LA JOLLA, Calif. (Feb. 26, 2024) – Love is in the water for the critically endangered Sunflower Sea Star as a team in California successfully spawned and cross-fertilized gametes from a male and a female, resulting in fertile eggs. This success marks another incredible step forward in an ongoing collaborative effort to save the species from extinction. This advancement took place at Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, where their experts were joined by partners from the Aquarium of the Pacific, California Academy of Sciences, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA) and Sunflower Star Laboratory. 

SAN DIEGO (Feb. 14, 2024) – It's a match! In the world of conservation, pairing a perfect couple is more than just a romantic endeavor; it could be the key to saving an endangered species. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA) is playing Cupid for the critically endangered ‘alalā, a unique bird found only in Hawai‘i. In a new, unconventional study recently published in the journal Animal Conservation, SDZWA scientists hoping to hone their matchmaking skills applied personality traits to these crow relatives to find love connections to result in successfully fertilized eggs.

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 (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.

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.