Roaring Forward | San Diego Zoo 100
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To kick off its next 100 years, San Diego Zoo Global publicly announced its “Roaring Forward” capital campaign on November 7, 2015, the largest fundraising campaign in the Zoo’s history. The goal of this seven-year effort is to raise $400 million by the close of 2017, to help fund the Zoo and its conservation work as it steps into a second century of saving species. Berit Durler, campaign chair and member of the board of trustees for San Diego Zoo Global said about the campaign, “While this may appear to be a staggering goal, it is our starting line, not where we end. The most important aspect of the $400 million is the impact the Roaring Forward campaign will make for children, wildlife, and the natural world.” This is the organization's first comprehensive campaign designed to use all contributions to fight extinction of the Earth’s rarest and most vulnerable animal and plant species. In announcing the public phase of the campaign, San Diego Zoo Global hopes to involve all its supporters to help make the Zoo’s hopes and dreams for the future a reality.
When the San Diego Zoo broke ground on the largest expansion in its history on July 29, 2015, an African crested porcupine and his trainer had the honor of taking the first dig, with guests (left to right) Conrad Prebys and Debbie Turner; Dan and Vi McKinney; and San Diego Zoo Global chairman Robert Horsman. Conrad Prebys Africa Rocks is a $68 million project that will transform eight acres of the Zoo and replace the 1930s-era grottos and enclosures that formerly made up Cat and Dog Canyon. What was previously a steep canyon will become a gently winding, ADA-accessible pathway that will lead guests through different types of African habitats, including a kopje rock habitat, Ethiopian highlands, acacia dry forest, West African rain forest, and a Madagascar habitat. There will be a 65-foot waterfall, funded by donor Ernest Rady, and a southern African coastline habitat for rock penguins, funded by donors Dan and Vi McKinney, along with homes for baboons, lemurs, African birds, dwarf crocodiles, and more.
Oliver Ryder, Ph.D., Director of Genetics, Kleberg Chair (right) discusses the features of the Frozen Zoo. The Frozen Zoo currently contains living cell lines, gametes, and embryos from nearly 10,000 individuals and more than 1,000 taxa of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, including one extinct species: the po'ouli honeycreeper. The Frozen Zoo is valued as a global genetic resource that has helped advance artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell technology and how they may be applied to wildlife conservation, and it will continue to be a vital asset in the years to come as San Diego Zoo Global leads the fight against extinction.
While saying goodbye to Nola the northern white rhino was heartbreaking, her legacy lives on in San Diego Zoo Global's Frozen Zoo. Researchers from the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research collected postmortem tissues from her to preserve her DNA, which have been added to frozen samples from 11 other northern white rhinos already in the Frozen Zoo. Taking a science-based approach, Oliver Ryder, Ph.D., director of genetics; Barbara Durrant, Ph.D., director of reproductive physiology; and their teams at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research Frozen Zoo—along with collaborators at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and at the Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Medicine in Berlin—are working to develop and perfect assisted reproductive technology to save the northern white rhino from extinction. The first step involves sequencing the genomes of the northern white rhino. The next step requires conversion of the cells preserved in the Frozen Zoo to stem cells that could develop into sperm and eggs. From there, reproductive options might include artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, or embryo transfer. One of the pieces fell into place at the end of 2015—San Diego Zoo Global opened a new Rhino Rescue Center at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and was able to bring six southern white rhinos over from South Africa to be housed at the new center. The reproductive system of rhinos is very complex, and there is still much to learn and a long way to go, but it is theoretically possible that some of these new rhinos could eventually serve as surrogates to carry northern white rhino calves. It's a project that will be developing well into the first decade of San Diego Zoo Global's next 100 years.
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2015

End Extinction 2007 - 2016
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