Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by Elizabeth Bacher, Communications Seattle’s tallest baby is now Seattle’s tallest 1 year old giraffe! Happy birthday Lulu! We love you! Sometimes you CAN have your cake and eat it too! Photo by John Loughlin/Woodland Park Zoo The birthday girl and her animal keepers celebrated the occasion with a specially-made giraffe cake: an ice fruit cake adorned with an assortment of her favorite treats, leaves, and leaf eater biscuits with her name carved out of apple slices and the centerpiece #1 carved out of sweet potato. Delicious and nutritious! A cake fit for a giraffe. Photo by John Loughlin/Woodland Park Zoo.  Dad Dave, mom Tufani and aunt Olivia were all there to “help” her eat her cake! In September, Lulu will be old enough to move to a new zoo where she could eventually start her own family. Her future home will be Lincoln Children’s Zoo in Lincoln, Nebraska. This move is part of a recommendation made by the Giraffe Species Survival Plan, a conservation b

Editor’s note: Morgan Jensen is a high school senior at Bear Creek High School in Redmond, Washington. Morgan completed his graduating Capstone project as a community affairs intern at Woodland Park Zoo. Next month, he is heading to South Carolina, where he'll begin college at The Citadel. Morgan spots carnivores often in his backyard in east King County, and thinks it's pretty cool. Posted by Morgan Jensen, Community Affairs Intern The City of Issaquah and Woodland Park Zoo have something in common: each provide an opportunity to see many great animals up close. Surrounded on three sides by forested mountains and Lake Sammamish to the north, the Issaquah area is also home to abundant wildlife, including some of Washington’s most charismatic carnivores: black bears, coyotes, bobcats, and cougars. While sharing space with these animals has potential to lead to conflict, residents can take many actions to ensure a peaceful coexistence with carnivores. This is where the

Posted by: Elizabeth Bacher, Staff Writer Meet Papú, our newest and smallest ambassador-in-training.  Hello Papú! Photo by Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/ Woodland Park Zoo Ambassador animals have an important role at Woodland Park Zoo—they allow visitors to have up-close experiences and serve as catalysts for educating about their species. By interacting with them, we learn more about their wild cousins. We learn more about ourselves and our impacts on the ecosystem. We are moved to protect them and the wild spaces they represent. Simply put, we love them and they inspire us to make conservation a priority in our lives. It’s a big responsibility. What does it take to become an ambassador—to fulfill such an important role connecting people to wildlife? The answers to these big questions can often be found in the littlest places—and in this case, an egg barely the size of a ping-pong ball. The tiny egg came to Woodland Park Zoo from Sacramento Zoo, where its parents were not able

Posted by Elizabeth Bacher, Communications It’s almost butterfly time at Woodland Park Zoo! Molbak’s Butterfly Garden will open for the season on May 25, 2018. You’ll be able to walk among nearly 500 free-flying butterflies representing at least 15 species native to North America. An arching tent structure will enclose a landscape of approximately 3,000 square feet filled with flowering plants provided by Molbak’s Garden + Home store in Woodinville. Behind the garden is the year-round Microsoft Pollinator Patio, where guests can enjoy a beautiful stroll among pollinator-friendly plants. Photo by Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo https://www.zoo.org/butterflygarden  We asked our friends at Molbak’s to suggest their favorite flowering plants that provide lots of good food for butterflies, bees, hummingbirds and other pollinators. Here are five flowers to make your backyard a pollinator-perfect destination.  Agastache (Hyssop) Slender and stylish, the fragrant hyssop bl

Every single day, we work to protect wild animals and wild places.  This week, and on Endangered Species Day, May 18, we can celebrate many conservation success stories, but there is more work to do. Taj wading into Assam Rhino Reserve. Photo by Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act and the hard work of conservationists and activists, the bald eagle, green sea turtle, American alligator, peregrine falcon, and many other species were kept from disappearing forever. Your zoo has given Western pond turtles a head start and helped protect thousands of acres of pristine cloud forests. We would do anything for animals, and with your support, we can. Getting ready to release a pond turtle into a protected Washington wetland. Photo: Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo. Working with conservationists and researchers, Woodland Park Zoo focuses on a conservation strategy that includes: habitat and species conservation, research

Posted by Zosia Brown, Resource Conservation and Sustainability As plastic waste in our environment becomes an increasingly important global topic, Woodland Park Zoo is celebrating a milestone in our own resource conservation journey with the announcement that we are no longer selling beverages in single-use plastic bottles. Refill, please! Photo by Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/ Woodland Park Zoo. Woodland Park Zoo is committed to protecting and preserving wildlife and habitat for generations to come. It is our role to inspire our zoo guests and communities across our region to meaningfully reduce their own impact on the planet. Our Sustainable Zoo Plan guides our own operations following a Natural Step model that aims to: take no more from the earth that it can sustainably provide; provide no more to the earth more than it can sustainably absorb; and eliminate "waste" of all kinds from our operations, instead viewing waste as a resource. The zoo as a green oas

Posted by: Elizabeth Bacher, communications While you’re getting to know our curious sloth bear cubs, Deemak and Kartick , we thought you’d also like to know more about their wild cousins and how Woodland Park Zoo is working with conservation partners on the ground in their native habitat to help to protect them. Sloth bears are endangered, mostly due to habitat loss or degradation from human expansion, retaliation from human-bear conflict and to a lesser degree, poaching.   It is believed that no more than 10,000-20,000 sloth bears remain in the wild. That’s one of the reasons why Woodland Park Zoo partners with a conservation organization like Wildlife SOS . Currently, the research study that Wildlife SOS is conducting focuses on the two types of dens that wild sloth bears use – maternal dens which are used to give birth and raise cubs, and day dens which are used as a place to safely rest during daylight hours when sloth bears are not as active. Here is some new ca