2020-2023
Past Responses
What is a response?
Significant events like hurricanes, floods, and fires can require the assistance of response teams from multiple ZDR3 Network member facilities. With large-scale incidents, it is important to cycle teams in and out because there is a limit to how long a facility can have their personnel working at another site, and to how long any team can work a site.
Deployment objectives are: human and animal safety, animal welfare, and critical facility operations (for instance, ensuring the animal care staff has a safe route to manage the animals and that there is power for critical infrastructure).
Some incidents only require help from a ZDR3 On scene Liaison, or one experienced response crew that can quickly deploy from a neighboring facility. In many cases, we can offer assistance remotely by guiding facilities to the right resources and/or providing documents that step them through specific tasks.
Responders who render assistance to their colleagues gain more than the satisfaction of a job well done and building bonds among professionals. They also acquire valuable experience they can use at their home facility.
2023
(Google Maps)
In June ZDR3 received a call for assistance after Super Typhoon Mawar smashed a zoo on Guam, a U.S. territory in the Western Pacific.
Our Executive Director flew to Guam to do a needs assessment. She couldn't deploy a response team to assist the zoo, so she worked alongside the owners to help them prioritize their needs, identify resource requirements, assist with procurement strategy, and coordinate related communications. With remote assistance, ZDR3 provided communications support that allowed the zoo’s owners to make appeals for local volunteer assistance and donations via press releases, website updates, and social media posts.
Miniature donkey on the lush grounds of the zoo the day before the storm
The zoo after the storm made landfall on the island. Despite extreme damage to structures and gardens, the animals are fine.
In February ZDR3 coordinated a response after icing uprooted trees and dropped limbs throughout a zoo in Texas. The zoo was closed for six days while their staff cleared visitor paths, creating massive brush piles they struggled to clear.
An experienced and well-equipped ZDR3 Network response team cleared what the zoo’s director said would have taken her staff weeks to accomplish.
A facility in Florida lost a wolf habitat to a huge downed tree. The wolves weren’t harmed, but the facility needed heavy equipment and additional muscle to remove all the debris so they could rebuild the habitat.
ZDR3 coordinated a response in January during the intense, back-to-back storms in California.
A ZDR3 Network zoo evacuated more than a dozen animals when a neighboring zoo was under threat of flooding. The responding zoo housed and cared for the animals for 3 weeks, which allowed their neighbor to recover and perform necessary repairs before the animals were returned home.
ZDR3 provided mapping, monitoring, coordination, and deployment to various facilities throughout 2022.
Our most significant response activities occurred in September: Hurricane Ian was the deadliest storm to strike Florida since 1935. The destruction it left in its wake led to the most complex response ZDR3 has coordinated since we formed in 2019.
2022
ZDR3 monitors zoological facilities in a storm’s path by superimposing NOAA
storm information over a map of potentially impacted facilities. ZDR3 created
this map of Hurricane Ian on 9/28/22.
After Ian made landfall as a Category 4 storm, it ravaged Florida zoos, aquariums, and other facilities that house non-domestic animals. Hurricane-strength winds and tornadoes the storm spawned left sites littered with downed trees and damaged electrical infrastructure.
Personnel at devastated facilities were faced with the overwhelming task of responding to the immediate needs of the animals in their care while absorbing the wreckage of their homes and communities.
Ian’s impact on Florida immediately galvanized the zoological community: more than 50 facilities (40 of them already part of the ZDR3 Network) from 13 states offered 100+ personnel, trucks, trailers, transport crates, off-site housing for displaced animals, and much more.
Two weeks after Ian made landfall, ZDR3 had assisted 12 zoological facilities. Seven requested consultations, 5 required direct onsite support. To read more about this response, please see our Facebook feed, beginning on September 25, 2022.
Thanks to the many responders and response supporters who helped ensure the success of the ZDR3 Hurricane Ian response. They validated the strength of the ZDR3 response network.
2021
A zoo faced the possible need to evacuate 20 large, dangerous animals off-site due to flooding from heavy rain upstream. Within 10 hours of the call for assistance, ZDR3 identified the personnel, transportation and housing required, then deployed an On Scene Liaison. The floodwaters crested before any animals needed to be evacuated, and ZDR3 did not need to deploy responders.
A similar situation occurred in October when flooding surrounded a zoo, but did not necessitate an evacuation. A ZDR3 On Scene Liaison provided assistance to staff, including working with zoo personnel to document and improve their flood contingency planning, which will better prepare the zoo for potential future events.
The nation experienced a record-setting Atlantic hurricane season; over the course of 19 days, 37 ZDR3 network responders from 8 participating facilities deployed to provide aid to 3 impacted zoos in Alabama and Louisiana.
Responders included horticulturists equipped with chainsaws, pole saws, and safety gear; maintenance people; and animal care personnel to help wherever they were needed.
2020
At one zoo the storm had toppled more than 50 mature trees and smashed 20 animal habitats, countless fences, and several roofs at the zoo. Although their animals were all safely contained, their outdoor cougar exhibit was destroyed.
In coordination with ZDR3, a team from a neighboring zoo transported the cougars to one of their big cat quarantine areas. That gave the impacted zoo time to refurbish the cougar exhibit and repair some damage to their building without causing stress to the animals.
