Denver Zoo Informations

The Denver Zoo is an 80-acre (32 ha) zoological garden located in City Park of Denver, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1896, it is owned by the City and County of Denver and funded in part by the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). It is the most popular paid attraction in the Denver metropolitan area.

The Denver Zoo was started with the donation of an orphaned American black bear. With the construction of Bear Mountain, it became the first zoo in the United States to use naturalistic zoo enclosures rather than cages with bars. It expanded on this concept with Primate Panorama, featuring huge mesh tents and open areas for apes and monkeys, and with Predator Ridge, which has three separate areas through which animals are rotated so that their overlapping scents provide environmental enrichment. Toyota Elephant Passage, which opened on June 1, 2012, is divided into five areas for rotating the various species.

The Denver Zoo is accredited by the (American) Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and is also a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA). The zoo achieved ISO 14001 certification in 2009, was given the first AZA Green Award in 2011, and was named the "Greenest Zoo in the Country" at the World Renewable Energy Forum in 2012. In 2015, it was re-certified for ISO 14001 and achieved OHSAS 18001 certification, becoming only the fourth zoo in the world to get both certifications.

The Denver Zoo was founded in 1896 when an orphaned American black bear cub named Billy Bryan – short for William Jennings Bryan after the contemporary American politician – was given to Thomas S. McMurry (mayor of Denver from 1895–1899) as a gift. McMurry gave the hard-to-manage cub to the keeper of City Park, Alexander J. Graham, who started the zoo with this animal. Other animals at the young zoo included native waterfowl at Duck Lake, native prairie dogs, antelope which roamed the park, and a flock of Chinese pheasants, which later populated the eastern plains of the state.

In 1905, a population of red squirrels was added to the zoo's collection; this population grew rapidly and decimated the bird population at Duck Lake. A plan to shoot the squirrels was scrapped when citizens protested. Instead, as many squirrels as could be caught were sent to the Denver Mountain Parks.

The zoo was a motley menagerie until 1906, when Mayor Robert W. Speer declared that the zoo's "[p]rison bars can be done away with" in favor of "concrete rocks, waterfalls, trees, etc." Speer hired the city's landscape architect, Saco R. DeBoer, to draw up the plans for his renovation and appointed Victor H. Borcherdt as zoo director.

Borcherdt designed the Bear Mountain exhibit, which opened in 1918. This structure is 43 ft (13 m) tall and 185 ft (56 m) long, and cost $50,000 to build. It was built of dyed and textured concrete forms cast from Dinosaur Mountain just outside Morrison, Colorado. Hidden moats replaced cage bars, and native plants and an artificial stream enhanced the natural look. The two main exhibits originally housed polar bears and grizzly bears. The south tip of the exhibit was designed to resemble Mesa Verde National Park. Originally it housed monkeys, but due to escape problems sea lions were housed there instead. Between 1941 and 1961 it housed a female polar bear named Velox, who became the mascot of the 31st U.S. Infantry Regiment in 1952. Velox died at the zoo in 1961 and a memorial stone for her is displayed at the zoo. Bear Mountain established Denver as one of the foremost among American zoos, and the Saint Louis Zoo hired Borcherdt after seeing the exhibit.

Although other zoos in the region made extensive use of New Deal funds to upgrade their facilities, only one notable addition was made to the Denver Zoo between 1918 and 1950. Monkey Island was built in 1937 using funds from the Works Progress Administration. Mayor Benjamin F. Stapleton funded the zoo very little, and it was in poorly maintained condition when Mayor Quigg Newton was elected in 1947. Newton hired DeBoer, the architect involved with the zoo's design forty years before, to plan a rebirth. Starting with the 1950 overhaul of Monkey Island, the zoo has steadily added to and improved its exhibits.

The Denver Zoological Foundation was created in 1950, the same year that the zoo acquired its first elephant, Cookie. A Children's zoo was opened in 1951 (since replaced by Primate Panorama). A perimeter fence was built in 1957, defining the zoo as a separate area but still within City Park. Automobile traffic in the zoo was finally eliminated completely in 1959. Pachyderm Habitat was opened the same year, and Cookie was joined by a second elephant, Candy.

