Daniel is the San Diego Zoo’s Teen Arctic Ambassador 2009.

September 28, 2009
Getting to the Arctic Circle is not easy. When we left San Diego on Sunday, September 27, the weather forecast was predicting highs in the upper 90s. So the hard part started before I even left, having to put warm clothes in a suitcase with such hot weather outside. We stopped in Winnipeg for the first night and then flew onward to Churchill on a small plane that carried 16 of us teen ambassadors from places in Canada, the U.S., and Australia. I am attending Polar Bears International’s Teen Leadership Camp for a week. This cool program is done as a partnership between Polar Bears International and the Arctic Ambassador Center network of zoos that is headquartered at the San Diego Zoo.
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September 29, 2009
Today we arose to the harmonious singing voice of Robert Buchanan, the president of Polar Bears International and the “Head Bear” of our Leadership Camp. He was singing “Oh, what a beautiful morning.” The tundra was beautiful, that was true. After a wonderful breakfast, we went onto the Tundra Buggy to explore the wonders of the Arctic for three hours, but we didn’t find anything in the polar bear department. Since we didn’t see anything, we were allowed to get out of the Tundra Buggy and step on the ground. This was huge, since this was the first time we have set foot on the ground since arriving at camp in the Tundra Buggy Lodge.
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September 30, 2009
Today started again with a tundra wake-up call from Robert Buchanan, the president of Polar Bears International and a pretty bad singer. I was excited to have this morning’s breakfast burrito, a taste of home up here in the Arctic. Well, not exactly as good as home, because San Diego is pretty famous for its Mexican food, but it was good enough.
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October 1, 2009
Today I had to help make the meals for the buggy, which was really fun. While making breakfast, an Arctic fox was running around the buggy to say good morning to all of us. It was splendid because of his beautiful colors of white, black, and gray. I never thought I would describe an animal beautiful with such bland colors, but this fox truly was. After that we did videoconferences with kids from Winnipeg, Canada, and from Memphis, Tennessee. This was our first experience of spreading our experience and knowledge. It was a necessary stepping stone to my future presentations.
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To coincide with a recent video interview for the San Diego Zoo’s Web site, I was asked to write an update on what’s been going on with my “string” (what we call the area/animals in our charge).

Red River Hogs:
Everyone is doing well (see One Pig, Happy Family). Jabari is now nearly nine months old and continues to flourish. He hardly resembles the tiny, striped little creature that could barely crawl into my lap. Our construction team is currently working tirelessly on building a permanent pool for the hogs to enjoy wallowing in during the hot summer months.
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Yun Zi was curled up like a puppy on the weight scale before being brought into the room for today’s exam. He was so cute there, sleepy and all curled up in a ball. His weight, 18.3 pounds (8.3 kilograms), showed he’s still growing at a steady pace.
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What a morning we had yesterday! Su Lin was full of energy after a short nap, playing with a burlap bag and carefully sniffing it all over. The keepers had not doused the bag with spices or scent, as they often do, but there was something the panda liked about it. Later on she was extracting slivers of bamboo from the bag and munching away. Done with that, she gave her plastic donut-shaped toy a workout, including inserting her left foreleg through it and walking around wearing it!
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The repositioning of the Chinese elm on December 16 wasn’t the only change we saw at the San Diego Zoo’s panda exhibit. On December 17 there was a big new bolt through the tree, connecting the elm securely to the large tree trunk on the ground. When I first started working at the Zoo, I was curious about why all the animals’ furniture was bolted down. The answer? So they can’t push it around and find a way out of their exhibits. The items in an exhibit—rocks, trees climbing structures, shelters, etc.—are known as furniture.
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We’ve had an explosion of cuteness at the Wild Animal Park in the form of adorable cheetah cubs. Critically endangered, each cheetah cub arrival is cause for celebration—but what do we do with all those spots?

Although these tall, slender cats are familiar to all, not everyone is aware that cheetahs may not be around much longer without some serious help from researchers. The Wild Animal Park set up a cheetah breeding program in 1970, and 133 cheetahs have been born as a result of this effort.
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The Conrad Prebys Polar Bear Plunge at the San Diego Zoo has been a really noisy place during the past few weeks. Yes, lots of construction, but mostly the noise is coming from the questioning. . . is she? We’re talking about the hoped-for pregnancy of Chinook! We still don’t know…for sure. That said, Chinook has gained over 20 percent of her normal body weight and has now slipped into the most calm, contented, beautiful mood we have ever seen in her 14, now almost 15, years. The most activity she shows is munching on her carrots while glancing over at the silly antics of Kalluk and Tatqiq and slowly dipping into the plunge pool to luxuriate and soak.
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