(PRESS RELEASE / THE VILLAGE REPORTER)
TOLEDO ZOO PROGRAMS … Jodi Anderson (left), director of education for the Toledo Zoo and Aquarium, told Archbold Rotarians about the wide range of educational programming that the Toledo Zoo provides children, organizations and families throughout the year – both at the zoo and off-site. The program was arranged by Rotarian Lou Levy.
PRESS RELEASE – What began as a gift of a woodchuck from a local businessman for an animal display at Toledo’s Walbridge Park in 1900 has turned into a collection of some 16,000 animals representing about 700 different species from around the world. This year, the Toledo Zoo celebrates its 125th anniversary.
Typically, about one million people visit the zoo every year with the zoo’s Lights Before Christmas display that opens the weekend before Thanksgiving one of its most popular draws, Jodi Anderson, the zoo’s director of education, told Archbold Rotarians.
In fact, even now visitors will see zoo employees starting to string the lights so some of the holiday lights will be ready for the zoo’s annual Christmas in July display July 25-26.
Anderson explained that all of this as well as the year-round education program that she directs, including summer camps that will draw more than 1,300 children to the zoo this summer, fulfill the zoo’s four-word mission: Enjoy. Imagine. Educate. Act.
The “act” part of the mission refers to the zoo’s goal of furthering people’s understanding of why nature and people need to live together successfully.
One project that the zoo’s education department uses is a partnership with area school teachers and children.
Called Project Prairie, school children and their teachers come to the zoo where staff show them areas of the zoo that have been developed as a prairie area to explain how they have used landscaping and native plants to create low maintenance prairie areas that once existed in northwest Ohio.
Zoo staff then visit the students’ school to help them plan and create a landscape that would work for them and determine what plants they would like to use to create their school’s “prairie.”
By next year, Anderson said the zoo and area schools will have completed about 70 prairies.
She explained that many of the zoo’s buildings, including the aquarium, were built during the Depression as WPA (Works Progress Administration) projects.
When the aquarium opened in 1939, it was the first zoo aquarium in Ohio. Incidentally, it was the final WPA project to be completed in Ohio.
Of course, the aquarium underwent a massive renovation that was completed in 2015. Anderson said another WPA project, the Reptile House, is currently closed for renovations.
Several of the animals that Anderson said she is most excited about at the zoo are related to species education and survival.
Kali is the zoo’s new male polar bear. He arrived earlier this year from the St. Louis Zoo in exchange for the zoo’s two polar bear cubs that were born to Crystal, the zoo’s 26-year-old female, in 2022.
Kali, who is now 12, was captured in the wild as an orphaned cub and will hopefully mate with Crystal and introduce entirely new genes to the captive polar bear population.
Crystal has given birth to nine cubs while at the Toledo Zoo and this would likely be her last mating, Anderson said.
Another favorite animal at the zoo, is Eddie the vulture. He is fostering a chick that was abandoned. Anderson explained that he has done this before and appears to be doing a good job again.
The zoo is also home to a three-year-old Amur leopard, Antin. Native of southwestern Russia and northeastern China, amur leopards are considered critically endangered species with perhaps 130 living in the wild.
Finally, Anderson said the zoo’s playful otter family is always popular with the four pups now almost as large as their parents.
And another popular youngster at the zoo is over a year old and packing on the pounds. Kirkja, the baby elephant, is now more than 15 months old and weighs 1,000 pounds.