At the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., orangutans casually move across wires above the craned necks of intrigued visitors. On the Wgasa Bush metrorail at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, children gape as a family of elephants clomps its way through a replicated African savanna. And at similar zoos and aquariums across the country, spectators peer through glass to watch the antics of penguins, harbor seals, and river otters.

What these visitors don’t see is that behind the scenes zoos are undertaking their most essential work—multifaceted efforts to save endangered species. Some of these creatures are nearly extinct in the wild. A fortunate few have been brought back from the brink—in large part because zoos and aquariums have forged strong alliances with the governmental agency charged with overseeing the welfare of imperiled species in the United States, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

These partnerships are crucial chiefly because zoos have the expertise to breed animals in captivity, while FWS manages the world’s only national network of public lands set aside specifically for wildlife—the National Wildlife Refuge System, which celebrates its centennial year beginning in March. Made up of some 100 million acres with more than 535 refuges and thousands of small prairie wetlands, the refuge system protects hundreds of wild species. Without it, says Will Waddell, coordinator of the species survival plan for endangered red wolves at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Wash., “we’d be breeding animals only to save them in captivity.”

Also because of the refuge system, public lands are available to manage recovery efforts for designated species. “Private lands are also an important consideration for species recovery, but some private landowners may have concerns with carnivore reintroduction,” he adds.

Crying Wolf

When FWS asked the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium to establish a captive-breeding program in the 1980s, only 14 red wolves were left in existence. But following the success of the program, by 1987 FWS had begun reintroducing red wolves back into the wild. Today, roughly 100 roam in northeastern North Carolina, including the Alligator River and nearby Pocosin Lakes national wildlife refuges, thanks to more than 30 organizations that joined in recovery efforts by offering to care for and manage red wolves. “It’s fair to say that without this partnership between FWS and zoos, red wolves would’ve become extinct,” says Waddell.

Last May, the North Carolina Zoological Park provided two captive-born red wolf pups to FWS to place into the den of a wild wolf female. She accepted them as her own, raising them alongside her two wild-born pups, a first for the program. “Participants in the captive-breeding program are vital to red wolf recovery,” says Bud Fazio, FWS team leader for the red wolf recovery program, who praises the zoos for “maintaining the red wolf population long enough for [FWS] to develop and implement an effective plan to restore red wolves to the wild.”

But things weren’t always so symbiotic. “There was a time when both sides had their own turf,” says Waddell. Zoos dealt with captive animals and FWS focused efforts on managing wild populations. “Over time, it became apparent that the two sides needed to combine their efforts if we were going to conserve animals in the wild,” he says.

A good example is the captive breeding of Andean condors. FWS tried its own breeding program at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, but it didn’t work because they didn’t have the necessary resources to manage such a massive effort on their own. However, the unfortunate lesson later paid off for California condors. “Instead of trying to breed these condors themselves, FWS turned to zoo experts for help,” says Mike Wallace, a biologist at the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park.

Soaring Success

These giant birds with nine-foot wingspans teetered on the brink of extinction for mostthe past century. In the early 1980s, fewer than 30 remained in the wild. FWS captured the last free-flying condor in 1987 in a final effort to save the species. For the first time since the Pleistocene era, condors no longer soared over North America. But thanks to the expertise of biologists at the San Diego Zoo, California condors bred successfully in captivity beginning in 1988. The following year, other zoos took on the challenge, and by 1993, five condors were back in the wild. The program continues, with a staging ground for releases located at Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in California, and has succeeded beyond the expectations of FWS and zoo biologists.

Another species that owes its continued existence to collaborations between zoos and FWS is the whooping crane, the Earth’s tallest flying bird. Habitat destruction and hunting reduced whoopers, rarest of the world’s crane species, to about 20 birds by 1941. Today in the wild they number 280, the result of another captive-breeding effort undertaken by four breeding facilities in North America, including the Calgary Zoo and the San Antonio Zoo. Since the late 1990s, the zoos have provided chicks for releases into the wilds of the refuge system.

Whooping cranes are difficult to reintroduce because they learn migration routes from their elders. If a population dies out, knowledge of the route dies with them. But in 2001, a small flock reintroduced into Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin became the first of its species to migrate along the Eastern Flyway since the late 1800s. They flew to wintering grounds in Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida behind ultralight airplanes outfitted with crane puppets that they were conditioned to think were their parents. The following spring these captive-raised whoopers glided back to their summer grounds without any human support “It’s a remarkable success story,” says Axel Moehrenschlager, head of conservation research at the Calgary Zoo. “A lot of reintroduction programs aren’t so successful. We’ve been very fortunate with whooping cranes, but we are still continuing to do research in the hopes that we can boost the numbers released into the wild every year.”

The saving of endangered species is a daunting, overwhelming task, says Winston Card, conservation program manager for reptiles, amphibians, and aquatics at the Cincinnati Zoo. But zoos have an opportunity to make a great impact, especially when they pool their resources and don’t compete with one another. “There are so many problems and so few solutions,” he says. “Neither FWS nor zoos could tackle this alone. We need each other.”

