Los Angeles Zoo

About Los Angeles Zoo

The Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens covers 133 acres at 5333 Zoo Drive in Los Angeles, California. The city of Los Angeles owns the zoo outright, including its land, its facilities, and its animals; animal care, grounds maintenance, construction, education, and administrative staff are all city employees. The zoo opened at its present site on November 28, 1966, and is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Day-to-day operations sit within a city department that has reported directly to the city council since 1997, after decades as part of the parks and recreation department. Alongside the city-run zoo, the nonprofit Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association (GLAZA), created in 1963, raises financial support for zoo programs and capital projects; it also ran the zoo's concessions from 1980 until 2025, when it stepped back from that role. Denise M. Verret has served as the zoo's director since June 2019, the first female African American director of an AZA-accredited institution.

In 2002 the zoo became a certified botanical garden and adopted its current full name, the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens, reflecting 15 separate plant collections across the grounds, with more than 800 plant species and over 7,400 individual plants. The zoo's website lists roughly 150 species in its current collection, spanning primates, big cats, reptiles, and birds housed in a series of large, themed exhibit complexes built up over the past several decades.

History

The Los Angeles Zoo is the city's third zoo. The first, Eastlake Zoo, opened in Eastlake Park (renamed Lincoln Park in 1917) in 1885. The second, Griffith Park Zoo, opened in 1912 about two miles from the current site and closed in August 1966; remnants of that original zoo still remain in the park. The present zoo opened on its current site on November 28, 1966, on land that had previously held Rodger Young Village, itself built over the former Griffith Park Aerodrome.

By the early 1990s the zoo's infrastructure was deteriorating: in January 1992 a ten-inch water pipe burst, cutting off water to half the zoo, and the following day city officials approved a $300 million master plan to address failing infrastructure and outdated exhibits. The zoo nearly lost its accreditation in 1995 over health and safety violations before rebounding under new leadership; the number of species on exhibit was reduced from about 400 in 1993 to around 280 as the zoo shifted toward larger, more naturalistic enclosures holding bigger groups of animals.

A series of major exhibits followed: Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains in 1998, Red Ape Rainforest in 2000, the Komodo Dragon Exhibit and the Winnick Family Children's Zoo in 2001, the Entry Plaza, Children's Discovery Center, and Sea Lion Cliffs in 2005, Campo Gorilla Reserve in November 2007, Elephants of Asia in the winter of 2010, the LAIR (Living Amphibians, Invertebrates, and Reptiles) in 2012, and Rainforest of the Americas in 2014. During the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, the zoo grounds are set to serve as the start and finish point for road cycling and para road cycling time trials.

Exhibits and habitats

Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains, a one-acre hillside complex that opened in 1998, is dotted with boulders, palm trees, and an artificial termite mound, with a waterfall beside a rock ledge where the troop's leader can survey the group; guests view the chimpanzees across moats or through a glass window. Campo Gorilla Reserve, opened in November 2007, holds western lowland gorillas across 1.5 acres viewed through glass observation windows from several points; an endangered gorilla born there on January 18, 2020, was the exhibit's first birth in more than two decades.

The LAIR, opened in 2012 at a cost of $14 million, is an indoor-outdoor complex built around reptiles, amphibians, and terrestrial arthropods. Visitors move from the Oak Woodland Pond through a 6,000-square-foot main building holding the Damp Forest — home to poison dart frogs and Chinese giant salamanders — and a recreated Daintree Rainforest river with archerfish and Fly River turtles, then through a room of venomous snakes named after longtime GLAZA co-chair Betty White. A second, 2,000-square-foot building, the Desert LAIR, houses Gila monsters, Sonoran toads, desert hairy scorpions, and California kingsnakes, and the complex ends outdoors at Crocodile Swamp, home to false gharials.

Red Ape Rain Forest, which opened in 2000, is a donut-shaped, 6,000-square-foot mesh enclosure for Bornean orangutans, backed by hibiscus, bamboo, and rubber trees and fitted with sway poles and a shallow stream; guests enter and exit through Indonesian-style pagodas. Rainforest of the Americas, added in 2014, houses species from the tropical Americas including the uakari, southern black howler monkey, harpy eagle, giant river otter, Baird's tapir, and jaguar. Elephants of Asia, a $42 million complex divided into Thai, Indian, and Chinese sections with a 3.8-acre main enclosure and a 16,000-square-foot barn, opened in 2010 but currently holds no elephants: the zoo's last two, Billy and Tina, were transferred to the Tulsa Zoo in May 2025.

Animal highlights

The zoo's website lists at least 150 species on exhibit, ranging from small amphibians to large mammals. Big cats include the jaguar, snow leopard, and Sumatran tiger; primates include the Western lowland gorilla, Bornean orangutan, chimpanzee, mandrill, and ring-tailed lemur. The collection also includes hoofstock such as the okapi, Masai giraffe, Grevy's zebra, and greater one-horned rhinoceros, and reptiles including the Komodo dragon, gharial, and Gila monster. Birds on the list range from the California condor and Andean condor to flamingos, macaws, and the harpy eagle.

The zoo is also known for particular rarities in its collection: it is one of the few zoos anywhere to house the mountain tapir, and the only zoo outside Peru and Brazil to house the red uakari, both reflected in the exhibits described above.

Conservation and programs

The zoo's Gottlieb Animal Health and Conservation Center, named for philanthropists Robert and Suzanne Gottlieb, is a 33,589-square-foot facility in a restricted area of the grounds, with an intensive care unit, an on-site commissary, a surgical suite with an observation area, and research facilities. In 2007 the center handled 853 medical cases, ranging from a 0.08-kilogram spider tortoise to a 4,826-kilogram Asian elephant.

The zoo credits its breeding program for the California condor with helping grow the species' population from a low of 22 birds in the 1980s to more than 430 today; condors are not currently on exhibit because of the sensitive nature of that rescue work, though the California Condor Rescue Zone play space for children ages six and up features live webcam feeds of the birds. The zoo has also been among the first to successfully breed echidnas and reports the first Coquerel's sifaka born outside its native Madagascar. Across the street in Griffith Park, the zoo-affiliated North Hollywood High School Zoo Magnet Center, established in 1981 and run by the Los Angeles Unified School District, offers about 300 high school students a college-preparatory curriculum in animal and biological sciences.

Planning your visit

The zoo is open 10 am to 5 pm, as listed on its website. Beyond the address, 5333 Zoo Drive in Los Angeles, and its hours, the source material does not include published ticket prices, parking details, or dining and accessibility information.

Beyond the main animal exhibits, the zoo offers scheduled activities including a World of Birds Show at 11:30 am and 3:30 pm daily except Tuesdays, 15-minute Animals & You presentations in the Winnick Family Children's Zoo, a petting area known as Muriel's Ranch, and the Neil Papiano Play Park, a play area designed to be accessible to children with medical and physical challenges.

Check the zoo's official website for current ticket prices, parking information, and accessibility services before visiting.