African penguins and California least terns share marine habitat challenges.

SAN DIEGO (Dec. 19, 2023) – For more than a decade, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s entomology team has collaborated with Australia’s Melbourne Zoo to maintain populations of the critically endangered Lord Howe Island stick insect. For the first time in North America, visitors to the San Diego Zoo will have the opportunity to see these rare, nocturnal insects in a specialized habitat at the Zoo’s Wildlife Explorers Basecamp.

SAN DIEGO (Nov. 27, 2023) – When a mysterious illness called “sea star wasting syndrome” decimated 95% of the sunflower sea star population, and some 20 other sea star species along the Pacific Coast from Baja to Alaska in 2013, scientists rallied to understand the factors that caused such a massive wasting event. Now as part of the greater recovery initiative, in a scientific first, dozens of baby sunflower sea stars were hatched and are thriving thanks to a breakthrough in reproductive cell cryopreservation technology.

SAN DIEGO (Nov. 14, 2023) – San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, in collaboration with Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, reintroduced more than 70 endangered mountain yellow-legged frogs into a lake located in the San Bernardino Mountains. This release marks the first time the Southern California distinct population segment of the mountain yellow-legged frog has been reintroduced into a lake instead of a mountain stream. The frogs were bred at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Beckman Center for Conservation Research between 2020 and 2022, and then reared at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium. The cross-country effort to save this California frog is part of a robust conservation breeding and reintroduction research program aimed at restoring populations of this declining species throughout its historic range.

SAN DIEGO (Oct. 11, 2023) – San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has been recognized for its expertise in wildlife biobanking, and has partnered with the Species Survival Commission (SSC) of the world’s largest conservation organization—the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—to form the new Center for Species Survival: Biodiversity Banking. The new center is the first ever to have a strategy focus rather than a taxonomic one.

Andean bear twins at the San Diego Zoo are a double dose of hope for this vulnerable species.

Challenges are lurking in the watery world of black caimans—and their reptilian relatives.

Technology takes wing, and is playing a key role in Hawaiian hawk conservation.

In the face of increasing biodiversity loss, biobanks like ours play an essential role in conservation.

These resourceful insects turn fresh leaves into an edible fungus garden.