Nashville Zoo is proud to announce that our Tiger Crossroads exhibit has acquired Prime Honors for the Exhibit Design Award from the Affiliation of Zoos and Aquariums. This award was additionally given to the Zoo in 2019 for our Expedition Peru: Trek of the Andean Bear exhibit. Successful high honors in exhibit design for 2 years in a row has taken place solely two different occasions in AZA historical past. The primary in 1976 and 1977 on the Saint Louis Zoo. The second was 33 years in the past in 1986 and 1987 on the Bronx Zoo. The Exhibit Design Award is the very best accomplishment for exhibit design given by the AZA.
“That is, fairly truthfully, the spotlight of my 30 plus years right here on the Zoo,” mentioned Nashville Zoo President and CEO Rick Schwartz. “For our Zoo to face alongside two of probably the most revered and well-known zoos within the nation is a big accomplishment. Our workers, board, Zoo members, and donors ought to all be very pleased with what their help has been capable of obtain.”
The Exhibit Design Award was introduced in the course of the digital AZA Annual Convention, Sept. 14-18, 2020. The AZA Honors and Awards Committee was unanimous of their resolution based mostly on the general aesthetics and authenticity of the exhibit, the enhancements to the unique house each for the animals and friends, the extraordinary degree of exhibit element, the excessive degree of academic content material, and Nashville Zoo’s long run dedication to tiger conservation. The committee was significantly impressed with the extent of workers involvement permitting an distinctive degree of element and holding prices manageable.
“Clearly it takes an important staff to perform what we now have executed within the comparatively brief time since we opened in 1997,” mentioned Schwartz. “I’m all the time humbled about how our workers comes collectively to help in constructing our award-winning displays. I’m endlessly grateful.”
Nashville Zoo, in collaboration with the Nationwide Zoo’s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Level Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, was additionally awarded the celebrated Edward H. Bean Award for our long-term work, dedication, and success with clouded leopards. The award acknowledges a major captive propagation effort that both considerably enhances the inhabitants of a species, or represents a breakthrough in husbandry or breeding methods which might be vital milestones for creating a brand new zoo and aquarium inhabitants. Established in 2002, The Clouded Leopard Consortium efficiently remodeled a dwindling inhabitants of clouded leopards into a strong, genetically various program.
“Nashville Zoo, together with our companions, developed husbandry and socialization strategies that dramatically lowered clouded leopard toddler mortality and vastly improved their managed care surroundings,” Schwartz mentioned. “I’m extraordinarily proud that Nashville Zoo is being acknowledged for our long run dedication and experience with this species.”
