The area of San Diego has been inhabited for more than 10,000 years by the Kumeyaay Indians before the Spanish claimed it in 1542 until the Mexican-American war. The main attraction for us here was San Diego zoo. This was to be our third and final zoo of the trip and again this is reputed to be one of the best in the world. We both thought that it was better than Australian zoo but it still didn't quite match up to Singapore zoo which is truly the best in the world.
The zoo has a great range of endangered animals, including polar bears, gorillas, pandas and grizzly bears amongst many others. It is home to over 4,000 animals of more than 800 species. The zoo was set up in 1915 and the zoo's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species (CRES) was founded in 1975. CRES was renamed the division of Conservation and Research for Endangered Species in 2005 to better reflect its mission. In 2009 CRES was significantly expanded to become the Institute for Conservation Research.
The zoo is extremely active in conservation and species-preservation efforts. Its CRES raises California Condors, Pandas, Tigers, African Black Rhinos and a large number of other endangered species. Many species are bred in captivity for release into their native habitats where appropriate. It employs numerous professional geneticists, cytologists and veterinarians and maintains a cryopreservation facility for rare sperm and eggs called the Frozen zoo. All of the animals are owned by the zoo except the Giant Pandas who are owned by China and are on long-term loan. The pandas first came to the zoo in 1987 and after years of going through red-tape China agreed to loan the zoo two Giant Pandas and they have now had 3 cubs, the youngest of which is 8 months. The breeding program is going well here and there are plans for more cubs to be born which will be reintroduced to the wild in China. We got a cool video of the panda sitting eating bamboo you can see by clicking here, just excuse Gemma's shaky hands!
The zoo has a cracking website which has tons of information on their conservation projects and the animals in general. It also has live webcams in the panda, polar bear and ape enclosures that run 24/7. You can find this here:
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/zoo/index.php
Some of the facts that we learned were quite disturbing about the amount of animals left in the wild such as the fact that there are less than 4,000 tigers left in the world and over 50% of these are in captivity. The sad part is that the natural habitat of these animals is so small and overrun by poachers that zoos cannot re-introduce tigers as it would be pointless. The worst stat had to be that it takes 500,000 trees every week just to produce Sunday newspapers for Americans. Multiply that through 7 days and then again throughout the world and you can see how fast the animals homes are being destroyed. It is extremely important to start recycling or some of these animals may be lost to us forever.
To see more of our photos from the zoo you can click here.
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