The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is a nonprofit organization headquartered in San Diego, California, that operates the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Founded in 1916 as the Zoological Society of San Diego under the leadership of Harry M. Wegeforth, the organization claims the largest zoological society membership in the world, with more than 250,000 member households and 130,000 child memberships, representing more than half a million people. The San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park feature a combined 15,000 animals of 750 species, not all of which are displayed publicly. In its first few decades, the Zoological Society of San Diego worked to establish and build up the San Diego Zoo. Members of the organization formed groups that later became the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK). In the early 1970s the society established the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species (CRES). The organization changed its name to San Diego Zoo Global in 2010 as part of a rebranding that also saw the Wild Animal Park renamed to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The name of the organization was changed again in March 2021, to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. The organization's mission is to save species worldwide by uniting their expertise in animal care and conservation science with their dedication to inspiring passion for nature. It is classified as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and is funded by a combination of grants, donations, membership revenues, revenues from the Zoo and Safari Park, and property taxes collected by the City of San Diego. Its lands, facilities, and animals are legally owned by the city, but are exclusively managed and maintained by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. The organization and its institutions are accredited by the AZA and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), and have received many awards for their habitats, breeding programs, and wildlife conservation efforts.
History
Formation
Dr. Harry M. Wegeforth, a San Diego physician, founded the Zoological Society of San Diego in 1916 with the intention of starting a zoo in the city's Balboa Park area using abandoned exotic animal exhibitions from the Isthmus portion of the 1915–16 Panama–California Exposition. Wegeforth had served on the board of directors for the Exposition in 1916, and he and his brother Paul, also a physician and surgeon, had served as surgeons for the event. By his own account, Harry Wegeforth was inspired to start a zoo after hearing the roar of a lion from one of the Exposition's exhibits:
On September 16, 1916, as I was returning to my office after performing an operation at the St. Joseph Hospital, I drove down Sixth Avenue and heard the roaring of the lions in the cages at the Exposition then being held in Balboa Park. I turned to my brother, Paul, who was riding with me, and half jokingly, half wishfully, said "Wouldn't it be splendid if San Diego had a zoo! You know...I think I'll start one." Taking me at my word, he replied that he would be glad to help me but added dubiously that he did not see how such a project could be put over on the heels of an Exposition not very successful in its second year. I had long nurtured the thought of a San Diego Zoo and now—suddenly—I decided to try to establish one. Later that month,[I] in an article in the San Diego Union, the brothers announced a call for interested parties to join them in forming a society to develop and support a zoological garden. They specifically called for local physician Fred Baker, who had co-founded the Marine Biological Institution (which later became the Scripps Institution of Oceanography), and Joseph Cheesman Thompson, a Navy neurosurgeon with an interest in entomology and herpetology:
Baker and Thompson responded, and helped convince naturalist Frank Stephens, a member of the board of directors of the Natural History Society, to join as well. The five men held the first organizational meeting of the Zoological Society of San Diego on October 2, 1916, with Harry Wegeforth serving as the founding president, Thompson as vice-president, Baker as treasurer, and Paul Wegeforth as secretary. Using the by-laws and constitution of the New York Zoological Society as a model, Harry Wegeforth, Thompson, and Stephens drew up the Articles of Incorporation and by-laws for the Zoological Society of San Diego, which were submitted to Mayor Edwin M. Capps, Park Commission President George Marston, and the state and executed on December 11, 1916. The group had already received one of its first animals that November: "Caesar", a female Kodiak bear that had been kept as a mascot and pet by the crew of the USS Nanshan; having grown too large and unruly to remain aboard the ship, the bear was lent to the fledgling zoo by Captain W. D. Prideaux. By the end of the year the Zoological Society had grown to 120 members, and had raised $1,000 in four days by selling lifetime memberships at $200 apiece.
Establishing the San Diego Zoo
The Zoological Society's initial efforts focused on the creation of the San Diego Zoo. In January 1917 the Balboa Park Board agreed to furnish quarters in the park to establish a zoo, and to assist the society with maintenance. The Zoo began as a long row of animal homes along Park Boulevard ("little more than Menagerie Row", according to Wegeforth) for animals that had been rented for the Panama–California Exposition from a menagerie at the Wonderland Amusement Park in nearby Ocean Beach; Wonderland had gone out of business during the Exposition, and the animals were held jointly by the society, the Park Department, and the Mission Bay Corporation. Additional animals left over from the Exposition and scattered throughout Balboa Park included buffalo, deer, a pair of bears, ducks, and herds of Panama deer and elk; supervision of most of these animals was turned over to the new Zoo by the Park Department. Other early animals acquired by or donated to the Zoo included a badger, two lynxes, a gray fox, a coyote, two golden eagles, two rails, a whip snake, and a white goose. Stephens served as the active director of the Zoo during this time. The Zoological Society's first official seal was created, featuring an image of a grizzly bear (the animal depicted on the Flag of California).
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