February is Heart Month, and just like our partners at Children’s Hospital Colorado encourage preventive and well-care visits, our great apes participate in ongoing maintenance and preventive care for their heart health. Go behind the scenes with Amy, senior keeper in Primate World, and her team as they ask Sumagu, Baka, and Goma to show us their husbandry training with an EKG, blood pressure reader, blood draws and cardiac ultrasound. Even young Kera shows her interest in the training!

Unfortunately, we have documented heart disease in some of CMZoo’s great apes. Because heart disease is prevalent in their species – just like it is with humans – CMZoo’s Primate World team works with the orangutans and Western lowland gorillas to get regular readings so they can adjust the great apes’ medications, exercise routines or diets to hopefully prevent disease progression.

Back to The Waterhole
 

In March 2021, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo members participated in the annual Member Conservation Vote, which decides how $75,000 in member-funded conservation grants will be spent. One of the projects members voted to support recently came to fruition with the wild reintroduction of two orphaned black bear cubs, right here in the Pikes Peak region.

Five CMZoo staff members assisted Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) on the excursion at the end of January 2022, pulling two anesthetized yearling bear cubs on sleds through snowy, remote areas on Pikes Peak to a den where the cubs will rest until they emerge for the spring and summer months.

The bear cubs were orphaned in July 2021, when their mother was killed south of Woodland Park in a suspected case of poaching. Since then, the nonprofit Wet Mountain Wildlife Rehabilitation has been caring for the cubs at its facility in Wetmore. Rehabilitating and releasing cubs isn’t new to CPW, but this reintroduction was extra special, thanks to CMZoo members’ funding for GPS tags for the bears.
“Urban bear conflict is one of our single biggest issues, especially bears getting into garbage at area homes and businesses,” said Travis Sauder, CPW’s acting Area Wildlife Manager for the Pikes Peak region. “It will be extremely valuable to study the effectiveness of our rehabilitation efforts with orphaned bear cubs and see if they really do learn to avoid humans in the future. We’re grateful to the Zoo for its partnership with us.”

The member-supported conservation grant funded two GPS ear tags for the cubs, which will allow CPW to track the cubs’ movements for at least the next year, as long as everything goes to plan. This data will provide information about how – and most importantly, where – the cubs spend their time in the wild. This vital information could help prevent human-bear conflicts by teaching bear lovers more about how to keep wild bears wild.

Members voted to contribute the full amount requested, $14,500, to this project, which will also fund additional GPS trackers for bears rehabilitated and released in the future.

“Up until now, we haven’t been able to track their movements,” said Rebecca Zwicker, Rocky Mountain Wild animal care manager. “Where do they go? Do they return to the den? Will they stay together? There’s a lot to learn about their behavior. The ultimate goal is that information could help guide CPW toward better human-bear conflict mitigation and rehabilitation strategies.”

For now, the data collection is on hold while the bears are mostly sleeping. They’re well insulated in the cold temperatures, thanks to the experts at CPW. In addition to building them a warm den, the cubs’ rehabilitation team made sure the cubs were pleasantly plump in preparation for a long winter’s rest in their cozy den together.

The cubs were each about 100 pounds of floppy, furry, grumbling goodness. The CMZoo team got to feel the literal weight of this important project, because once the bears were safely secured onto the sleds, CPW stepped aside to supervise while the CMZoo team got hands-on.

“It was so inspiring,” said Zwicker. “It was also hard work! Imagine trying to maneuver a completely asleep, very chunky bear cub off a sled, over the snow and through a small opening into their den. It was quite a physical challenge. CPW directed us, and we got to physically pull these little guys into their wild home. We did a lot of scooting around in the snow to make sure they were properly tucked in and correctly positioned, so they could breathe, while they recovered from the anesthesia, and snuggle together for warmth.”

CPW plans to share what it learns from these young bears’ travels this spring and summer. CMZoo is looking forward to continuing to grow the relationship with CPW so our two organizations can work together to help people keep bears and other wildlife as wild as possible.

