Detroit Zoo
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| Detroit Zoo | |
 The Horace Rackham Memorial Fountain, Corrado Parducci, sculptor
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| Date opened | 1883; August 1, 1928 |
| Location | Royal Oak, Michigan, USA |
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The Detroit Zoo is located in suburban Royal Oak and Huntington Woods, Michigan, USA. The Detroit Zoological Institute is an agency of the City of Detroit despite not being physically located there. The Institute, now run by the Detroit Zoological Society, also runs the Belle Isle Nature Zoo located on Belle Isle inside the city.
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[edit] History
The first Detroit Zoo opened in 1883 on Michigan and Trumbull Avenues, across from the current site of Tiger Stadium. A circus had arrived in town and went broke. Luther Beecher, a leading Detroit citizen and capitalist, financed the purchase of the circus animals and erected a building for their display called the Detroit Zoological Garden. The zoo closed the following year and the building converted into a horse auction.
The Detroit Zoological Society was founded in 1911 but it was not until 1924 that the zoo became a reality. The zoo's official opening was August 1, 1928 and acting Mayor John C. Nagel was to speak at the event. Running late, Nagel parked in back of the bear dens and as he came rushing around the front, Morris, a polar bear, leaped from his moat and came face to face with Nagel. Not aware how precarious his situation was, Nagel stuck out his hand and walked toward the polar bear joking, "He's the reception committee." The keepers rushed the bear and forced him back into the moat, leaving the mayor uninjured.
Two years later the Bear Dens and Sheep Rock had been added, followed shortly by the Bird House. Next to be constructed were the Elk Exhibit, the Baboon Rock, and Primate and Reptile houses. The Detroit Zoo was one of the first in the world with cageless exhibits. The onset of the Great Depression brought to a halt additional major projects, but expansion resumed in the 1940s and has periodically continued since then.
During the depression, one of the more popular attractions was Jo Mendi, a four-year-old chimpanzee purchased by the zoo director with his own funds. A veteran of Broadway and motion pictures, the chimp performed an act for the audience. As one press account stated, "he enjoys every minute of the act...He counts his fingers, dresses, laces his shoes, straps up his overalls; pours tea and drinks it; eats with a spoon, dances and waves farewell to his admirers." When the chimp fell ill in late 1932 after eating a penny, surgeons from area hospitals came to check him out. During his recovery, visitors brought toys, peanuts and more than $500 worth of flowers, along with several thousands cards and letters. Jo died in 1934 from hoof and mouth disease.
In 1939, sculptor Corrado Parducci created the Horace Rackham Memorial Fountain, popularly known as "the Bear Fountain." The memorial was one of four major donations made by Mary Rackham in the memory of her late husband Horace, the other three being college buildings named after him in Detroit, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan.
From the 1950s through the early 1970s, local weatherman Sonny Elliot hosted a television program At the Zoo that was shown on Saturdays on television station WDIV.
[edit] Current activities
The zoo participates in numerous Species Survival Plans (35 species in 2004), helping preserve critically endangered species. Trumpeter swans and Partula snails were raised at the zoo for reintroduction to the wild, while the zoo has taken in abused circus animals (Barle the polar bear in 2002) and drug-house guard lions. The National Amphibian Conservation Center (or Amphibiville) opened at the zoo in 2001 and the Arctic Ring of Life - the world's largest polar bear exhibit - opened in 2002. Barle successfully gave birth to a cub, Talini, in late 2004. In the spring of 2005, two wolverine kits were born at the zoo - a very rare event for the species, which tends to breed poorly in captivity. Other new buildings include the Ruth Roby Glancy Animal Health Complex (opened 2004) and the 38,000-square-foot Ford Education Center (opened 2005).
The zoo made additional news in 2005 when it became the first U.S. zoo to give up its elephants on ethical grounds, claiming the Michigan winters were too harsh for the animals and that confining them to the elephant house during cold months was psychologically stressful. The elephants, named Wanda and Winky, were relocated to the Performing Animal Welfare Sanctuary (PAWS) in California. The zoo had housed elephants since 1923. The former elephant exhibit was renovated, and is now home to two white rhinos, Jasiri and Tamba, both age three.
The Zoo's newest exhibit, Australian Outback Adventure, opened in spring 2006. The exhibit allows visitors to walk through a two-acre simulated Outback containing 17 red kangaroos; only knee-high wire cables separate visitors from the kangaroos, allowing the kangaroos to hop freely onto the walking path. [1]
On February 18, 2006, the Detroit City Council voted to shut down the zoo as part of budget cuts, being unable to reach an agreement with the Detroit Zoological Society to take over the park and a legislative grant having expired that day. An uproar ensued and the Council, on March 1, 2006, voted to transfer operations to the Detroit Zoological Society with a promised $4 million grant from the Michigan Legislature. The city retained ownership of the assets, including the Detroit Zoological Institute in Royal Oak and the Belle Isle Nature Zoo. The Society will be responsible for raising the money needed to keep the facilities operating.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- The First Fifty Years, William Austin, the Detroit Zoological Society 1974
- Shadowing Parducci, unpublished manuscript, Einar Einarsson Kvaran
[edit] External links
Zoo • Public aquarium • Aviary • Menagerie • Tourist attraction
List of zoos • List of aquaria • List of zoo associations
Animals in captivity • Environmental enrichment • Endangered species • Conservation biology • Biodiversity • Endangered species • Extinction • Ex-situ conservation • In-situ conservation • Wildlife conservation • Zoology
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