Visitors here will be more fortunate. And since Dr. Schaller’s surveys of snow leopards in the Himalayas during the 1970s were done in conjunction with the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the zoo, and those surveys built awareness about this endangered species, Dr. Schaller’s tributes to it are shown at the entrances to the Allison Maher Stern Snow Leopard Exhibit, which opened on Friday. “Suddenly I saw the snow leopard,” Dr. Schaller writes. “Wisps of cloud moved between us,” causing the animal to appear and disappear “as if in a dream.”

Image CALM The companions of Zoe, left, are a male, Bo, who turns 3 on Saturday, and a 12-year-old female, Chocolate. Credit... Librado Romero/The New York Times

It is to the credit of this $10.6 million installation  the first new exhibition in the Central Park Zoo since 1988  that you can get a sense of Dr. Schaller’s excitement.

The habitats created for the animals cannot, of course, replicate the stunning vistas of their mountainous homes (which, the exhibition points out, would dwarf Manhattan skyscrapers). But the Wildlife Conservation Society has shaped miniature natural worlds that maintain the illusion.

Two pavilions, with spare panels of text, look out onto two hills, while a barely visible steel wire mesh covers these habitats like protective tents. One scene is a verdant landscape with plantings that hide most signs of a world beyond. Another is a rocky landscape with a waterfall. Mist-machinery creates wisps of cloud through which snow leopards mysteriously take shape, their lush spotted fur illustrating why poachers have so coveted their pelts.

Here, too, snow leopards can be easily seen, even coming right up to the viewing glass. It is quite different in their native home of rock and snow as a photograph on display shows, daring the stymied viewer to try to find one, so expertly camouflaged. These are not brightly colored jungle cats, but vaguely yellow-hued, spotted with white and gray. Their lives on the edges of precipices make their long tails as important as their wide paws, while their thick belly fur provides some comfort at 19,000-foot altitudes. There is a fierce calm in their stride and the strength to leap 20 feet toward helpless prey (including domesticated livestock).