“At the Zoo, we work to inspire our guests by getting them up-close with our animals,” said Zwicker. “Well, that’s exactly what happened to me through this work with CPW. Living in Colorado, you hear about human-wildlife conflicts, but being out there made it so personal and real. When you’re looking at their little bear faces, hearing their little groans and feeling their wiry fur, you can’t help but whisper a few words of encouragement, like ‘make good choices out there, friend’ and to hope that they’ll be okay. We know there’s risk for them, but we want them to be wild and free, too.”

Every membership and every visit to the Zoo is conservation in action. Since 2015, the Member Conservation Vote has provided $525,000 of membership revenue to support field conservation worldwide. Each year, a total of $100,000 of membership revenue is contributed to conservation in two ways:

  • $25,000 to the Quarters for Conservation program, which has contributed more than $3.5 million dollars to CMZoo’s legacy conservation partners, since the program began in 2008.
  • $75,000 to projects voted for by CMZoo members through this annual vote.


“I’m really proud of our members for supporting this local conservation effort,” said DeeAnn Wilfong, CMZoo veterinary technician and hospital manager. Wilfong and Zwicker’s relationships with CPW and work protecting Colorado’s bears were instrumental in coordinating this field effort for our members.

“We often get comfortable that our local fauna are plentiful because we see them all the time,” said Wilfong. “Right now, black bears are plentiful in Colorado, but we have learned through the decline of other species, that you can’t assume they’ll always be here. As we continue to experience longer drought conditions and human population growth, we want to take action to help them before it may be too late.”

Stay tuned for the 2022 Member Conservation Vote candidate projects, which will be announced and open for voting in March 2022. Then, members will again vote to decide which conservation projects receive funding. To learn more about becoming a member at CMZoo, visit cmzoo.org/membership.

Back to The Waterhole
 

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment a story begins, but the end of the story could be near for Malaika [muh-LIE-kuh], a 36-year-old female African elephant. We think this story started for us about 17 years ago when the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Board decided to build a facility especially for aging female elephants, but that doesn’t make anticipating a loss any easier.

As humans, we deal with death from a young age. Our first experience may be with a beloved pet. At some point we all lose someone close to us. All loss is painful, but we know that some goodbyes are going to hurt especially bad.

This is true for our Zoo family, too. We know we are going to grieve deeply when it’s a certain animal’s time to go. Malaika is one of those animals. Combine an entire organization in various stages of grief with the logistics required for the sheer size of the animal we’re focusing on now, and you have an extremely complex and delicate situation.

Malaika has a history of health challenges, and has had far more good days than bad ones in her life. But, recently, she showed us signs that it might soon be her time to leave us, including worsening mobility issues and a fluctuating appetite.

After not eating regularly for a couple of days, Malaika’s appetite returned on Wednesday morning, when she ate, among other things, 11 blueberry bagels. Keepers said she seemed a little brighter.

By Wednesday evening, we were back to being more worried than ever for her. A couple of hours later, there was another light, when she ate again. Thursday morning, she ate and drank a little bit more. The situation is changing by the hour, and we are prepared for the worst while we reflect on her life and her mortality.

“Malaika loves people, and Malaika is easy to love,” said Annie Dinwiddie, senior elephant keeper. “She has social opportunities with the other elephants, but she usually chooses to be close to us keepers. It’s like she has adopted us as her own herd, and she’s really tuned into us.”

Malaika is a sensory elephant. She notices immediately if Dinwiddie is wearing a new lotion or used a different soap. She’ll give Dinwiddie a certain look, then she’ll slowly breathe in the new smell while looking at her keeper as if she has many questions about it.

“Malaika will hold out for the best training rewards possible,” said Jake Jachim, elephant keeper. “She loves training, but sometimes she’ll do the behavior we’ve asked for, and she’ll sense that she has a choice in how she’s being rewarded. I have seen her smell a reward in her keeper’s hand and completely bypass it for what was in their other hand. Like, ‘thanks, but I’ll take this instead.’”

Malaika, who came to CMZoo in 2008, loves to knock down trees and pick up giant logs to throw them across the yard. She also loves making noise. If you’ve been lucky enough to hear an elephant trumpeting during a visit, there’s a good chance it was Malaika.