Often the first step zoo personnel take to get involved in endangered species conservation is attending a national or regional American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) meeting. “There are plenty of opportunities for zoo professionals to talk to colleagues and get great advice,” he says.

Ensuring a successful partnership means a constant and honest exchange of information, says Peter Tolson, director of conservation at the Toledo Zoo. When working with other zoos and FWS, the Toledo Zoo sent out reports nearly every day about the progress of its Karner blue butterfly captive-breeding program—even if the news was bad. “Not everything goes well all the time,” says Tolson. “If we had unexplained deaths, we didn’t want to cover it up because someone else might have a solution to our problem.”

According to Dave Harrelson, a biologist with FWS’s endangered species program, the partnerships that have formed between AZA-accredited zoos is one of the most productive collaborations for FWS when it comes to endangered species recovery. “It’s not just because zoos do captive breeding, it’s because they are involved in other things that include research and public outreach,” he says.

Zoo Evolution

Zoos have come a long way since their origins as a purely entertainment-driven undertaking in the late 1800s. During the second half of the twentieth century, more enlightened zoo administrators began to consider their organizations as modern Noah’s Arks that, through captive-breeding programs, would rescue species from an approaching flood of extinctions. But in the past decade or so, even that paradigm has shifted. While captive-breeding programs remain essential, “the real logjam,” says Cheri Asa, director of research at the St. Louis Zoo, “is finding safe places to put the animals in the wild.” Further, says Waddell, “the idea is not to get to the crisis point where we need to pull animals out of the wild to save them. It’s always better to conserve habitats and animals together.” That’s why zoos are taking yet another step, beyond the Ark approach and toward helping to protect animals in the wild.

The Toledo Zoo joined forces with a variety of groups including FWS, local governmental agencies, and The Nature Conservancy (TNC), to help recover the Karner blue butterfly, extirpated from its range in Ohio since 1988 because of habitat loss. Today, 200 to 300 flutter across TNC’s Kitty Todd Preserve in Swanton, Ohio. After helping replant lupines—the food of butterflies’ larvae—and uprooting invasive trees, the Toledo Zoo has successfully reintroduced nearly 1,350 captive-hatched blues since 1998.

“It was a project carried out strictly for conservation’s sake,” says Tolson. “We don’t even display the butterflies at the zoo. We gain nothing from it except the knowledge that we’ve helped recover a species to its former range.”

Another example that illustrates how zoos are shifting toward a more holistic approach to conservation is at the Cincinnati Zoo, which built a place for endangered manatees to recover after life-threatening injuries with boats. “FWS has no facilities to house animals that need rehabilitation, but we have the space and the expertise to care for the manatees until they recover and can be released back into the wild,” says Card.

Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando has a similar program for manatee rehabilitation. Disney also works with FWS to help rehabilitate injured sea turtles and monitor turtle nesting on beaches. “We have one of the country’s most active sea turtle beaches on the east coast of central Florida,” says Kim Sams, Disney’s manager of conservation initiatives. “Recently we partnered with FWS to monitor turtle nests near our Vero Beach resort to see how many turtles nest and how many eggs are laid and hatched.” Back at the park, the zoo educates people with displays that show them what a turtle’s nest looks like and where turtles go when they are at sea.

“One of the things we’re really passionate about is helping people change their behaviors,” says Jackie Ogden, Disney’s director of animal programs. “We spend a fair amount of time getting people excited about creating backyard habitats for wildlife, and we thought that helping FWS celebrate the refuge system’s centennial would be a great way to remind guests that there’s a refuge in their backyard.” Adds Sams, “We’re jumping into the refuge system’s centennial celebration in a huge way.”

More educational collaborations between FWS and zoos are on the table, says Michael Hutchins, AZA’s director of conservation and science. “As zoos gather more volunteers, they can become more directly involved in local conservation in their communities.” He also says he hopes that one day zoos and aquariums will have programs that take people to see endangered species in the wild at refuges instead of at zoos. “The objective is to get people away from TV to experience wildlife, not on the Discovery Channel but by getting their hands dirty,” he says. “We have a chance to help people experience real nature instead of virtual nature.”



Along that line, AZA recently launched its Butterfly Conservation Initiative, a way for zoos to get people in their communities involved with endangered species recovery in their own backyards—tearing out invasive plants, planting host plants for butterflies and caterpillars, and even going on butterfly counts. Already 44 of AZA’s 208 member organizations have signed on, says Ruth Allard, a biologist and coordinator of the program. “When you say endangered species conservation it has a ring to it,” says Allard. “People think big and exotic. But this helps zoos show people that there are ways to make a difference locally.”

She says that zoo staff members also get excited about the chance to help out close to home, and FWS researchers are often amazed to have such a resource at their fingertips. “Here are people who work at zoos who either know what they’re doing or are otherwise very receptive to training,” says Allard. “It’s fun to watch the connections being made. Someone from FWS will call and say ‘We have this project coming up, do you know of anyone interested in helping?’ and although there may not always be enough money to go around, zoos at least have the people, the interest, and the enthusiasm to get things done.”