This year marks the 10-year anniversary of Nature Boardwalk, the urban oasis just south of the zoo. Formally known as “South Pond”, this space was once a traditional, ornamental pond, surrounded by a concrete path, turf grass, and mostly non-native vegetation that supported few native wildlife species. In 2009, Lincoln Park Zoo set out to…
While the Tanzanian plains might look vastly different than the forests of the Republic of Congo or the great Chicago skyline, Lincoln Park Zoo’s conservation sites may have more in common than one might think. Each benefits from the zoo’s tried-and-true approaches, refined using decades of noninvasively collected data across the sites, to helping mitigate…
In a rapidly urbanizing world, how do you build wildlife-friendly cities? Through research, planning, and collaboration. The Urban Wildlife Information Network (UWIN) held its first summit to encourage unity between experts of all kinds. The Urban Wildlife Information Network (UWIN), created by the Urban Wildlife Institute at Lincoln Park Zoo, combats the biodiversity crisis by…
For the last 20 years, the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project (GTAP) staff have lived and breathed wild great ape research and conservation. Under the leadership of Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes research scientist David Morgan, Ph.D., the team has grown across two remote field sites and employs site managers and…
Lincoln Park Zoo’s Conservation & Science department began in 1989 with only a single scientist, but has become one of the largest zoo-based science programs in the country. On any given day at Lincoln Park Zoo, animals explore their habitats, families criss-cross the Main Mall, and wild pollinators flit between native plant species. But that’s only the tip of the…
How does an animal tell you how they’re feeling or what they’re experiencing? Science. More specifically, through the Animal Welfare Science Program, a formalized initiative to better understand each individual in the zoo’s care. The dedicated Animal Care staff at the zoo work 365 days a year to feed specialized diets, create dynamic habitats, and…
Lions. Elephants. Chimpanzees. African dogs. Mountain gorillas. Rachel Santymire, Ph.D., director of Lincoln Park Zoo’s Davee Center for Epidemiology and Endocrinology, has studied wild and captive species from every corner of the world via hair, blood, nail, semen, urine, and fecal samples. By analyzing the stress and reproductive hormones in biological materials, she monitored the…
Lincoln Park Zoo is home to a wide array of species spanning several taxa, from armies of Madagascar hissing cockroaches to our baby eastern black rhinoceros, King. However, species diversity at zoos goes beyond the wildlife on exhibit; many native and non-native species live within the landscaped vegetation or water features around a zoo, in…
For the last couple years, Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute has spent some time listening to the skies. Because of this data, we now have a pretty good idea of who is flying around at night, chomping up all of the nighttime insects, from moths to mosquitoes. Now that the weather is turning cooler, most…