Even while she’s not feeling well, her keeper team knows they can count on resilient Malaika to participate so they can care for her. Dinwiddie remembers after what could have been a life-threatening fall that Malaika took in 2019, she kept fighting. After working for hours to stand back up with her team’s help, Malaika was exhausted, but still allowed her keepers to give her oral medications.

With the support of her team and specialized equipment, Malaika has fought her way through two potentially fatal falls – once in 2018 and again in 2019. During her previous episodes, we held on tight to hope, as we do now. We were realistic that Malaika might not make it through those challenges, but nearly three years after her most recent rescue, she’s still here helping people fall in love with elephants.

It may sound morbid to some, but preparing for death is part of taking care of animals. It is part of what it means to be their forever caregivers. The team has been preparing for the inevitable death of an aging elephant since we built the facility in 2013 – and well before that, when the CMZoo Board decided to go down this road of caring for aging elephants.

For now, Malaika’s future is uncertain, but her team is prepared to make the most compassionate decisions for her, empowered with the training and equipment we need to face whatever comes our way. We meet at 4:30 p.m. each afternoon to discuss what happens if there is a situation during the evening and who can get back and how fast. We consistently practice our emergency response protocols to lift an elephant that falls and can’t get up, or for a humane euthanasia decision.

While planning the design of the Wilgruen Elephant Center, the Zoo made a conscious decision to meet the demand for specialized staff and equipment to care for aging elephants, including a crane system in the barn. More than 20 cross-discipline Zoo staff members, including animal keepers, veterinary staff, and operations, maintenance and grounds personnel, team up for rescue lift efforts. Some specialize in rope work, others focus on operating the hoist, and others document the entire process so we can learn from it later. The Zoo also depends on Colorado Springs Fire Department’s Heavy Rescue Team for supplemental support. The Heavy Rescue Team receives on-site elephant rescue training in advance of an emergency, and they’re always on stand-by.

Our veterinary and animal care teams are working to keep Malaika as comfortable as possible. She is taking oral medications and receiving other treatments for discomfort. We also work closely with Colorado State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital to consider all treatment options for Malaika.

There are countless other Zoo professionals vital to an event like this. For example, we recently hired a career and life coach at the Zoo who provides on-site coaching support as our teams move through grief. When you care for as many animals as we do, loss is part of life.

We’re holding onto hope that Malaika will get through this, but we just don’t know what the next few days or weeks hold for her. If she does recover, it wouldn’t be the first time an aging animal has given us a scare and then lived happily for many more years. Still, we know it’s possible that it may soon be time to say goodbye to Malaika, if she takes another turn for the worse.

When the time comes, we have a beautiful final resting place in the mountains for her, thanks to a donor who has been planning with us for many years. For every foreseeable turn, there’s a plan in place for Malaika.

We’ll continue monitoring Malaika closely, during the day and overnight, and will keep you posted as we have any updates to share. Please join us in rooting for Malaika, and in celebrating the special ways this beautiful animal has touched your life and so many others.

Summer is the busiest season of the year at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, as we welcome locals on summer break and out-of-towners spending their vacations in the Rocky Mountains. Though the number of animals we care for typically stays the same during those warmer months, the number of guests can be thousands more than those who might visit during our winter months. To prepare for our summer guests to have the time of their lives at CMZoo, we spend the spring months looking for amazing people to help provide those experiences!

We get a lot of questions about how people can join our Zoo team, and how they can get the chance to work at the 4th Best Zoo in the U.S., ranked by USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards. Here is the inside scoop: late winter and early spring are the best times of year to look for opportunities for employment with Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. In fact, we are gearing up right now to welcome new faces to our summer team.

Right now, CMZoo is looking for passionate people to join our Guest Experiences, Food Service and Retail, and Summer Camp Mentor teams.

