Birmingham Zoo

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Birmingham Zoo


Date opened	1950
Location	Birmingham, Alabama
Land area	50 acres (0.2 km²)
# of Animals	750
# of Species	250
Accreditations/ Memberships	AZA
Website
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The Birmingham Zoo, is a major zoological park founded in 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama. The 50 acre (20 hectare) zoo is home to approximately 750 animals of 250 species including many endangered species from six continents. The Zoo, which is managed by a private non-profit corporation, participates heavily in Species Survival Programs. It is located, along with the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, in Lane Park, a 200 acre (90 hectare) city-owned park near the western terminus of U.S. Highway 280 at U.S. Highway 31 on the southern slope of Red Mountain.

1 Early History
2 Lane Park
3 Jimmy Morgan Zoo
4 Today
5 Attractions/Exhibits
6 External links

[edit] Early History

The origins of the Birmingham Zoo start with a small menagerie of exotic animals kept in a Southside firehouse. As the collection grew it was moved first to Magnolia Park (now Brother Bryan Park) and then to Avondale Park. At the time, the collection consisted mainly of non-exotic animals, except for "Miss Fancy," a lone elephant donated by the Birmingham Advertising Club which had purchased it as a promotional novelty from a struggling circus stranded in the city.

As the collection grew in size and scope, city leaders contacted the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm, which had drawn up plans for a system of parks in Birmingham, for advice about housing a zoological collection. They were put in contact with the few municipal zoos existing in that period and plans began for providing a new permanent home for the growing attraction.

[edit] Lane Park

Birmingham, under mayor A. O. Lane, had purchased land on the south of Red Mountain between 1889 and 1896. The former [1]Red Mountain Cemetery, a pauper's cemetery was part of the parcel that was dedicated as a city park in 1934. The Works Progress Administration built a fish hatchery and a number of pavilions from the Hartselle sandstone quarried out of the mountain within the park's borders. The hatchery was fed by a natural spring and provided stock for recreational lakes in the region until the zoo took over the park.

The first source of post-World War II support for a new zoo came from the Birmingham Junior Chamber of Commerce. In 1946 Elton B. Stephens chaired a Jaycees committee to create a new zoo for the city of Birmingham. In 1949, then Birmingham mayor, James R. Morgan, a key supporter of the development, began an initiative to help in the planning and development of a city zoo.

[edit] Jimmy Morgan Zoo

A zoo commission was also established, and it decided to build the zoo on 50 acres (202,000 m²) of land on the southern foot of Red Mountain with a budget of $250,000. A much larger parcel of land that included the zoo parcel was incorporated into the city of Birmingham and was named Lane Park, home of the zoo as well as the neighboring botanical gardens.

The budget would be spent to build six exhibits with the opening of the zoo that included "Monkey Island," an elephant house, bear moat, birdhouse, snake pit and seal pool. The funds were raised through private donations, charter memberships, and in-kind donations from a broad base of community and business supporters.

The zoo, once known as The Jimmy Morgan Zoo, opened its doors with Monkey Island as its first official exhibit on April 2, 1955. The Jimmy Morgan Zoo operated as a quasi-private venture until city of Birmingham decided to assume responsibility in November 1955. The city changed the name to the Birmingham Zoo, and set an annual budget of $663,000 for its first year under city control.

By the early 1960s, the Alabama Zoological Society was created as a non-profit support group to raise funds to supplement the escalating operational necessities. Beginning in the 1960s and following decades, the City of Birmingham had many needs more important than the Birmingham Zoo. The situation was such the case with many municipal zoos across the nation at the time, and Birmingham was no different. The sources of funding for the zoo was inadequate to maintain and operate it at acceptable professional standards. A series of master plans were developed but never came to fruition due to lack of funding throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The need for significant improvements became increasingly evident by the 1990s.

The numerous financial demands on the city taking precedence led to the zoo's loss of accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in the late 1990s due to concern about aging facilities and uncertainty over continued funding.

In 1999, members of the Alabama Zoological Society worked with Birmingham mayor Richard Arrington Jr. and other political leaders to set up a public-private partnership to operate the zoo. Strong community leaders were recruited to serve as the first board of directors of a new organization, Birmingham Zoo, Inc. (BZI) The new organization established a transitional funding package with contributions from four government entities to support BZI during its first five years of operation.

[edit] Today

BZI undertook an intense 18-month effort to address the most pressing and immediate problems so that the zoo could become accredited by the AZA once again, ranking the Zoo in the top 10% of animal holding facilities in the nation. The Zoo also received 501 (c)(3) status from the IRS, and the first major capital campaign was launched in January 2001.

William R. Foster, DVM, joined the Zoo as Chief Executive Officer in January 2004. Foster, a veterinarian and leading zoo management authority on the national scene, is past president of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association and was president and executive director of the Louisville Zoo.

In the short time following this privatization, the Birmingham Zoo has hosted traveling exhibits of bats, koalas and black-footed penguins, added permanent exhibits of a Komodo dragon and interactive lorikeet aviary, and regained AZA accreditation. The Zoo completed the Junior League of Birmingham - Hugh Kaul Children's Zoo, a $15 million anchor exhibit dedicated to children and devoted to urban, rural and wild animals and environs of Alabama in April 2005, its 50th anniversary of operation.

The zoo draws more than 450,000 visitors annually and, in 2005, was named Alabama's top tourist destination by the Bureau of Tourism and Travel.