Conservation - Elmwood Park Zoo

OUR MISSION

Our mission is to foster an appreciation for wildlife and the environment that will inspire active participation in conservation. The zoo participates in programs and initiatives that help save wildlife, and it teaches others how they can help prevent species extinction and resource depletion.

PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS

Animal Management Programs

Elmwood Park Zoo works with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to ensure the survival of critically endangered species.

AZA species survival plan (ssp)

The mission of this program is to manage specific species populations within AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums. The species being managed are often either threatened or endangered and must be conserved in order to ensure their survival. In addition to breeding plans, the Species Survival Plan ensures that the zoo is coordinating with other AZA facilities to maintain a healthy and diverse animal population.

SSP’s are REQUIRED participation for AZA holding facilities if you house or own an animal covered by the SSP. We are required to follow final recommendations for breeding and transfer. Final decisions are made after a comment period where institutions can voice their concerns and opinions.

To qualify as an SSP, a program must fulfill four qualifications.

The majority of the managed population (>50% of individuals) is housed at AZA member facilities
The program is not externally managed. This includes cooperatively managed programs where final approval of breed/transfers/husbandry practices/reintroductions fall to or is made in partnership with external entities. (i.e. Black-footed ferret program is monitored and regulated by the US Government.
Breeding must exceed acquisitions from external sources over the last five years or generation length, whichever is longer.
The species is held in at least 15 AZA facilities.

SSP’s can be categorized by one of three tiers.

Provisional: Population does not meet above criteria but has the potential to within 5 years or makes significant progress towards those goals.
Signature: Population meets the above criteria and will be sustainable.
Secure: Program meets the above criteria and AZA is relatively certain it will be present in AZA facilities in 100 years as a robust, viable, healthy, biologically sound population.

Animals managed by the SSP

: African Pancake Tortoise

: African Straw-Colored Fruit Bat

: Black-Footed Ferret

: Burrowing Owl

: Chacoan Peccary

: Crested Wood Partridge

: Emperor Tamarin

: Giraffe

: Golden Lion Tamarin

: Hartmann’s Mountain Zebra

: Jaguar

: Lesser Madagascar Hedgehog Tenrec

: Linnaeus’s Two-toed Sloth

: North American Porcupine

: North American River Otter

: Ocelot

: Panamanian Golden Frog

: Patagonian Mara

: Plush-crested Jay

: Prehensile-Tailed Skink

: Red Panda

: Reeve’s Muntjac

: Scarlet Ibis

: Snowy Owl

: Southern Tamandua

: Southern Three-banded Armadillo

: Spotted Turtle

: White-Faced Saki Monkey

Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE)

AZA SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction focuses the collective expertise within AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums and leverages their massive audiences to save species.

SAFE’s focus on in situ (in the field) conservation helps save wild individuals/habitats of species. This can focus on in field work as well as monetary donations. SAFE’s are not mandatory participation. Just because you have a species covered by a SAFE does not mean you have to participate in the program since the program does not focus on the individuals under human care. However, research with such individuals can contribute to care and conservation in the wild. Institutions are also able to join SAFEs even if they don’t have those species in their collection (i.e. North American Songbirds and EPZ). To join a SAFE there is an agreement that the institution has to sign that stipulates requirements for membership such as monetary donation or participation in programs. These requirements can vary based on the individual program and its goals.

Below is a list of SAFE species we have at the zoo:

Black-footed Ferret

Spotted Turtle

American Turtle

Jaguar

Ocelot

Chinchilla

North American Bison

Giraffe

Red Panda

North American Songbird

North American Monarch

Conservation Projects

The zoo supports both national and international organizations whose work benefits wildlife and their natural habitats.

Red Panda Network

The Red Panda Network is committed to saving wild red pandas and preserving their habitat through the empowerment of local communities by community-based research, education and carbon mitigation. The network’s community-based monitoring program, Project Punde Kundo, trains locals of Eastern Nepal as professional forest stewards or “forest guardians.” These guardians organize workshops that provide educational training about the importance of red pandas and the fragility of the Eastern Himalayan ecosystem.

El Centro Chaqueño para la conservación e investigación

CCCI began in 1985 with a goal of starting research and captive breeding programs for the Taguå (Chacoan Peccary) due to their alarming decline. In 2010, The Taguå Project became CCCI, a non-governmental organization that continues to expand the work of captive breeding, conservation, health, and sustainable development with an emphasis on the Chaco region of Paraguay. CCCI's has a number of ongoing projects that align with their mission to act as a center for research of national and international information and to strengthen and improve the system of monitoring and management of protected areas, both public and private.

Northern Jaguar Project

Uniting organizations on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Northern Jaguar Project strives to preserve essential jaguar habitats through the establishment, care, and expansion of a safe-haven sanctuary in northern Mexico. They aspire to restore habitats suitable for jaguars and other threatened and endangered species, to support wildlife research and educational programs, and to reduce conflicts between carnivores and humans.

North American Songbird SAFE focuses on minimizing some of the main threats to songbirds including bird collisions with glass and encouraging visitors to adopt best practices at home, increasing effective messaging regarding domestic cat impacts on wildlife, preserving and building native habitats on AZA members’ grounds and in the communities they serve, reducing contaminants that affect North American songbirds, increasing bird friendly behavior through education and creating empathy, and ending the trafficking of North American songbirds.

AZA SAFE North American Monarch is a network of over 100 zoos, aquariums, and experts in the field aiming to galvanize action to help save the charismatic monarch butterfly. Our goal is to empower people of all ages to roll up their sleeves and help save this iconic but imperiled species in their own backyards. This could be through creating more habitat for monarchs by planting milkweeds and nectar plants, or by going outside and helping in the scientific effort to document monarch butterfly populations.

AZA ACCREDITATION

Elmwood Park Zoo is proud to be one of only 230 institutions accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of zoos and aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation. Elmwood Park Zoo’s accreditation was renewed in September of 2022.

PARTNERS