Minnesota Zoo

This entry was originally going to be about the Lake Superior Zoo. Only one day after I had begun my road trip, Duluth, MN was struck by a terrible flood and the zoo suffered property damage as well as the tragic loss of fourteen animals. Because of this it was understandable that I would be unable to visit the zoo while on my trip, though I had them in my heart when I visited Minnesota (if you're interested in helping out the Lake Superior Zoo, there are still ways to do so). The Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, Minnesota stepped up and allowed me to visit on short notice.
The Minnesota Zoo had one of the largest education department I saw and also had one of the largest staffs, with 60 to 75 employees including seasonal workers. This large department accommodated a host of diverse and unique programs. These programs included ones targeted for older teens and adults, something that was rare to find among many zoos. When asking about this in my interview, I found the reason for this myriad of programs was twofold: partly because of the zoo's philosophy to reach out to every facet of the community, and partly because of the amount of resources at its disposal. The zoo had a formal relationship with the state but only received about 25% of their funding from it, the rest came from ticket sales and donors. With such a large department and the capacity to do many educational programs which do not generate revenue, the Minnesota Zoo was privileged enough to put on these atypical programs and wished to use its advantage to engage as much of the community as possible.

Here is a moose at the Minnesota Zoo, which was the first moose I have ever seen in person. They're so big in real life!

The programs aimed at older teens and adults included a Speaker Series, Career Day, and travel programs. The Speaker Series is free, open to the public, and brings in local or national speakers with topics related to conservation or environmental issues. The Career Day program was originally designed to help accommodate the requests the zoo got for information about zoo careers, and is now a day long program which includes interactions with employees from throughout the zoo, and behind the scenes tours. The travel program, some of which is aimed at youth, allows people to travel with the zoo to work on hands-on conservation projects which are related to the zoo's collections, meaning that their work can directly impact zoo animals, such as a popular trip to Costa Rica to work with sloths.
Some of the programs for younger children included an interactive online game called WolfQuest, developed through an NSF grant, which targeted young gamers and had over 3 million downloads. They also had a diverse selection of Zoo Camps, as well as a highly successful outreach program called Zoo Mobile.
The Zoo Mobile housed and managed all of the Minnesota Zoo's education animals. If another program wanted to use an animal, they would have to request it, and some of the animals could only be used by Zoo Mobile staff. The trend of having a separate department manage education animals was one I first noticed in Dallas, and seemed to affect zoos differently. At some it seemed to create a larger rift between education proper and the outreach program, but at the same time it could free up resources within the education department when they do not have to maintain the education animals but can still use them in programming. The housing and care of education animals varied between zoos, from the animals being completely managed by education directorial staff and housed in education buildings, to being housed off-site and handled by a separate department. These differences did not create many palpable differences in programming however, as the zoos still used the education animals they had in similar ways.
Overall the Minnesota Zoo's education department was so huge it was sometimes hard to keep track of, and they were in the middle of a transition and some heavy strategic planning while I was there. But its massiveness was a lesson all its own - it was an example of what zoos can offer when given more funding, and could serve as an example for how donating to a zoo can help that zoo offer more for the community as a whole.

Great Plains Zoo

The Great Plains Zoo & Delbridge Museum of Natural History resides in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Getting to Sioux Falls from Boise, Idaho was an adventure all its own, involving a stop in Yellowstone National Park and driving through the entire state of Wyoming in one day. Being in this region made me realize the true distance between major cities, the vastness of the west. In this context, it made sense that the ZooMobile outreach and Sanford ZooExpress would travel 150 miles or 4 hours away in order to reach communities.
These two programs were just two of the many that the Great Plains Zoo offered. Their Zoo Club provided educational opportunities for children 15 months to 6 years old and Zoo Camps for those aged 2 to 11. Each camp or class is custom designed and pulls on the variety of resources the zoo has (such as their Museum of Natural History) and they run year round.
While the Great Plains Zoo offered many outreach opportunities, they also had interesting on-site programming, such as Biofact Tours. These are 60 minute on-site guided tours with integration of Biofacts at relevant exhibits.
One of the things I found interesting about the Great Plains Zoo's education program was that despite of their large and active outreach program, the education animals were still integrated into the main education department and cared for by the education specialists. Many of the zoos I went to had education animal collections which were handled by a different department, such as an outreach program. Here the animals were more integrated into the program as a whole. Though as a caveat, I wasn't able to see the education animals in holdings or in action, so this observation is conceptual.
The education program and the zoo itself had another unique aspect - the integration of the Delbridge Museum of Natural History. When I first read the combined name and realized the two had a partnership, I assumed the Museum was in a separate building and completely apart from the zoo. Instead, I was greeted with mounted animal specimens upon my immediate entrance to the zoo. This combination seemed off at first - as I read in Savages and Beasts, most modern zoo visitors are aghast at any 'dead' animals. But the Great Plains Zoo combined these animals with pride, and as I was given a tour, I realized that the Museum was much like a very well-organized set of Biofacts. These animals were on display in the same way the animals in the zoo were - they were there to foster connections with the natural world and to educate. In fact, perhaps my comparison to Biofacts did not do them justice, because as the person I interviewed put it in perspective, those animals were all part of the collection, and the ones in the zoo just happened to be the live collection.
Overall my visit to the Great Plains Zoo was productive and atypical, but in a positive way. I was given the tour and interview by a person from marketing, which gave me the special opportunity to understand how other zoo departments may view education. It also highlighted how an effective education program can be a true marketing tool for zoos. And of course, my visit had to be pretty awesome because I got to ride a camel: