2025 Annual Appeal supporting Friends of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo
2025 Annual Appeal supporting Friends of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo
How Your Support Makes a Difference
Your generous donation ensures our ability to care for all of these important animals — to save and preserve their future, and educate our community in the process.
Contributions, of any amount, help us maintain the important work happening here at the zoo. From excellent animal care and conservation to engaging guest experiences and public education, we rely on your help to implement our important mission.
Please send what you can to ensure the continued care and protection of some of the most vulnerable species on the planet.
As a loyal friend of the Friends of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo, you know that our mission is about more than caring for animals—it’s about fostering compassion, teaching conservation, and inspiring wonder in all who visit. You have stood beside us in this mission, and we are deeply grateful for your support.
Today, we have a special opportunity to make a lasting impact on one of our most iconic and endangered species—the Amur tiger. You may have heard that we recently welcomed a new male tiger, Metis, to join our zoo family. As we look to the future—including the potential for tiger cubs—we are dedicated to ensuring that their habitat meets the highest standards of animal care, welfare, and enrichment.
One of the most critical needs is redesigning and upgrading the tiger pool. While guests love watching our tigers splash and play, for the animals, swimming is an essential natural behavior that supports their physical health and mental well-being. The current pool is outdated and too shallow to meet modern standards. The redesigned pools will be deeper, more dynamic, and designed to reflect the tigers’ natural environment, providing better exercise, enrichment, and breeding support for this endangered species.
As an AZA-accredited zoo, we are held to the highest standards of animal care and habitat design. Meeting these standards requires continuous investment to ensure our animals live in environments that promote their natural behaviors and well-being. This project is vital not only for the health of our tigers but also for maintaining our AZA accreditation—a distinction that places us among the best zoos in the nation.
The total cost of this important project is $400,000, and the Friends of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo have committed $150,000 toward making it a reality. We invite you to join us in this effort by helping us raise these funds needed to complete this transformation.
Your gift—of any amount—will directly enhance the lives of Metis, Zeya, and their future cubs, ensuring they have a safe, enriching, and naturalistic home that will inspire generations of zoo guests to care about wildlife and conservation.
Please make your gift to the Friends of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo today by returning the enclosed card or giving online at rosamondgiffordzoo.org/donatenow.
Thank you for your generosity and for helping us continue our mission of compassion, conservation, and education. We couldn’t do this without you.
With gratitude,
Carrie Large
Executive Director