San Diego Zoo Global scientists are celebrating a major conservation milestone for the organization’s Burrowing Owl Recovery Program. One of two burrowing owls released into their native range have successfully reproduced—and they have produced the program’s first chicks to be hatched in the wild. The mother owl, known as “Blue X,” hatched at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Bird Breeding Complex (BBC) in 2018. The father owl, known as “B06,” is the offspring of birds that were translocated from Otay Mesa, CA.
August 23, 2019
Study Cites Elephant Reintroduction Programs as a Model for Wildlife Releases
June 13, 2019
Three orphaned elephant calves from Reteti Elephant Sanctuary have been successfully translocated to a holding area in Sera Wildlife Conservancy, in Kenya’s Samburu County—the first such rewilding initiative for a community-managed wildlife facility. The calves are doing well in what experts call a “soft release,” as close monitoring continues ahead of the final release.
May 22, 2019
Bringing a Native Forest & Its Native Songs Back to the Forest
April 12, 2019
San Diego Zoo Global Researchers Help Rear and Release Aga on Rota
For more than 2 million years, the native forests on the islands of Guam and Rota were home to several thousand crows of a species found nowhere else on Earth. But over the last 60 years, the Mariana crow—called the aga, in the Chamorro language—has completely disappeared from the island of Guam and rapidly declined on neighboring Rota. Today, there are only about 175 Aga left on the planet.
October 08, 2018
Continued Efforts to Reintroduce Rare Crow Species to Native Forests of Hawai’i Island
September 28, 2017
After years of conservation work that included painstakingly tracking, breeding and releasing almost 100 endangered Pacific pocket mice, researchers from San Diego Zoo Global have discovered that mice reintroduced into Orange County, California’s Laguna Coast Wilderness Park have begun to breed on their own.
September 14, 2017
Procedure Marks Milestone in San Diego Zoo Global’s Efforts to Save the Critically Endangered Northern White Rhino from Extinction
July 25, 2017
Significant Data Collected During Treadmill Study
May 09, 2017
Female Bear Prepares to Walk on Treadmill
Tatqiq, a 580-pound polar bear at the San Diego Zoo, is making new strides in her “fitness” training. Animal care staff and scientists at the Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research have been preparing the 17-year-old female to voluntarily take part in a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) project that is studying the energy demands polar bears face in the Arctic—an example of the role that zoos play in conservation science.
