Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Ryan Hawk, Photographer A few weeks ago, on a rainy, rainy day, zookeeper Kimberly Cooper and I hopped in the zoo’s Prius and traveled to the off-road back areas of Fort Lewis to release the last few of this year’s batch of about 450 Oregon spotted frogs . In the first year of the recovery program at Woodland Park Zoo, the endangered frogs were raised on zoo grounds to be given a head start in the wild. It’s one of several species recovery programs the zoo participates in locally. Zookeepers like Kimberly raise the frogs from egg to adult in order to increase their odds of survival in the wild. The work takes place behind the scenes in a quiet corner of the zoo’s 92 acres . Watch the release in this short video. Woodland Park Zoo participates in the recovery program in collaboration with partners including Northwest Trek , Oregon Zoo , Cedar Creek Correctional Facility, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife . And each of these groups were represented as we re

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Check out this latest conservation interview featuring Dr. Sergei Smirinski, a Woodland Park Zoo Partner for Wildlife , on endangered cranes and other plants and animals of Muraviovka Park in Russia. The Cranes of Asia conservation project works to protect the red crowned crane, hooded crane and oriental white stork, all of which rely on protection of the habitat in Russia's Muraviovka Park. Some of the critical threats facing the cranes and their habitat include long-term drought, fires that eliminate the dead grass necessary for nest camouflage, predators and competitors due to the growing impact of the drought and fires, disturbance by spring hunting on waterfowl, collisions with power lines, and use of pesticides and herbicides. For more information on Dr. Smirinski's work to conserve the cranes of Asia, check out our newly updated Partners for Wildlife website. Video by Ryan Hawk, photo by Dennis Dow.

Posted by: Kate Neville, Development Here’s your chance to help us save endangered turtles—all you have to do is cast a vote! Woodland Park Zoo has been selected as one of three local conservation organizations to participate in the 2009 Patagonia Voice Your Choice Program . From September 24 through October 24, customers at the downtown Seattle store will learn more about each of the three selected organizations. Customers can then vote for their favorite organization. Grants will be awarded based on the voting—First place: $2,500, Second place: $1,500, and Third place: $1,000. Proceeds from this program will go to Woodland Park Zoo's Western Pond Turtle Recovery Project , a collaborative, grass-roots effort to restore Western pond turtle populations in Washington state. Funds will help cover the costs of Woodland Park Zoo's headstarting program, in which baby turtles are reared in captivity, then released into the wild when they are large enough to be safe from predators.

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications Woodland Park Zoo's conservationists and staff photographer traveled to Papua New Guinea in April this year to help celebrate the passage of PNG’s first national Conservation Area —a conservation milestone 12 years in the making with Woodland Park Zoo’s Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program , partners , and PNG villagers and government. This video transports you to the Sing Sing celebration in the highland village of Teptep, Papua New Guinea, complete with songs and dances honoring this national achievement and the international unity behind it. Hear from the many Papua New Guinea nationals who have contributed their own land, time and dedication to this project. In the words of one PNG landowner you’ll see in the video, “I saw that people were destroying the land. But I said, save the land. Save it and look after it. Easy does it—step by step.” This is one huge step we are proud to be part of. Go here to learn more about the 187,000 acre Y

Posted by: Kim M. Murray, Ph.D., Assistant Director of Science, Snow Leopard Trust Read on for an update on tracking wild snow leopards from the Snow Leopard Trust’s field research base in Mongolia. The Snow Leopard Trust is one of Woodland Park Zoo’s Partners for Wildlife *. Summer is the busiest season at the Snow Leopard Trust’s research camp in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. This summer our crew spent long days in the field looking for sites with recent snow leopard activity to deploy our trap cameras. By early July we had 41 cameras distributed over a 500-square-mile area, making it the most ambitious camera trapping study ever undertaken for snow leopards. The cameras remained in the field for a month; now we’re reviewing the images to see how many cats we photographed. Because every snow leopard has a unique spot pattern, just like a human fingerprint, we can use these photos to identify individual cats to estimate the size of the snow leopard population. We’re also using GPS sat