Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Ric Brewer, Communications Break out the cake--today is our 110th birthday! (Photo taken by Asahel Curtis from the roof of the old Primate House looking northeast, on July 4, 1924.) On December 28, 1899, the Seattle City Council officially signed the paperwork purchasing the 141 acres that would become Woodland Park Zoo and surrounding parkland. Once owned by real estate tycoon Guy Phinney, the land and its collection of animals had become a burden for his widow after Phinney died in 1893, so it was sold to the growing city for $100,000 to be developed into a park. The purchase was controversial as many believed the land, located 5 miles north of downtown Seattle, was so far out into the countryside that no one would visit it! But generations of families have proven that wrong as what became Woodland Park Zoo is now a fixture in the lives of more than one million visitors each year. Over the course of the last century plus, the zoo has changed from an attraction that merely

Posted by: Hilary Aten, Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program Last night, TV viewers across the U.S. discovered an animal few had ever seen before, but are now not likely to forget. Woodland Park Zoo's work to study and protect the endangered Matschie's tree kangaroo was featured on both ABC World News and ABC Nightline --showing rare glimpses of the animal's elusive, tree-top lifestyle in the remote, dense forests of Papua New Guinea. Click to watch the full story online (will open in a new window): From November 5-7, 2009, ABC News anchor Dan Harris joined researchers from Woodland Park Zoo-based Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program (TKCP) and National Geographic at the program's Wasaunon field research site in the Papua New Guinea cloud forest of the Huon Peninsula. Through a generous grant from National Geographic and the Waitt Foundation's exploratory research program, Kyler Abernathy and TKCP's Dr. Lisa Dabek successfully captured and outfitted two wild

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 Last Thursday, Woodland Park Zoo was recognized by the Seattle Design Commission with a design excellence award for our new Humboldt penguin exhibit! The award is in recognition of Seattle’s best capital improvement projects. Other honorees were Fremont Peak Park, Thornton Creek, Seattle Center Century 21 Master Plan, and Sound Transit Central Link. Visitors may be fixated on the nose-to-beak views of the penguins in the exhibit, but it’s the harder to see sustainable elements of the exhibit that captured the Design Commission’s attention. With support from Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities , we installed an energy efficient ground-based geothermal heat pump that uses the Earth’s below-ground temperature to keep the exhibit’s water at a penguin-friendly 55 degrees year round, as well as an innovative water filtration system. These features will save nearly 22,000 kilowatt-hours of energy and 3 million gallons of water per year.

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications We're getting into the holiday spirit here at the zoo. Join us in kicking off the holiday season by sharing our new season’s greetings video with your friends and family. You can also now send a zoo-themed holiday e-card to wish that special someone a happy holiday season. Video produced by Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo.

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications We’re asking for your help to provide relief for the community by dropping off food donations at our annual Turkey Toss event this Saturday. We’ll be accepting donations of non-perishable food items at the zoo to benefit the Phinney Neighborhood Association (PNA) soup kitchen program. Food items can be dropped off on November 21 outside the zoo’s South Entrance (N. 50th St. & Fremont Ave. N.) during operating hours, 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Zoo admission is not required to donate food, but if you join us that day, you’ll see snow leopards, Komodo dragons, grizzlies, lions and more carnivorous species chow down on raw, store-prepared turkeys—all part of the zoo’s ongoing enrichment program for the animals! So what kinds of food items should you donate? Our friends at the PNA soup kitchen program tell us the items most in demand are: non-perishable juice, jam, canned fruit, beans, canned vegetables, chili, ketchup and powdered creamers. Ever

On November 12, the zoo lost a beloved staff member, Sammy Kiako Ole Sipoi, to a tragic motorcycle accident in Kenya. Sipoi had worked as a Maasai cultural interpreter at the zoo for two summers, sharing stories about his life on the savanna with zoo visitors, and bringing to life the real conservation issues of his homeland. Paula Eggertsen, a close friend to Sipoi and former member of Woodland Park Zoo’s education staff, writes this tribute. We welcome you to share your thoughts and memories of Sipoi in the comments section. Tribute to my “olalashe,” Sammy Kiako Ole Sipoi Posted by: Paula Eggertsen The interpretation of cultural values and traditions is nearly impossible, particularly when you’re comparing cultures as different as a pastoralist and a capitalist society. What can easily translate are the qualities of human kindness. Sipoi embodied kindness. When I first met Sipoi in Kenya in 2004, he rode the bus to Nairobi to greet my sister and me. It took Sipoi three hours of bus t