As a zookeeper, I see a lot of animals that change over time. Some changes are subtle and some are significant. This change, however, seemed a little sweeter than most, which is why I want to share it with you. I’m a senior keeper in the Children’s Zoo at the San Diego Zoo, but I occasionally help out at the Zoo’s Giant Panda Research Station. It had been a few weeks since I had worked with our giant pandas, along with our newest arrival, Zhen Zhen. I was expecting certain milestones of growth; however, I was surprised when I saw just how many!
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BOISE, Idaho
The effects of exposure to lead from spent ammunition is the focus of a conference sponsored by The Peregrine Fund, a conservation organization, May 12-15, 2008, in Boise, Idaho. The conference, “Ingestion of Spent Lead Ammunition: Implications for Wildlife and Humans,” will bring together biologists, scientists, health professionals and sporting groups to review scientific data on this topic.
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A San Diego County high school student hand made and donated a condor puppet to the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park California condor program for use in the hand rearing of chicks.

Un estudiante en una preparatoria en el condado de San Diego fabricó un títere hecho como un cóndor y lo donó al programa de recuperación en el San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park.

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Kathleen Ferris, a 10th grade student in Vista, Calif., personally delivered a California condor puppet she hand made to Don Sterner, animal care manager in charge of the California condor program at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park. Puppets like the one Kathleen created are used by condor keepers to feed, clean, and care for California condor chicks that are hand raised for reintroduction into their native habitat in Baja California, Mexico. Thanks to the efforts of the California Condor Recovery Program, there are more than 140 condors flying in the skies of California, Arizona and Mexico and approximately 150 condors in the four breeding centers including the Wild Animal Park.

Read Mike’s previous blog, Tracking Steller’s Sea-eagles, Part 1…
In late July 2007, I was back in the field on the breeding grounds, surveying breeding pairs on the rivers and the coast near Magadan with my team. This time Dave Rimlinger, San Diego Zoo curator of birds, joined us as we tagged another group of Steller’s sea-eagle chicks as part of a study of this species in the Magadan State Reserve in Russia.
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The meerkat exhibit on Elephant Mesa at the San Diego Zoo has been very popular as of late. No doubt mostly because of the four meerkats pups that have been drawing crowds. The pups, born on February 21, 2008, just reached five weeks old and are doing great.
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The day after Labor Day (September 4, 2007), construction began for the new Elephant Odyssey habitat at the San Diego Zoo. All the plants in the project area had been identified with different colored ribbon. A blue ribbon meant the LIMS (Landscape Installation Maintenance Specialists) crew would be responsible for their removal; these plants were mostly no larger than what would fit into a 15-gallon (56-liter) container. Orange ribbons were awarded to the largest plants that would need to be dug, boxed, and lifted with the help of a crane; an outside contractor would do this work. The lucky plants given a white ribbon would be able to stay in place; Elephant Odyssey would be built around them. The unlucky plants marked with red ribbon indicated they were to be demolished along with the roads, sidewalks, and old exhibits.
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After a very busy winter, life at African elephants at the Wild Animal Park is calming down a bit, though with one juvenile and three babies, it’s always exciting! (That’s right, a juvenile! Can you believe Vus’musi, aka Moose, just turned four years old? He is over 3,000 pounds!) Lungile is recovering well; she is back out in the large yard with all the other elephants.* Her appetite and weight are increasing. It looks like she’ll be back to 100 percent in no time!
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You’d think some famous celebrity had just moved into the hospital at the San Diego Zoo the way people have been coming up to visit. Actually, he’s better than a celebrity; he’s an old friend. If you visited the Zoo any time between 1986 and 1997, you might even remember him. His name is Huang Di, which means “king” in Chinese, but all his friends called him Blackie. He’s a Manchurian brown bear that was born at the Beijing Zoological Garden in 1984 and arrived at the San Diego Zoo when he was 2½ years old. Blackie resided at the Zoo from 1986 through 1997 (he is pictured here in 1996). Now, after 11 years in Tennessee at the Smokey Mountain Zoological Park, he’s back and presently serving his 30-day quarantine at the hospital.
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Meymey (pronounced “MAY-may”) is one of the California condors on exhibit in Condor Ridge at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park. He has been on exhibit since Oct. 23, 2007, the day after the Witch Creek Fire swept through the Park and destroyed one of our Condor Breeding Facilities. Meymey’s pen was one of the structures destroyed, so we decided to put him in the exhibit.
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It must have been the weather, or the first full day of spring, or the adoring crowds coming to see her, her sister, and her mother, or just because, but Su Lin (pictured) was having one fine ol’ time in her enclosure Friday morning, March 21. The weather had been just blissfully beautiful, and she was tearing around like the high-spirited youngster (now 2½ years old) that she is. Up the trees, down the rocks, into the hollow tree, and up again, hanging by her heels, into the pool, wrestling with a log, the bushes, and tree branches; anything she could grab, around and around. It was unusual and very entertaining for the many guests who’ve come from all over the country and the world during this Spring Break season. It’s especially gratifying that she chose this week to “cut loose,” with so many people here to enjoy it.
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