of a top primate collection at Santa Ana Zoo a reality,” said Mary Green, a Friends of the Santa Ana Zoo board member. “It’s something he would have loved to have seen.”