When we first arrived at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park, we met with Dr. Oliver Ryder, director of genetics. Dr. Ryder received his Ph.D. in chromosome replication in bacteria at UC San Diego. Because of this highly specialized level of education, he started at the Zoo not knowing anything about animals, but figured everything out as his career progressed. Amazingly, he was part of the group that founded the research department, which is now one of the largest research institutes in the world. He has been part of some amazing discoveries, including discovering a disease among California condors and developing a test for carriers of the disease. Dr. Ryder loves his job because he enjoys discovering new things that have never been known before.

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The amazing thing about conservation is that it can be both broad and specific. The San Diego Zoo emphasizes that all species should be conserved, from cacti to giraffes, but they are also working hard to protect and conserve specific species like the California condor. 

The Zoo has thousands of birds in its collection, and not all of them are endangered. In fact, many of them are not even threatened. But that is not to say that the stable species will not be threatened sometime in the future. There is no way of knowing if the wild populations of an African bird may someday disappear, so the Zoo maintains happy, healthy populations as an insurance policy. The keepers who care for the birds do visual check-ups every day to make sure the animals are doing well and that there are no signs of illness.
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If you have pets, you know that animals often add an element of unpredictability to life.  Maybe your pups simply can’t grasp the concept of sharing their favorite toy. Maybe your cat doesn’t want to swallow its pill, or your bird just chewed up something important. Keeping a healthy, happy home for an animal can definitely be a challenge.

Bird keeper Michael Grue knows better than most how difficult it can be to maintain the health and happiness of an animal “home.” Each exhibit that is assigned to him is home to an animal family or two or three. A keeper’s day begins with a quick visit to each assigned exhibit to assess the general health of the animals inside. This requires a critical eye as birds will go out of their way to hide signs of weakness. Mr. Grue walked us through this observation process as we visited the Zoo’s pair of Bateleur eagles.  (more…)

As you visit the Zoo, you may notice the extensive collection of birds exhibited throughout. In fact, there are more birds at the Zoo than mammals or reptiles. From passerines to song birds and waterfowl to raptors, the Zoo has a variety of birds that are common and highly threatened. The Zoo is home to some of the most fearsome and aggressive birds, including the harpy eagle Harpia harpyja and one of the most well-known in the world of conservation –the California condor Gymnogyps californianus.
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Oliver A. Ryder, Ph.D., talked with us about what his team of geneticists is doing to help the conservation efforts of the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park. 

One of their core activities includes the maintenance of, and addition of samples to, the Frozen Zoo. The Frozen Zoo is a collection of deep-frozen cell cultures representing over 8,700 individuals from more than 800 animal species, many of which are endangered. The Frozen Zoo is a landmark step in conservation efforts worldwide because it provides specimens for research everywhere. By providing DNA of endangered and even some extinct animals, the Frozen Zoo helps researchers establish missing links in the ancestry of animals. It also aids with genome sequencing, or the mapping of all the genes in an animal’s DNA. In the future, the Frozen Zoo might even be used for cloning. 
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There is much more to exhibits and their planning and to the maps of the San Diego Zoo than one would think. The goal of exhibit designers is to hide the fences and make the visitors feel like they are getting a glimpse of the animals in their natural habitats. And it takes more than a clever eye to choose where to place the fences and the walls so the visitor is at once fooled and perfectly safe. There is also more to the maps than one would suspect: they are a balance of the complexities of land surveying and making the maps easy to read for the general public. For these reasons, the Zoo has a division called Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to survey the land and determine what is usable for the exhibits and how the land can be used most efficiently to maximize space. Division staff also continuously update maps for the use of guests and engineers alike.
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On Thursday, we met with Tod Chee, a GIS specialist at the San Diego Zoo. When I walked into the room, I had no idea what a GIS specialist was, but I quickly found out through a challenging (but interesting) first-hand experience. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems.  There are many different aspects of this job, including project planning, 3-D markups of terrain, and map topography. Basically, a GIS specialist spends most of his or her time making maps of the Zoo. In order to collect the elevation information, the Zoo owns an airplane equipped with LIDAR (light detection and ranging), which sends a laser to the ground and measures how long it takes for the reflected signal to return. This amazing technology has measured the elevation of all the land owned by the Zoo and the Wild Animal Park, which is very useful to GIS specialists.
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Jean-Pierre Montagne, senior research technician at the Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research, taught and showed us the importance of maintaining biodiversity. Biodiversity refers to the variety of life within an ecosystem, for example the coastal sage scrub ecosystem. A wide collection of life within an ecosystem boosts productivity of the area, and ensures that it will be able to rebound after a disaster. Every species plays a role in an ecosystem, even down to the microorganisms living in the soil.

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mountain yellow-legged frogs

The term “guardian” typically applies to people such as parents, police officers or bodyguards. Of course, there are other types of guardians, and I met one in what may seem like a surprising place: the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park.

This guardian is Jean-Pierre Montagne, a senior research technician at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. Mr. Montagne holds a bachelor’s degree in ecology and evolution and has been working for the Zoological Society of San Diego since 1995 and has experience in other science fields besides animal ecology, including animal behavior and pathology. Now he works primarily in studying and protecting the biodiversity (variety of plant and animal life) in the area surrounding the Wild Animal Park.  (more…)

 

It’s been my experience that Murphy’s Law (anything that can happen, will happen) is not only true, but is an active part of my life. On the same day Zoo Internquest planned to visit the Reptile House, my mom called me with the news that she had rescued a large tortoise, which was now residing in the back seat of her car. The next half hour was a frantic rush as I got the tortoise settled in a temporary house and then headed for the Zoo. As I hurried toward the Reptile House, I was eager to meet the best people possible to identify our find: the reptile keepers!   
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