Why support the Zoo during Give to Lincoln Day?
This year, we're celebrating 60 years of the Lincoln Children's Zoo. Sixty years of creating memorable, educational, and enriching experiences for those of all ages. Sixty years of providing high quality care to animals, inspiring curiosity in young minds, and sixty years of expanding our efforts to protect wildlife close to home and around the world. With the support of the Lincoln community, we've accomplished a lot in the last 60 years, and we're excited to see what we can accomplish in the next sixty.
The Zoo has been an important part of the Lincoln community for the last 60 years, and with your support and generosity, it always will.
Your gift supports education programs, conservation work, animal care and meets the Zoo’s most urgent needs. Your gift is vital for the Zoo’s future success, for the next 60 years and beyond.
Give to Lincoln Day is May 29th!
Help us reach 175 donors and receive an additional $10,000!
We play an important role in animal conservation and protecting species from extinction.
One example of the important role Lincoln Children's Zoo plays in conservation is our continued support of important vulture conservation efforts in South Africa. African vultures face many threats to their population in the wild. While there are many species of vultures, most of the African vulture species are considered endangered or critically endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
In December, as part of an ongoing partnership, the Zoo donated critical medical equipment and provided on-site medical assistance to VulPro, a vulture rehabilitation facility and conservation organization. Dr. Sarah Woodhouse, the Zoo’s Director of Animal Health and Conservation, spent three weeks in South Africa working with VulPro. During this time she performed annual health checks on vultures that live on site and worked to triage and treat any injured birds that arrived in those three weeks. The Zoo also contributed important medical equipment such as a vital signs monitor that enables them to undertake surgeries and monitor patients with precision and care during anesthesia, a 36-inch walk-on platform scale, a multipurpose centrifuge, two Littman stethoscopes, bandage materials and scissors, and lab and blood collection supplies. These additions help make major advancements in equipping VulPro 's on-site hospital.
Why is vulture conservation important? Vultures are essentially nature’s clean-up crew. Ecosystems are dependent on vultures to keep diseases at bay. As scavengers, vultures clean up carcasses and can eat diseases that other animals cannot such as tuberculosis, rabies, anthrax and more. This eliminates the disease and prevents other animals from getting infected and spreading that infection further.
We provide high quality care to the animals that call the Zoo home.
At the Zoo, our dedicated zookeepers work tirelessly every day to make sure each animal receives the best care possible. This includes but is not limited to preparing special diets, cleaning habitats, creating enrichment activities, and building strong bonds with the animals through positive reinforcement training.
Zookeepers play a key role in keeping animals healthy by training them to participate in their own healthcare, like wellness exams or getting blood samples – making veterinary visits less stressful and safer for everyone.
Our expert animal care team also includes a full-time veterinarian and vet tech, who provide both emergency treatment and routine health checkups. In 2024, the animal care team:
- Collected 110 blood samples.
- Anesthetized 82 animals for various procedures ranging from wellness exams to diagnosing specific illnesses or ailments.
- Took 107 animal x-rays
- Filled 543 prescriptions.
The behind-the-scenes efforts from Zookeepers and the entire animal care team make a world of difference for the animals who call our Zoo home. We’ve been caring for animals for 60 years, and with your support and generosity, we always will.
The Zoo is a place to create lifelong memories.
For the last 60 years, Lincoln Children’s Zoo has been a place where people come face-to-face with animals, creating lifelong memories and inspiring future conservation champions. Whether you’re feeding a giraffe for the first time, watching a cheetah run in awe, or discovering the incredible adaptations of a spider monkey as you climb next to them in the Secret Jungle, the Zoo is a place for families to connect, learn and have fun.
