 The Horace Rackham Memorial Fountain, Corrado Parducci, sculptor The Detroit Zoo is located in suburban Royal Oak, Michigan. The Detroit Zoological Institute is an agency of the City of Detroit despite not being physically located there. The Institute also runs the Belle Isle Aquarium and the Belle Isle Nature Zoo (currently closed) located on Belle Isle inside the city.
The Detroit Zoological Society was founded in 1911 but it was not until 1924 that the zoo became a reality. Two years later the Bear Dens and Sheep Rock had been added, followed shortly by the Bird House. Next to be constructed were the Elk Exhibit, the Baboon Rock, and Primate and Reptile houses. The Detroit Zoo was one of the first in the world with cageless exhibits. The onset of the Great Depression brought to a halt any more major projects.
In 1939, sculptor Corrado Parducci created the Horace Rackham Memorial Fountain, popularly known as "the Bear Fountain." The memorial was one of four major donations made by Mary Rackham in the memory of her late husband Horace, the other three being college buildings named after him in Detroit, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan.
The zoo participates in numerous Species Survival Plans (35 species in 2004), helping preserve critically endangered species. Trumpeter swans and Partula snails were raised at the zoo for reintroduction to the wild, while the zoo has taken in abused circus animals (Barle the polar bear in 2002) and drug-house guard lions. The National Amphibian Conservation Center (or Amphibiville) opened at the zoo in 2000.
The zoo made news in 2004 when it became the first U.S. zoo to give up its elephants on ethical grounds, claiming the Michigan winters were too hard for the animals and confining them to the elephant house during cold months was psychologically stressful. The zoo had had elephants since 1923.
References:
The First Fifty Years, William Austin, the Detroit Zoological Society 1974
Shadowing Parducci, unpublished manuscript, Einar Einarsson Kvaran
External link: Detroit Zoo official site (http://www.detroitzoo.org/)
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