Rewilding at Lincoln Park Zoo: Informing Reintroductions, Protecting Habitat, and Naturalizing Green Spaces

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “rewilding” refers to “an effort to increase biodiversity and restore the natural processes of an ecosystem that typically involves reducing or ceasing human activity and often the planned reintroduction of a plant or animal species and especially a keystone species.” It’s about returning to nature and restoring or reconnecting with wildness and wild areas.

Visionary rewilding projects work to bring wildlife back to places that have lost them, revitalize ecosystems, increase biodiversity, and reverse the negative effects of human development that have contributed to habitat loss. Full-scale rewilding projects—like reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone National Park and restoring Eurasian beavers or water buffalo to parts of Europe, where the term “rewilding” is more commonly used—take place around the world. Lincoln Park Zoo is conservation-focused organization that contributes to the more general aspects of rewilding both locally and globally.

Here are a few of the ways in which the zoo works to forward the philosophy and practice of rewilding:

Reintroducing Parrots in Puerto Rico

In 1975, the population of Puerto Rican parrots was down to just 13 wild individuals as a result of habitat loss, storms, and predation. Since the mid-2000s, Lincoln Park Zoo has supported a long-term conservation effort by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, which successfully brought the population up to several hundred birds at three island locations through a recovery program that involves bringing birds up in captivity, then reintroducing them into the wild. This work includes population viability analyses provided by the zoo’s Alexander Center for Applied Population Biology, which inform the management of the parrots in their native ecosystem. To find out more about the zoo’s involvement in Puerto Rican parrot reintroductions, visit this page.

Protecting Pristine Forest in the Congo

The Goualougo Triangle Ape Project was founded to protect great apes in one of the last intact mature old-growth forests in the world. Located in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Congo Basin, GTAP does research in the only known area where chimpanzees and gorillas coexist. While the park itself is protected, the area around it is open for development. Zoo scientists have worked with local logging companies to monitor the success of sustainable logging in the region. And, in 2023, the work of zoo scientists helped provide evidence that led to an act by the Republic of Congo’s Parliament to protect the Djéké Triangle, adjacent to Noaubalé-Ndoki Park, making it national park land.

Opening Pathways in Tanzania

Lincoln Park Zoo’s has collaborated with conservation partners in Tanzania, a high-biodiversity area with many threatened species, since 1995 as part of the Tanzania Conservation Research Program. Along with protecting animals and mitigating human-wildlife conflict on the ground through KopeLion, the zoo’s Alexander Center has analyzed how lions move through the Ngorongoro Crater Area as a way of understanding what conservation actions might help them survive and thrive in the region. Working with partners, the zoo helps protect important migratory corridors for lions through lands populated by human pastoralists. The TCRP does the same kind of work for other animals in the Greater Tarangire Ecosystem, such as elephants, buffalo, zebras, hippos, and giraffes.

Centering Science

The Alexander Center for Applied Population Biology, one of several science centers at the zoo, studies factors that make animal populations vulnerable to extinction. In doing so, it explores management strategies that allow them to thrive. Established in 2005, the Alexander Center conducts population viability analyses and works with a wide range of reintroduction programs to inform the breeding and release of species that include eastern massasauga rattlesnakes and red wolves, greater sage-grouse, Attwater’s prairie chickens, Hungarian meadow vipers, and Puerto Rican crested toads.

Naturalizing Nature Boardwalk

This historical image features recreational boats on the South Pond next to Café Brauer.

A bit closer to home, Lincoln Park Zoo did some rewilding just south of the zoo gates, in the area that includes South Pond and is now known as Nature Boardwalk. From the late 19th century to 2010 this area was a simple, classic city park with a manmade pond defined by a concrete lining. It was well known for the swan boats that visitors could ride. Today, the naturalization of this space, which included replacing that concrete lining with a soil substrate, has transformed it into an urban oasis. Nature Boardwalk is now regularly used by animals as well as people. Well over 100 species have now been documented using numerous microhabitats here that include prairie, black oak savanna, and wetland elements. These include bird species, reptile species like turtles and snakes, fish, insects such as monarch butterflies, and small mammals such as beavers. . It’s the perfect green space for zoo staff to teach people about science, botany, and interpretation while helping to build community.