The Amarillo Zoo is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act.
From 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. this Saturday, the Amarillo community can enjoy multiple interactions with a variety of animals, a safari show, and learn more about endangered species.
“Endangered species day is just a day where we all can come together and highlight the animals that we might not have for a really long time. and we need to make sure that everyone’s aware, do what we can to bring issues to light that can be causing damage to habitats or animals in general,” says Nichole Robinson, Zoo Educator at the Amarillo Zoo.
The whole point of endangered species day at the zoo is to promote conservation to make sure they remain out in the wild.
“Without some of them, those ecosystems can fully collapse and then we lose even more animals that aren’t endangered,” says Dylan Long, Visitors Service Specialist at The Amarillo Zoo.
The Amarillo Zoo is currently home to many endangered species, like the white cockatoo, black-footed ferret, Black-handed spider monkeys, Ring-tailed lemurs, Pancake tortoises, Mexican fire leg tarantulas, and a Bactrian camel
“A great example is our black-footed ferret, they actually used to be found here in Texas all over and they would eat about 100 prairie dogs every single year. So that’s a great prairie dog pest control right there but due to agriculture, habitat loss diseases, and the loss of their food prairie dogs, they almost went extinct twice,” says Long.
Admissions this weekend will go towards support and better care of endangered species at the Amarillo Zoo.
“It’s really important because we need to make sure that this goes stick around. we want to make sure that they’re here for longer than we are willing to leave this place better than when we found it,” says Robinson.
Source : News Channel 10
