San Diego Zoo
The San Diego Zoo is a zoo in San Diego, California, United States, located in Balboa Park. It began with a collection of animals left over from the 1915 Panama–California Exposition that were brought together by its founder, Dr. Harry M. Wegeforth. The zoo was a pioneer in the concept of open-air, cage-less exhibits that recreate natural animal habitats.
The zoo sits on 100 acres of land leased from the City of San Diego. It houses over 12,000 animals of more than 680 species and subspecies. It is the most visited zoo in the United States; travelers have cited it as one of the best zoos in the world.
Its parent organization, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, is a private nonprofit conservation organization and has one of the largest zoological membership associations in the world. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance also operates the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
History
The San Diego Zoo grew out of exotic animal exhibitions abandoned after the 1915 Panama–California Exposition. Harry M. Wegeforth founded the Zoological Society of San Diego, meeting October 2, 1916, which initially followed precedents set by the New York Zoological Society at the Bronx Zoo. He served as president of the society until 1941.A permanent tract of land in Balboa Park was set aside in August 1921; on the advice of the city attorney, it was agreed that the city would own all the animals and the zoo would manage them. The zoo began to move in the following year. In addition to the animals from the exposition, the zoo acquired a menagerie from the defunct Wonderland Amusement Park. Ellen Browning Scripps financed a fence around the zoo so that it could begin charging an entrance fee to offset costs. The publication ZooNooz commenced in early 1925.
Animal collector Frank Buck went to work as director of the San Diego Zoo on June 13, 1923, signed to a three-year contract by Wegeforth. William T. Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoo, had recommended Buck for the job, but Buck quickly clashed with the strong-willed Wegeforth and left the zoo after three months to return to animal collecting.
After several other equally short-lived zoo directors, Wegeforth appointed the zoo's bookkeeper, Belle Benchley, to the position of executive secretary, in effect zoo director; she was given the actual title of zoo director a few years later. She served as zoo director from 1925 until 1953. For most of that time she was the only female zoo director in the world. She was succeeded as director by Dr. Charles Schroeder.
In October 1938, the zoo made ongoing national news, when, under the direction of Belle Benchley, it arranged to have two three-year old giraffes, later named Lofty and Patches, transported from British East Africa via freighter, where during their 54 days at sea they were caught in the Hurricane of 1938. The giraffes were then kept for 16 days at the U.S. Animal Quarantine Station in Athenia, New Jersey and driven cross-country over 14 days via the nascent Lee Highway on a specially customized 1938 International D-40 truck — to the zoo in San Diego. The quarantine station, the giraffes, the highway, the zoo and Benchley featured prominently in the 2019 novel, West With Giraffes. Lofty and Patches died in 1959 and 1962, respectively, both due to old age.
The San Diego Zoo was a pioneer in building "cageless" exhibits. Wegeforth was determined to create moated exhibits from the start, and the first lion area at the San Diego Zoo without enclosing wires opened in 1922.
Until the 1960s, admission for children under 16 was free, regardless of whether they were accompanied by a paying adult.
The zoo's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species was founded in 1975 at the urging of Kurt Benirschke, who became its first director. In 2005, CRES was renamed the Division of Conservation and Research for Endangered Species under newly appointed director Allison Alberts to better reflect its mission. In 2009, CRES was significantly expanded to become the Institute for Conservation Research.
The world's only albino koala in a zoological facility was born September 1, 1997, at the San Diego Zoo and was named Onya-Birri, which means "ghost boy" in an Australian Aboriginal language. The San Diego Zoo has the largest number of koalas outside of Australia.
In 2014, a colony of African penguins arrived for the first time in the zoo since 1979. They have since moved into Africa Rocks when it opened in 2017.
In 2016, Baba, the last pangolin on display in North America at the time, died at the zoo.
In October 2020, two gorillas charged at the glass of their enclosure, damaging the outer pane.
Escapes
The San Diego Zoo has had several notable escapees through the years; the most noteworthy of them is Ken Allen, a Bornean orangutan who came to be known as "the hairy Houdini", for his many escapes.In 1940, a Malayan Tapir managed to escape several times, earning it the nickname "Terrible Trudy".
In 1977, an animal control officer for the County of San Diego, Tom Van Wagner, a previous employee of the San Diego Zoo as a tour bus guide, captured a Tasmanian devil escapee in a south-central San Diego home's garage. The animal was transported to the zoo and the zoo hospital staff took possession of the capture.
In March 2013, the zoo, which was hosting a private party at the time, had to initiate a lockdown when two striped hyenas somehow got past their barriers. They were "darted with a sedative and taken to the veterinary care clinic."
In 2014, a koala named Mundu escaped to a neighboring tree just outside its Koalafornia Australia Outback enclosure. Zookeepers lured him down the tree once the park closed that day.
In early 2015, two Wolf's guenons monkeyed around outside of their Lost Forest enclosure after escaping. One of the monkeys neared a fence line off of Route 163, but was brought back to safety without injury.
