EXPLORE WILD HOPE

Frog saunas could help fight chytrid, Iberian lynx are no longer endangered, and scientists in Hawaii are breeding heat-resistant corals.

Black-footed ferrets are still alive today thanks to the combined efforts of scientists, zoos, tribes, and other partners across North America. The work hasn’t been easy — it’s involved a decades-long captive breeding effort, wild releases at 30 different grassland sites, and even the development of a vaccine to protect against plague! It’s been a […]

Black-footed ferrets nearly went extinct several times in the 20th century. Today, the current largest threat to their survival is a non-native disease called sylvatic plague.

Hope for Hawaiian honeycreepers, beavers in London, a snake's triumphant return, and rewilding on college campuses.

Black-footed ferrets have come back from near extinction thanks to breeding, cloning and reintroduction programs that have brought them back to the western prairie. Now, these wild populations are threatened by a plague that targets the prairie dogs they depend on for food — and even the ferrets themselves. The best chance? To vaccinate both predator and prey to keep both populations alive.

Increasingly, wildlife migratory routes are blocked by human-made obstacles like highways, cities, and dams. Wildlife corridors seek to connect as much land and water as possible to give animals the freedom to roam and maintain healthy, genetically diverse populations. 

In the past 40 years, golden lion tamarins became a symbol of conservation success when 150 zoos worldwide assisted a breeding and reintroduction program that brought their numbers in the wild from 200 to over 3700. Then, yellow fever jumped from humans to the primates and began to decimate their population—taking a third of the population in just two years.

Golden lion tamarins were nearly wiped out in the 1970s, but worldwide efforts by 150 zoos helped bring the species back from near-extinction. Today, local conservationists are expanding the forests in Brazil, and the wild population has grown from under 200 to now over 4800 tamarins!

Conservationists are hard at work protecting golden lion tamarins and other wildlife from extinction, and now you can help them from the comfort of your own home.

Zoos may be places where you can catch a glimpse of your favorite animal on a day out, but increasingly, they play an even more important role: as conservation institutions.