A female gray seal pup was born to mother Lily on Jan 2nd making the pup the first zoo birth of the year. Brookfield Zoo has a new baby gray seal | Chicago Sun-Times
As I feared, Birdie the bottlenosed dolphin did not survive after the move to Brookfield. She died in November.
Some updates to share: Great Bear Wilderness will be closed for maintenance from April 4th to April 15th. Adult male Grant's zebra Patches passed away last week at the age of 35. The male gray seal pup born this year has been named Ziggy, and is now on exhibit. He lives with his 2-year-old brother Charles, and the young sea lion brothers Kanuk and Kodiak come and go from the group.
A tropical bird display has opened in the Feathers and Scales building. Brookfield Zoo opens new tropical birds exhibit | abc7chicago.com
The article mentions the space became too small for the previous desert birds exhibit. Wasn't it previously reported the desert birds exhibit would reappear elsewhere?
Interested parties might like to request from ZIMS a copy of their current listing for the genus Manis.
I just found out about it today. There are 8 of them, 4 of them are pregnant, and they are all currently off exhibit.
I suppose they're either a fresh import (probably from Togo) or they came from this organization, which claims it will have given pangolins to AZA zoos and have them on exhibit by the end of the year. They've been more than secretive, and have not identified how many pangolins they have or what exactly their enclosures look like. They've shown four, on their Facebook page, one of which they claim was sent to a zoo in 2013. http://www.zoochat.com/22/pangolins-breeding-florida-charity-base-424076/ Pangolin Conservation – Conservation, Education, & Research Assuming it's true, of course.
I found out through a Brookfield Zoo volunteer email, and that's all the information they've provided so far.
That's interesting. So this would make 9+* tree pangolins in the USA captive population if true? Did the email mention when the zoo acquired them? * I put + because you said 4 were pregnant.
Actually this would push the population up even higher. As it stands, if Brookfield does indeed have 8 pangolins, then the North American population would stand at a minimum of 13 animals. 1 at San Diego, 8 at Brookfield, and at least 4 housed at the "Pangolin Conservation Center" in Florida.
Also, according to somewhere else on the site, a few have been imported privately, though there's no way to tell if they are alive.
I thought I'd heard about the pangolians in a previous edition of the member magazine but I could be wrong. The blurb was more so about general pangolian conservation than the zoo itself. Where are they housed?