The zoo opened the Feline House in 1964, a Giraffe House in 1966, and an Animal Hospital in 1969. Bird World was opened in 1975, followed by the Mountain Sheep Habitat in 1979, Northern Shores for polar bears, otters, and pinnipeds in 1987, and Wolf Pack Woods in 1988.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 made it impossible to keep the polar bears and sea lions in the Bear Mountain enclosure. This and its deteriorating condition lead to a $250,000 renovation of the exhibit starting in 1987. The exhibit reopened in 1989 with grizzly bears and Himalayan bears occupying the northern two exhibits and coatis in the southern tip.

In 1993, the zoo opened the $11.5 million Tropical Discovery exhibit. Designed by the Denver architectural firm Anderson Mason Dale, this indoor tropical garden topped by glass pyramids is the aquarium and herpetarium of the Denver Zoo, and its opening doubled both the number of species and the number of animals at the zoo. Along with the animals, 90% of which had never been on display at the zoo, there are over 250 species of plants represented in the exhibit.

On November 6, 1994, twin polar bear cubs Klondike and Snow were born to a first-time mother named Ulu, who rejected the cubs. They were successfully raised by zoo staff and became a popular attraction. The bears were transferred to SeaWorld Orlando. In 2012 Snow was transferred from Sea World in Orlando, Florida to the Reid Park Zoo in Tucson, Arizona, where she died unexpectedly on September 2, 2012. Klondike died at SeaWorld Orlando on September 13, 2013. Their story is commemorated at the Denver Zoo by a bronze sculpture located across from the main polar bear viewing area.

On February 24, 2007, a jaguar mauled zookeeper Ashlee Pfaff inside the animal's enclosure. The jaguar was shot and killed by the zoo's emergency response team while rescuing Pfaff, who later died of her injuries at a local hospital. This event occurred despite zoo policy prohibiting direct contact between keepers and big cats. An investigation by the zoo concluded the attack was the result of human error by Pfaff.

In 2009, the Denver Zoo was the first zoo in the United States to achieve ISO 14001 certification. City park rebuilt its greenhouses in 2009, and as part of this project was able to provide the zoo with its own dedicated greenhouse.

That same year, Denver Zoo celebrated the birth of an endangered aye-aye that was the first of the species to be conceived and born in a North American zoo. The zoo has continued to have a successful breeding program.

In 2010, the zoo, in cooperation with the City and County of Denver, drained Duck Lake in order to remove sediment buildup and improve its water quality. Duck Lake is part of 330-acre (130 ha) City Park but not part of the zoo, but it is a major nesting ground for black-crowned night herons and snowy egrets in the state. The nature walk along the lake shore was upgraded as part of the Asian Tropics project.

In 2012, the zoo opened the $50 million Toyota Elephant Passage. The exhibit was originally announced in 2006 as Asian Tropics, and bids for a general contractor were sent out in June 2009. The exhibit was constructed by the Kiewit Building Group and groundbreaking was on December 2, 2009. It was opened to the general public on June 1, 2012.

In 2015, following conservation work with researchers around Lake Titicaca in both Peru and Bolivia, Denver Zoo welcomed 20 Lake Titicaca frogs from the Huachipa Zoo and later became the first zoo in the northern hemisphere to breed the rare amphibians. Some have moved to other institutions in hopes of building a healthy captive population that can be released back into the lake in the future. In nearby Colombia, the zoo released Andean condors in 2010 and 2012.

The Denver Zoo houses species from all over the world, including hoofed mammals, carnivorous mammals, primates, pachyderms, birds, reptiles, and fish. The zoo's animal collection contains 4,125 specimens representing 613 unique species. The zoo is laid out in a large loop, with exhibits both inside and outside the loop. Current exhibits include the following:

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