Adira is a 2-year-old female red panda, who also happens to be an escape artist. Over in Panda Canyon, Adira scaled a tree in her enclosure and escaped for six hours on January 29, 2023. Luckily, Adira stayed close to home and was easily led back into her enclosure. A zoo social media account speculated, "January is the start of the panda's breeding season, which one could speculate may have been the reason for the jailbreak." The San Diego Zoo is currently breeding the red pandas because of their status being labeled endangered on the IUCN Red List; there are thought to be fewer than 10,000 left in the world. Adira and Lucas said hello to their first little cub on June 9, 2023, the first baby red panda since 2006 for the San Diego Zoo.
Features
The zoo offers a guided tour bus that traverses 75% of the park. There is also an overhead gondola lift called the Skyfari, providing an aerial view of the zoo. The Skyfari was built in 1969 by the Von Roll tramway company of Bern, Switzerland. The San Diego Zoo Skyfari is a Von Roll type 101.Exhibits at the zoo are often designed around a particular habitat. The same exhibit may feature many different animals that can be found side by side in the wild, along with native plant life. Exhibits range from an African rain forest to the Arctic taiga and tundra in the summertime. Some of the largest free-flight aviaries in existence are here, including the Owens Aviary and the Scripps Aviary. Many exhibits are "natural", with invisible wires and darkened blinds, and accessible pools and open-air moats.
The San Diego Zoo also operates the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, a nearly 2000-acre park located 30 miles northeast of the Zoo near Escondido, which features animals in more expansive, open areas than the zoo's urban 100 acres can provide. Exhibits are themed mainly around Asia, Africa, and Australia, with the five largest being 100- to 200-acre "savannas"; these mixed-species field exhibits feature grassy rolling hills, canyons, lakes, and rocky outcrops to give the animals a more naturalistic, enriching home. This approach has brought the Safari Park much-breeding success, and animals are regularly relocated between the two locations. The San Diego facilities also actively exchange animals with other zoos around the world, in accordance with Species Survival Plan recommendations.
San Diego has one of the world's largest and most diverse animal collections; however, the total number of animal species in the collection has been reduced somewhat over the past two decades, from around 860 to approximately 650. This comes as exhibits are redeveloped into more spacious, naturalistic areas, and as several animals are transitioned to the Safari Park.
The temperate, sunny maritime climate of California is well suited to many plants and animals. The zoo is also an accredited botanical garden; the botanical collection includes more than 700,000 exotic plants. As part of its gardening effort, some rare animal foods are grown at the zoo. For example, 40 varieties of bamboo were raised for the pandas when they were at the zoo on long-term loan from China. It also maintains 18 varieties of eucalyptus trees to feed its koalas.
Keepers and most other employees at the San Diego Zoo are members of Teamsters Union Local 481.
Exhibits
Monkey Trail and Forest Tales
Monkey Trails showcases primates and other animals native to the tropical rainforests of Asia and Africa. Opening in 2005, it replaced a decades-old area of exhibits known as Ape and Bird Mesa. These were some of the oldest animal "houses" still in use at the San Diego Zoo, being built in the 1930s, with little to no change until the demolition of Monkey Trails. In addition to a few small bird aviaries and a troop of siamang apes living on a treehouse in the center of a pond, the site was centered around two square buildings; these plain structures contained many small exhibits lined up, one after another, on all four sides. One of the buildings was focused on monkeys, while the other was mainly songbirds, parrots, and tropical avian species. There had been a few efforts at landscaping these cages; however, the monkeys notably lived in bleak, "prison-cell" like cages. Several Zoo members and guests left comments over the years regarding the exhibits and their lack of plant life, the lack of enrichment for the monkeys, and, mostly, the appearance of cement "cell blocks" as exhibits.Monkey Trails is home primarily to monkeys such as the Angola colobus, tufted capuchin, De Brazza's monkey, lesser spot-nosed monkey, Black mangabey, Wolf's mona monkey, and mandrill. There is also a pair of pygmy hippopotamus named Elgon and Mabel, who share their underwater-viewing pond with a large school of African cichlids and tilapia. On April 9, 2020, Mabel gave birth to Akobi, a male calf. His birth marked the first pygmy hippo born at the zoo in nearly thirty years.
Throughout the walking paths, visitors can also see West African slender-snouted crocodiles, different reptiles, and various African freshwater fish; these different animals live in a series of densely-planted paludarium- and riparium-style exhibits, complete with thick glass panels for close-up animal encounters. Monkey Trails utilized a newer concept for the displaying of arboreal animals; by making the exhibits two storeys high, with stairs, walkways, and elevators for access, the habits of animals can be observed from ground level as well as from the treetops. Some of the horticultural highlights of Monkey Trails include several massive Banyan fig trees, cycads, and a bog garden with Sarracenia, Drosera, Venus flytraps and other carnivorous plants.