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Magazine of the NC Zoo Society www.nczoo.com Winter 2019 :: 1 IN THIS ISSUE Winter 2019 Issue No. 95 3 Conservation Connection: SOCIETY BOARD What Does it Take to Save a Species? MICHAEL J. FISHER Chair 7 Protecting What We Cherish Greensboro 8 Holiday Gifts to Please the Heart MARJORIE M. RANKIN Secretary 9 Travel with the Zoo Society Asheboro JOHN RUFFIN 10 Happy Anniversary, North Carolina Zoo Society Treasurer Winston-Salem 13 Extraordinary Experiences Waiting at the Zoo in 2019 RICHARD W. CARROLL Cary 14 Zoo To Do 2018 Thank Yous NICOLE CRAWFORD Durham 15 Thank Yous BILL CURRENS, JR. Charlotte 16 Looking for Butterflies SUMNER FINCH and Blooms this Spring High Point SCOTT JONES Clemmons SCOTT E. REED Winston-Salem DAVID K. ROBB Charlotte BARRY C. SAFRIT Greensboro MARGERY SPRINGER Raleigh KENT A. VARNER Charlotte On the Cover.... DON F. WELLINGTON Asheboro CHARLES M. WINSTON, JR. Red Wolf Raleigh CHERYL TURNER Valerie Abbott Executive Director Assistant Secretary EDITORIAL BOARD Jayne Owen Parker, Ph.D., Managing Editor De Potter, Design & Layout John D. Groves Please go to nczoo.com to purchase any items listed in the Alive magazine Corinne Kendall, Ph.D. or to make a donation to the Zoo Society. If you have questions, or need help, Mark MacAllister please give us a call at 336-879-7273. Tonya Miller Jb Minter, DVM Pat Simmons The North Carolina Zoo is open every day, weather permitting, Dustin Smith except on Christmas Day. Winter admission hours begin Novem- FPO/FSC Roger Sweeney ber 1 and extend from 9 a.m. through 3 p.m. Summer admission Cheryl Turner hours begin April 1 and extend from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Diane Villa Alive is published quarterly by the North Carolina Zoo Society, the Financial information about the NC Zoo Society and Angie Kahn, Proofreader private, 501(c)3 non-profit that raises funds and engenders public a copy of its license are available from the Charitable Solicitation Licensing Section at 888-830-4989. Printed by Hickory Printing Solutions support for the North Carolina Zoo. Issue No. 95, Winter 2019. Copyright © by the North Carolina Zoo Society. All rights reserved. The license is not an endorsement by the State. 2 :: NCZoo.com Conservation Connection Of Red Wolves, Peregrines and Bison Jayne Owen Parker, Ph.D. What Does it Take to Save a Species? t is not easy to figure out why some efforts to save endangered species work and some do not. Tap the name of a no-longer-endangered species into a Google search, and most of the pages Iyou turn up will recite facts and figures about the animal but will say little about the specifics that led it off the endangered species list. More in-depth searches don’t usually help much either. Most of them veer off topic to talk about the people— bigger than life heroes—who seem to be vital to making the recoveries happen. continues>>> Winter 2019 :: 3 Bison Tales littering the prairie, he set down his gun and set out on a lifetime quest to Take the American Bison. Track its restore bison to the western prairie. recovery, and you’ll soon meet William On this journey, he formulated a T. Hornaday—a Victorian gentleman plan to capture and corral as many wild and a lead taxidermist at the Smithso- bison as possible and to breed them nian Museum of Natural History. back to health in much the same way An avid big-game hunter, Horna- that ranchers bred domestic cattle. His day allegedly came to his conservation simple but novel idea paid off. Before moment on a prolonged, futile hunt to he died, he watched America’s bison collect bison for the museum’s exhibits. population climb from a low of 800 As the story goes, weeks into this animals to a collective herd of more failed hunt, and at the end of another than 12,000. fruitless day, Hornaday became entan- gled in a mound of prairie brush. The Peregrine’s Recovery Frustrated and tired, he hacked himself A similar story traces the fall and rise free and, wiping the sweat from his of North America’s Peregrine Falcon. brow, looked up and stared out across It found its hero in Dr. Tom Cade, an As it traveled up the food chain, it a rolling sea of prairie grasses awash in Ornithology professor at Cornell Uni- eventually accumulated in sufficient the glow of the setting sun. versity. Cade hatched his plan to rescue quantities to disrupt its hosts’ endo- Squinting as he scanned the hori- America’s Peregrines after the species crine system. In birds, the disruptions zon, Hornaday saw not a single bison. was already perched on extinction’s kept calcium from flowing into devel- Instead, everywhere he turned, his doorstep: No Peregrines survived east oping eggshells. Devoid of this mineral, eyes caught the glimmer of stark, white of the Mississippi River and, maybe, the shells became too fragile to