Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens history

With the acquisition of a female from northern Ecuador in 1970, the Zoo initiated a breeding program and soon hatched the first harpy eagle chicks in the United States.

The Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association’s first fundraising gala was held on September 24, 1971.

On November 15, 1976, to commemorate the United States’ bicentennial, the city of Nagoya, Japan (one of Los Angeles’ sister cities) presented the L.A. Zoo with the first pair of Japanese serow ever exhibited in the Western hemisphere.

The L.A. Zoo made history on June 4, 1977, with the arrival of the first mountain tapir ever born in a zoo.

1978: Arabian Oryx Start Journey Back From Extinction

When the Los Angeles Zoo established a research department in July 1981, it was only the eleventh zoo in the nation to do so.

1982: G’day! Koalas Arrive in L.A.

A babirusa pair that arrived at the Zoo in June 1984 from Germany were the first wild pigs imported into the United States in more than 40 years.

1989: Golden Lion Tamarins Released Into Wild

1990: First California Condor Chick Hatches

1991: Emi the Sumatran Rhino Arrives

The first successful birth of a Coquerel’s sifaka outside of Madagascar occurred at the L.A. Zoo in February 1992.

The Board of Zoo Commissioners was created in 1997 when the Los Angeles Zoo became its own Department; previously it was part of the Department of Recreation and Parks.

1998: ”Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains” Opens

2001: Children’s Zoo Opens

2002: State-of-the-Art Medical Center Opens

With dwindling wild populations augmented by zoo-bred tamarins, the species’ status was upgraded from critically endangered to endangered in 2003.

2004: Restoring Critically Endangered Bongos

Few arrivals in the Zoo’s history have been as hotly anticipated as that of the male okapi (a rare woodland cousin of the giraffe) that arrived in June 2005.

2006: Children’s Discovery Center Opens

A pair of peninsular pronghorn (also known as berrendo) born at the Los Angeles Zoo on March 24, 2008, marked a milestone in the species’ recovery.

One of these was a female that gave birth to six babies in August 2009 – the first captive birth for the species in North America in more than 30 years.

2010: Zoo First! Successful Breeding of Komodo Dragons

The Los Angeles Zoo and UCLA hosted the first Zoobiquity Conference on January 29, 2011.

In October 2012, the Los Angeles Zoo hosted the annual conference of the Association of Zoo and Aquarium Docents (AZAD). The week-long event, which marked the 25th anniversary of AZAD, drew more than 600 attendees from as far away as Australia.

The Mayor of the City of Los Angeles is Eric Garcetti, who began his first term in 2013.

2014: ”Rainforest of the Americas” Opens

On May 12, 2015, the Zoo’s reptile staff celebrated another breeding success when the first of three butaans (otherwise known as Gray’s monitor lizards) to hatch and survive in a North American zoo emerged from its shell.

In addition to providing financial assistance and staff collaboration, the L.A. Zoo imported a group of pronghorn to establish an insurance population in the United States As of 2016, a total 0f 34 pronghorn fawns have been born at the Zoo.

When she died at age 48 in 2017, Randa was the oldest living Indian rhinoceros in any zoo.

In 2018, the Los Angeles Zoo commissioned an economic impact report in partnership with Beacon Economics, the financial consultant that prepared this report.