Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by: Ric Brewer, Communications Five-year-old best friends Hannah Madsen and Sophia Rascoff aren’t just all about fingerpainting and playing dress up. These two enterprising kids are helping to make a better future for the endangered western pond turtle by raising money for their care at Woodland Park Zoo. During a visit to the zoo, Hannah watched the video near our Template Wetlands exhibit that features the story of our conservation efforts for this native turtle. Hannah’s mom, Susan, said her daughter was so taken with these shelled creatures that she wanted to help. So she enlisted classmate and buddy Sophia and put together a bake sale to help raise money for the zoo’s Western Pond Turtle Recovery Project . The girls made a colorful sign to display at the sale and offered a variety of homebaked and donated pastries and cookies. Susan said some people even gave a $20 bill for a single cupcake! Susan contacted the zoo to see if the girls, along with some of their classmates

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications When 20-year-old fur seal Woody (short for Woodstock) developed a cataract lens in each eye, Seattle Aquarium staff grew concerned that the geriatric animal’s vision difficulties would interfere with her ability to explore her exhibit and engage with the other fur seals. So Seattle Aquarium staff, Woodland Park Zoo vets, and our consulting ophthalmologist Dr. Tom Sullivan (of the Animal Eye Clinic), got together to plan an operation to remove the cataract. But this wouldn’t be an ordinary procedure—in fact, it appears to be the first time that such a procedure has been performed on a Northern fur seal. Pioneering this procedure, the animal health experts faced a particular challenge: because of the unique physiology and anatomy of these marine mammals—mostly related to adaptations to allow for deep diving—anesthesia would need to be kept to as short a time as possible to prevent complications. So this meant both eyes would have to be addresse

Posted by: Pat Owen, Collections Manager Over the last few weeks, the keepers working in Northern Trail have begun introducing our two arctic foxes , Feliks and Somer, to a larger exhibit space—the mountain goat exhibit, where one goat, CK, currently resides. Both foxes are doing very well in their new exhibit space. With the expanded room and new surroundings, they have become much more active, and guests are enjoying the new dynamic in the Northern Trail. When we first introduced the foxes into the space with the mountain goat, the goat was not sure about having these new neighbors in her area. CK showed signs of submissiveness like she would to a male mountain goat, which is interesting since she is not a submissive animal! She would go up on the rocks and stay where she could keep an eye on them as the female fox, Somer, has more interest in CK than the male, more of a curiosity than anything else. But within a week, the three of them started moving around the exhibit and laying n

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications If you have seen celebrity naturalist David Mizejewski from National Wildlife Federation on any of his regular radio or television appearances—including the Today Show, Martha Stewart, HGTV and Animal Planet—you know he is committed to making the world a better place for wildlife. And now he is coming to the zoo to show you how you can do the same while having fun with your family. David will be joined by several animals that live at the zoo for a special free event at Zoomazium on February 5 from 2:30 – 3:30 p.m. He’ll share great ideas on creating wildlife-friendly gardens in your own backyard and community, and fun ways of getting kids outdoors and connecting with nature. Hope to see you there!

Posted by: Rebecca Whitham, Communications For Woodland Park Zoo, 2009 was a year of notable births, conservation milestones, and a few firsts. Here’s my personal pick of the top 9 zoo stories from 2009, in no particular order--some fun, some inspirational, and some just cute. What were your favorite zoo stories this year? 1. Creating Papua New Guinea’s first Conservation Area 2. Penguins take their first swim 3. Snow leopard twins born to first-time mom 4. How do you exercise flamingo chicks? 5. Zoo hatches a cottonball…err, tawny frogmouth chick 6. Endangered Oregon spotted frogs released into the wild 7. Zoo staff and community team up to restore local habitat 8. Introducing the world’s first GPS-enabled zoo iPhone app 9. Animals get their own downtown art show, critics go wild

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