support bison bones reflecting in the fading 150 pairs hung on in the West. the weight of incubating parents. light. Shaken by the volume of bones Cade’s late entry into the falcon’s Once this process was understood, rescue was due to the unnerving federal courts banned the use of DDT circumstances surrounding the bird’s inside the United States, and Cade disappearance. For years, Peregrine took this opportunity to begin a cap- populations (along with the popula- tive breeding program for America’s tions of many other native birds) had Peregrines. Making his program work, been in a tailspin because of exten- though, required a lot of ingenuity sive nesting failures. Generation after because, Cade had to help the birds generation of chicks failed to appear overcome their instinctive aversions to because their eggs shattered during caging and to nesting in sight of other incubation. Unless that problem falcons. could be solved, nothing could save But, overcome they did. In just a few Peregrines from extinction. years, Cade was successfully enticing Finally, though, scientists realized males and females to accept each other that DDT, a new and highly effective as mates and had them nesting in pesticide, was causing the nesting coops instead of on mountain ledges. failures. Thought to be non-toxic to He pioneered ways to double their birds and other large animals, the egg production and devised a strat- pesticide turned out to be deadly egy that kept Great Horned Owls and enough to create a mass extinction. eagles from picking off newly released The pesticide’s fault lay in its per- Peregrine youngsters. (Traditionally, sistence. It clung, unchanged, to the Peregrine chicks escaped this kind of tissues of dead and dying animals, predation because their parents were and, once inside their cells, rose up there to drive off the predators.) Amaz- the food chain as if it were a friendly ingly, it took fewer than 30 years for nutrient. It passed from stricken Cade’s program to restore Peregrines in insects into their predators and even- sufficient numbers to lift their name off tually into their predators’ predators. the Endangered Species List. 4 :: NCZoo.com North Carolina’s 120,000-acre Alli- Warm and Fuzzy Recovery Tales gator River National Wildlife Refuge Stories about people like Hornaday and became the wolf’s main reintroduc- Cade telegraph messages of hope and tion site. Over the years, the Service reinforce the idea that species’ rescues introduced several more captive-bred depend on wildlife heroes. But, these wolves and, as the refuge acquired more stories also distract from the reality that acreage, the wild wolves reproduced as species’ rescues are complicated and well. After a number of stops and starts, actually involve the support of a large the wild population expanded to about community of caring people. 130 animals. In the years that followed, Both Hornaday and Cade relied on though, the program ran into a series of benefactors, volunteers, and power- problems that stopped this expansion ful politicians to keep their programs and sent the population into a deep going. President Theodore Roosevelt decline. Today, this wild population bullied Congress into funding the probably contains fewer than 25 Red bison’s recovery plan and persuaded Wolves. these lawmakers to build a national disappearing species. zoo, as well, to house a recovery herd. Further, all three species arrived on What Will Happen? The National Bison Foundation formed these lists because they were victims Unlike Bison and Peregrines—which to bring in wealthy backers. And, five of human-induced catastrophes. Bison were released into welcoming national western ranching families—three were slaughtered for political and eco- parks and cityscapes respectively—Red headed by Native Americans—set up nomic gains—50 million killed in little Wolves were sent into a rather small, bison breeding programs before Dr. more than a decade. Peregrines, along newly formed refuge in eastern North Hornaday got his program off the with eagles and other native birds, suc- Carolina. Some community members ground. These ranchers, not Hornaday, cumbed to a poison unleashed, albeit welcomed the reintroduction, and some provided most of the stock that formed accidentally, by a deadly and improp- did not. the bison’s recovery herd. erly vetted pesticide. And, Red Wolves The people who did not remained Similarly, private falconers gave Cade were relentlessly poisoned, shot, and vocal and grew more so when wolves their birds to form his founding flock dispatched during predator eradication began wandering out of the refuge. and stuck around, along with other programs that wrongly likened these Things grew even worse as more and volunteers, to help take care of the shy and reclusive animals to the aggres- more Coyotes made their way toward birds.