Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by Kirsten Pisto, Communications Need an idea for that Valentine's date? Here are eight!  Lucy will definitely be your Valentine... as long as you have grapes! Photo by Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo 1. Get a zoo membership for your loves (or yourself!) and support conservation around the world. zoo.org/membership 2. A cuddly gift with conservation benefits! Give the gift of a ZooParent adoption to help fund the care of all the amazing animals at Woodland Park Zoo and make a difference for wildlife! zoo.org/zooparent/special 3. Cupid’s favorite. Did you know that more than 2 billion plastic cards end up in landfills each year? Opt for sustainable and prevent plastic waste by buying a Woodland Park Zoo e-gift card to treat your loved ones! zoo.org/giftcard 4. Love birds! Adopt a hornbill nest in their name. Endangered Asian hornbills need our help. Woodland Park Zoo works with the Thailand HornbillProject to help prevent trafficking of hornbill chicks and supports lo...

Posted by Kirsten Pisto, Communications Saying goodbye is never easy, especially to a bird as endearing as Blueberry the hornbill. Known to some as Blue for short, she was an especially flirtatious bird who had the uncanny ability to brighten days and produce smiles. Everyone who met Blue agreed, she brought an air of auspiciousness and her love of life was only matched by her love of blueberries. Thank you for being our very special hornbill, we will miss you. Sweetest Blueberry. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo. Blueberry, our female knobbed hornbill, passed away due to chronic advanced liver disease and other age-related concerns. Blueberry was 22 years old and was considered a geriatric bird. Blueberry hatched in May 1997 at Woodland Park Zoo and was named after her favorite treat, blueberries! The statuesque bird lived in the zoo’s Conservation Aviary where visitors could see her and learn about hornbills. In 2015, she transitioned to becoming an ambassador animal...

Posted by: Dr. Randall Kyes, Global Field Training in Conservation Biology, WPZ Partner for Wildlife For more than 10 years, Woodland Park Zoo has supported the Global Field Training in Conservation Biology (GFTCB) program, a WPZ Partner for Wildlife . Through GFTCB, Dr. Randall Kyes, from the University of Washington and One Earth Institute, and colleagues in Bangladesh, Nepal, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, and Brazil have been working together to foster the next generation of global conservation leaders, training university students and professionals to be responsible for the survival of the biodiversity in their home countries. Here is the most recent news from the field from Dr. Kyes… This past summer, we completed our 13th annual Field Course in Conservation Biology at the Tangkoko Nature Reserve in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. We had 10 participants including seven university students, one ranger, and two members of a local conservation o...

Posted by: Eric Kowalczyk, Zookeeper It was a perfect day for birding weatherwise for our annual Early Morning Birdwalk at the zoo this past Saturday: temperatures in low 50s, perfectly blue skies, no wind. If only the birds would cooperate! About 30 guests met us at the zoo's South Entrance at 6:45 a.m. After a brief introduction, we split the group up into two smaller parties. One group was led by raptor keeper Tom Aversa and docent Pat Bredouw. The other group was led by me with great assistance from docents Anna Martin and Laurie Ann Dudley. We wandered around the most likely places on the zoo grounds in hopes to spot some migratory birds that have stopped here for some fattening up before their next leg of their nocturnal migration north. The total bird count was 32 species. Some of the migratory species seen/heard by at least some include: western tanager, Townsend's warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, Wilson's warbler, warbling vireo, black-headed grosbeak, white-cr...

Posted by: Jona Jacobson, Field Conservation When it comes to conservation, it takes a village. Just ask the villagers of Tapoh, Thailand. To help protect hornbills from poaching and deforestation, the Hornbill Research Foundation (HRF) in Thailand—a Woodland Park Zoo Partner for Wildlife—has been working closely with Tapoh villagers in the Narathiwat Province in southern Thailand to transition them into stewards of their own wildlife. The HRF employs local villagers and former poachers as nest guardians—guarding not only naturally occurring nests, but also constructing, installing and guarding artificial nests. Guarding nests is especially important because hornbills tend to nest in large-diameter trees, which, unfortunately, are the same type of trees that are felled to clear the land for agriculture or wood products. There’s good reason for the people of Tapoh to protect hornbills and their nesting sites: hornbills are seed dispersers, essential to the health of the forests upon w...