Vic valbuena bareng/ViewKatz, a 2-year-old cougar, peers from behind a fence at the Southern Nevada Zoological and Botanical Park, 1775 N. Rancho Drive.
Vic valbuena bareng/ViewA male peacock stands beside an African-spurred tortoise at the Southern Nevada Zoological and Botanical Park.
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Driving past the Southern Nevada Zoological and Botanical Park at 1775 N. Rancho Drive likely will not give you a good idea of what's going on at the zoo or how significant and unique the facility is.
Even if you drop by, pay the $7 admission -- $5 for children -- and spend an afternoon roaming the facility's 3 acres, you'll probably be impressed with how close you can get to a pair of African lions, or how fun it is to interact with Terry, a chimpanzee. But perhaps you might not get an understanding of how important the zoo is, the success it has had, or what it could become.
There are some misconceptions about the Las Vegas zoo, said founder and director Pat Dingle. It's not for real. There aren't many animals. The conditions are poor. The zoo is struggling.
None of these statements is true, he said.
"Las Vegas has a far better reputation in the zoo world than in our own community," said Dingle, a 46-year Las Vegan. "The San Diego Zoo has been our mentor for years, and they put rare animals that most other zoos in the U.S. would kill for with us, because they know we care for these animals."
One of the best examples of that is the zoo's fossa exhibit. A fossa is a mammal similar to a mongoose and native to Madagascar. In fact, it's the largest predator from that region. Very little is known about the animal, Dingle said, although it was made somewhat popular due to the characters in the 2005 animated film "Madagascar."
"It comes from a very secluded place and it's not related to anything else on Earth," Dingle said. "There were only 30 in the U.S. a year ago, and the San Diego Zoo put a breeding pair with us."
Protocol requires regular inspection of the zoo habitats of such animals, and when Carmi Penny, curator of mammals at the San Diego Zoo, visited Las Vegas to check on the fossas, he was beyond impressed.
"He basically said this is the best fossa exhibit in the country," Dingle said. "It's constructed in a bamboo grove and it's twice the size of anything else out there."
The exhibit, and the efforts of Dingle and his mostly volunteer staff at the zoo, have led to advanced breeding of fossas, and that's not the only animal that has flourished in Las Vegas.
San Diego gave the local zoo a pair of Barbary apes 25 years ago, and Las Vegas has become the most successful facility in breeding that species since then.
"We're the only zoo with a family of these apes, and Harvard has done DNA studies on our animals as a result," Dingle said. "Of course, we don't indiscriminately breed animals. We don't breed for the sake of breeding, and we don't have the space to accommodate that, but we have many rare animals and these efforts have long-term educational impact."
Education is a focus at the Las Vegas zoo. School groups are among the most frequent visitors, and the 10-year-old Explorer Program for youth ages 14-18 from all over Southern Nevada provides extended study in zoology, veterinary care and animal husbandry.
"We get tourists, but we're here for this community," said Dingle, who knows a little bit about service.
His previous job was 12 years as a homicide detective for the North Las Vegas Police Department.
"A lot of people don't realize we're a nonprofit organization, totally dependent on our visitors," he said. "We are self-sufficient, we've been here a lot of years, and our growth can only reflect our own community. But we're the most successful zoo in the history of this state."
Visitors often expect something more in line with the big-city zoo they've seen elsewhere, like San Diego. But the Las Vegas zoo, founded in 1980 and built on a property that was Desert Nurseries in the 1950s, receives no financial assistance from the city or Clark County. The zoo has a small core staff and operates mostly due to the hard work of a larger group of volunteer workers.
Jeannie Akins has been in Las Vegas for 11 years and served as the head zookeeper here for about a year and a half. She said locals might not know about the zoo, but they're always impressed when they visit.
"It's a lot different than people think it's going to be," she said. "They're always surprised on their first visit, or when they see us feed the (9-foot American) alligator, or when they find out about all the endangered species we have. We have a lot to offer that people just aren't aware of."
Fancy animal attractions on the Strip may be popular with tourists, but Dingle said if visitors or residents want to see the real thing, the zoo is the place.
"There is a clear distinction between us. Those attractions on the Strip came years later, and while they're interesting and exciting, they're there for tourists, where we are a community zoo with an educational purpose," he said. "There is a certain mystique about Las Vegas, the glitz and glamour, and that leads to certain expectations about attractions here. But we're not like on TV. We're not a video game. Here, the animals are five feet away."
Dingle is hoping the Las Vegas zoo will one day expand into a facility that meets up with the public's expectations, but while he has sought financial assistance from just about every source over the years, the funding has yet to present itself.
"We're financially stable, we have no debt and we run like a Swiss watch," Dingle said. "The zoo can keep going on like this forever. The pressure is to provide a bigger, better facility. We're never satisfied."
"If you think about what it is, if you just allow it to be what it is, it's pretty amazing," Akins said. "It takes a lot of work to run this place. But it takes a lot more to build what people expect, and to do it right."
The zoo, open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, also has exhibits featuring American and Chinese alligators, rare birds, such as exotic parrots and emus, the last female Persian leopard in the country, a reptile room with species like the Mexican bearded lizard and more.
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