When you register and fundraise for Walk for the Wild Presented by SKECHERS, you’re supporting the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association (GLAZA) and L.A. Zoo. Through your participation and generosity, you’re doing nothing short of helping to make the world a better place for wildlife. Working hand-in-hand with partners throughout Los Angeles and around the world, the L.A. Zoo, with GLAZA’s support, is taking action to save threatened species while supporting communities.
This year’s event is inspired by giraffes, which are declining in the wild due to poaching and habitat loss. Through the daily care of Masai giraffes and other imperiled species, the L.A. Zoo is inspiring and engaging the next generation of conservationists and supporting global field efforts. Species including the California condor and peninsular pronghorn only exist today thanks to the L.A. Zoo’s important conservation work.
Since 2018, the L.A. Zoo and GLAZA have partnered with GCF, supporting efforts that protect giraffes, rhinos, and other animals in the Eastern Cape of South Africa from illegal hunting. This partnership initially helped to establish the horseback Anti-Poaching Unit (APU) at the Amakhala Game Reserve, and expanded in 2021 to form a new mounted APU in Kariega Game Reserve. The Zoo’s support has continuously provided salaries and training for local community members, funding for supplies, and an off-road 4-wheel ATV, all essential to the program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Severe habitat loss and the illegal trade in ivory have led to devastating declines of Asian elephants. One result of habitat loss is the rise of conflict between humans and elephants. Long-term funding from the L.A. Zoo has supported Wild Earth Allies’ efforts to reduce these conflicts and engage surrounding communities in protecting elephants. A recent L.A. Zoo grant funded deployment of 25 camera traps in Cambodia’s Prey Lang Forest. The cameras documented more than 38 animal species—including 15 threatened with extinction. The current grant will expand field surveys, develop community education events, provide ranger training, and protect and analyze salt licks (a key source for minerals in elephant diets). These projects will make a demonstrable difference to the forest elephants and neighboring communities.
GRACE’s mission is to provide rehabilitative care for rescued endangered Grauer’s gorillas, and to work alongside communities in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to promote the appreciation and conservation of wild gorillas and their habitat. L.A. Zoo Director of Animal Programs Beth Schaefer, who serves as Co-Chair of GRACE’s Animal Care and Welfare Advisory Group, has made several visits to the sanctuary to assist with staff training and consult on animal management issues. The Zoo has granted ongoing funding to help support sanctuary operations, veterinary care, vaccinations, education programs, and more. We’re also working with GRACE staff to test tracking devices that will one day allow researchers to track the movements of wild gorillas through the forest—a critical step in the goal of reintroducing sanctuary gorillas to the wild.
Chacoan peccaries are found in the Gran Chaco, a thorny desert region that stretches across Bolivia, Argentina, and Paraguay. The harshness of their habitat has earned them the nickname “pigs from green hell.” The L.A. Zoo has been involved in the care and conservation of Chacoan peccary since 2001, including building an extremely successful breeding program. Through the Chacoan Peccary Species Survival Plan, the Zoo provides ongoing financial support to the Chaco Center for the Conservation and Research’s Proyecto Tagua, the only conservation project in existence for this endangered species.
The L.A. Zoo has been involved in the effort to save North America’s fastest land mammal since 2000. In 2006, we imported the first peninsular pronghorn into the U.S. to establish a zoo-based assurance population. In addition to breeding a herd of these charismatic animals, the Zoo has also provided field assistance, expertise, and funding to the Peninsular Pronghorn Recovery Program in the Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve of Baja California Sur, Mexico. With fewer than 50 peninsular pronghorn remaining in the wild, the PPRP’s breeding and reintroduction program is critical to the species’ survival.
The L.A. Zoo has been a partner in the CCRP since its inception, helping to increase this iconic species’ numbers from a record low of 22 in the 1980s to more than 550 today. The L.A. Zoo has hatched hundreds of California condor eggs, and our hatchlings are represented at all five of the release sites, in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja California, Mexico. In addition to caring for roughly 20 adults and six chicks each year, our team provides our partners with critical training on safe handling, reproduction, and care of condors, and we continue to develop techniques to increase post-release success. No zoo does more for the California Condor Recovery Program than the L.A. Zoo.
Since 2007, the L.A. Zoo has participated in the Southern Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog Recovery Program, a collaborative effort to save this critically endangered local frog from extinction brought on by introduced predators, disease, pollution, and drought. Once widespread in the local mountains, its numbers have decreased dramatically. The Zoo currently maintains two breeding groups, and regularly assists the U.S. Geological Survey with field work, releasing thousands of Zoo-bred tadpoles into protected and restored native mountain streams where the species had gone locally extinct.
Your participation in Walk for the Wild ensures that species-saving conservation initiatives like these continue, and that GLAZA has the resources to go the extra mile in supporting the Zoo, so that future generations can experience the joy of wild things and wild places. Thank you!