18 Facts About Oregon Zoo

Oregon Zoo is Oregon's largest paid and arguably most popular visitor attraction, with more than 1.

Oregon Zoo was founded in 1888, making it the oldest North American zoo west of the Mississippi.

At this time, the Portland Oregon Zoo Railway was constructed to connect the zoo to its former site in Washington Park and other attractions there.

Oregon Zoo became popular locally in 1953, when Rosy the Asian elephant was acquired.

On February 9, 2017, Oregon Zoo staff decided to euthanize Packy after a long struggle with drug-resistant tuberculosis.

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Oregon Zoo was laid to rest at an unidentified city-owned "wooded, grassy area" that is not open to the public.

Oregon Zoo has a Penguinarium which exhibits Humboldt penguins, Originally built in 1959, it was extensively remodeled in 1982 to represent the Peruvian coast, and remodeled again in 2011 to improve water efficiency.

Oregon Zoo housed the world's oldest Sumatran orangutan, Inji, who celebrated her 59th birthday on January 30, 2019.

Oregon Zoo's Integrated Conservation Action Plan centers on four regions: Pacific Northwest, Arctic, Southeast Asia and West Africa.

In 2012 the Oregon Zoo became the first zoo to draw blood samples from polar bears without the use of anesthesia, leading to the development of a groundbreaking polar bear conservation science program.

Oregon Zoo manages community-based conservation education efforts, including the Non-Lead Hunting Education Program, to protect condors and other wildlife from lead poisoning, the greatest cause of wild condor mortality.

From 1998 to 2012 the zoo partnered on a recovery effort for endangered Oregon spotted frogs, a candidate for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act, and currently collaborates on a head-start and release program for northern leopard frogs.

In 1999, at the request of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Oregon Zoo joined with Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo in a silverspot butterfly captive rearing program to save a species once found from California to British Columbia and now reduced to five isolated populations.

In 2019, the Oregon Zoo successfully bred a captive silverspot butterfly for the first time in the world, producing in 269 viable offspring.

The Oregon Zoo is a member of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, which has developed and is implementing global environmental and social standards for sustainable palm oil.

Birth of Packy in 1962 began an elephant breeding program at the Oregon Zoo, resulting in a total of 28 elephant calves being born to date, of which seven were sired by Packy.

In May 2014, then-director Kim Smith and lead veterinarian Dr Mitch Finnegan were dismissed by Metro, the agency governing the Oregon Zoo, over alleged lapses in protocols following the death of Kutai, a 20-year-old orangutan, during surgery.

The animal rights group "Free the Oregon Zoo Elephants" has been campaigning to end the zoo's captive breeding program and release the elephants to a sanctuary.