The national zoological park popularly refers to as national zoo is one of the aged long zoos in the United States. And it is the part of the Smithsonian institution 1890, and also no fee is requiring for its entrance. It was accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).
The zoo was founded in 1889, by act of congress on March 2, of the same year. Its mission is therefore to provide engaging experience with animals and create and share knowledge to protect wildlife and habitats.it actually has two campuses, the first is a 163 acre urban park located at Rock Creek Park in Northwest Washington.
While the second campus is the 3,200 acre Smithsonian conservation biology institute located in front of Royal, Virginia; it is a private facility devoted to train wildlife professionals’ rare species through natural means and assisted reproduction. And because it is a part of the Smithsonian institution, the zoo receives federal appropriations for operating expenses . A new master plan for the park was introduced in 2008 to upgrade the park’s exhibits and layout.
The two campuses all together host about 1,800 animals of 300 different species. About one fifth of these animals are endangered or threatened. Most species are on exhibit at the Rock Creek Park campus. Animals housing here are not only the wide animal but also animals as birds, great apes, big cats, Asian elephants, aquatic and small mammals.
For the past 50 years, the national zoo, like most zoos around the world, focused on exhibiting one or two exotic representative animal species. Owing to this the number of species in the wild began to decline drastically because of the activities of human being.
In 1958, a friend of the national zoo (FONZ) was established.
The citizen group’s first accomplishment was to persuade congress to fund the zoo’s budget through the Smithsonian and the District of Columbia.
Later FONZ incorporated as a nonprofit organization and swayed its attention to developing education and volunteers programmes, support these efforts from its operation of concessions at the zoo, and creating community support for the zoo via its members annual fund raising.
As a result of some species breeding successfully and some did not, the zoo now changed its attention to breeding and studying threatened and endangered species, and this led to the establishment of zoological research Centre (CRC) in 1965 to studies animal both in their wild and at the zoo.
Their researches encapsulate reproductive biology, conservation biology, and biodiversity monitoring, veterinary medicine, nutrition, behavior and bird migration.
