What Do Zoos Do for Conservation? 5 Animals Zoos Helped Save

Modern zoos often describe themselves as conservation organizations. That can sound like marketing, but for some species it's the reason they still exist. Here's how zoo conservation works, and five animals that show what it can do.

How zoos help wildlife

Backup populations

When a species is in trouble in the wild, zoos can hold an insurance population: a healthy, managed group in human care that keeps the species going if the wild population crashes.

At accredited zoos this is coordinated through Species Survival Plan (SSP) programs. Each one tracks every animal of a species across many zoos in a shared studbook and recommends which animals should breed, so the population stays genetically diverse instead of inbred. AZA says it runs nearly 300 SSP programs.

Returning animals to the wild

When there's safe habitat and the threats have been reduced, zoo-bred animals can be reintroduced. That's the end goal for many breeding programs, though it only works alongside habitat protection.

Field conservation

Zoos also fund and staff projects in the wild: protecting habitat, monitoring populations, training rangers and working with local communities. AZA's SAFE (Saving Animals From Extinction) programs pool the work of many zoos on a single species.

Research and veterinary science

Working with animals every day gives zoos knowledge that's hard to get in the wild: nutrition, reproduction, disease and behavior. That knowledge feeds back into caring for wild populations.

Education

Zoos reach millions of visitors a year. For many people, a zoo is where they first see an animal they'll go on to care about protecting.

5 animals zoos helped save

1. California condor

North America's largest land bird came close to disappearing. By 1987, only 27 California condors were left, and wildlife officials captured every remaining wild bird to save the species.

Those birds were bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park (now the San Diego Zoo Safari Park) and the Los Angeles Zoo. Condors have been released back into the wild since 1991, in California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California in Mexico. The species is still critically endangered, but hundreds now fly free. Learn about the California condor.

2. Black-footed ferret

The black-footed ferret was declared extinct in 1979, but in 1981 a small wild population turned up near Meeteetse, Wyoming. When disease struck that population, the survivors were brought into human care for breeding.

A captive breeding program led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with zoos as key partners, produced ferrets that were reintroduced to the wild from 1991 across eight western states, Canada and Mexico. Learn about the black-footed ferret.

3. Przewalski's horse

Przewalski's horse is a wild horse from the steppes of Central Asia. It disappeared from the wild in the 20th century and survived only in zoos.

Zoos around the world cooperated to breed it, and since the 1990s it has been reintroduced to Mongolia, including Hustai National Park. Learn about Przewalski's horse.

4. Arabian oryx

This white desert antelope was extinct in the wild by the early 1970s, wiped out by hunting. It survived in zoos and private reserves, and reintroductions began in 1980.

In 2011, the Arabian oryx became the first animal to improve from "Extinct in the Wild" to "Vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List. Learn about the Arabian oryx.

5. Red wolf

The red wolf, a wolf native to the southeastern U.S., declined almost to nothing. The last wild red wolves were captured in the 1970s to start a breeding program, and the species was declared extinct in the wild.

Zoo-bred red wolves were reintroduced to eastern North Carolina in 1987. The wild population remains very small and fragile, and zoos still hold most red wolves, so the backup population matters as much as ever. Learn about the red wolf.

The honest picture

Zoo conservation isn't a cure-all. Breeding animals in human care can't save a species whose habitat has disappeared, and reintroductions are slow, expensive and sometimes fail. Not every zoo takes part in conservation work at all.

That's why it's worth knowing which zoos do. AZA accreditation requires a zoo to take part in conservation, so it's a good place to start. Read what AZA accreditation means, or find an accredited zoo near you.