CMZoo’s Guest Experiences team members are truly the face of the Zoo, and provide amazing human interactions for our guests. Whether it’s educating guests about the Quarters for Conservation program at the front gate, or helping to make sure our giraffe get lots of lettuce snacks at our giraffe feeding experience, these employees are one of the most powerful reasons guests keep coming back to CMZoo. The Guest Experiences team plays a pivotal role in connecting our guests from all over the world to our incredible zoo.

Ciera Ramirez works in a variety of roles on the Guest Experiences team at CMZoo, including admissions, the giraffe feeding lettuce hut, and the front desk in the administration office. She has been a Guest Experiences team member for two years.

“We’re all animal lovers who have a heart for guest service,” said Ramirez. “We don’t work directly with the animals, but we get to learn about them over time. It’s rewarding to help our guests enjoy their visit to the Zoo by sharing information and providing tips for making the most of their time with us. My favorite part of my job is seeing little kids’ faces light up with excitement when they feed the giraffe herd.”

Summer Camp Mentor is an ideal role for those who love to work with kids and to connect them to the natural world. Camp mentors are crucial for turning our youngest guests into future stewards for wildlife and wild places. Zoo camps are not your typical summer camp experience, and camp mentors are not your typical camp counselors. This role is hands-on, nature-based, kid-guided and conservation-minded. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s camp program has been named one of the best in Colorado Springs, and it is all due to the wonderful people who mentor the campers through the experience.

Zachary Ehlers has been a Summer Camp Mentor for two years, and is returning for his third year in 2022.

“I really value being able to help build the bond between youth and nature,” said Ehlers. “Providing such a unique and fun experience at Summer Zoo Camp while sharing my personal passion for the outdoors is priceless.”


Our Food Service and Retail team can be found anywhere guests can find dining and retail shopping opportunities at the Zoo. Although these team members technically work for a separate company – The SSA Group – they are an integral part of the CMZoo family. Like the Guest Experiences team, The SSA Group team members provide a world-class Zoo experience with delicious food, tasty beverages and unique items for purchase. Did you know that the gift shop has items that directly contribute to the conservation of animals in the wild, and that a portion of every purchase helps support the good work being done at CMZoo? Members of this team are not only well versed in their products, but also the environmental impacts of these items as well. If you love food, people, fast-paced environments and animals, then this is the perfect summer (or year-round!) opportunity.

Mary England is a gift shop retail associate with The SSA Group at CMZoo.

“Working in the gift shop is really fun because we get to see guests on the way out and hear all about their visits,” said England. “It’s really endearing, and it’s rewarding to know you’re helping guests choose meaningful gifts that represent the memories and animal connections they made here. Plus, I get to walk around the mountain and visit the animals on my break. It’s great!”

If you or someone in your life is looking for an opportunity to join the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo family, be sure to visit cmzoo.org/jobs to see all the current job postings and how to apply.

Back to The Waterhole
 


In July, we told you about the new shipping container farm growing produce for animals at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Since then, CMZoo’s horticulture team has been working through challenges and growing their knowledge, along with lots of lettuce.

Last month, they harvested their first test yield of romaine lettuce for CMZoo’s giraffe herd!

“They ate it up!,” said Denny Patton, senior horticulturist at CMZoo. “After so many months of trial and error, testing, failing, and trying again, it was really cool to see the animals enjoying this produce that we’ve worked so hard to provide.”

Like every Colorado gardener knows, farming in The Centennial State is no easy feat. Using a complex, year-round growing system like this one requires commitment, patience and ongoing education.

“We’re learning so much,” said Patton. “I don’t think any of us thought we’d be programming computers and testing water’s oxygen levels in this role. We love this project. It’s a challenging and rewarding adventure.”

It’s hard to find a project much greener than this. The system is energy-, water- and space-efficient. Because the growing system’s shell was a freezer shipping container in its previous life, it’s heavily insulated. That will protect the plants from Colorado’s extreme temperature ranges, and allow the team to grow produce year-round.

The hydroponic lettuce growing system inside the container is one of the most efficient ways to grow lettuce – and as anyone who has visited our 17-member giraffe herd knows, they go through a lot of lettuce. On average, the Zoo uses more than 3,500 heads of romaine lettuce per month. Romaine lettuce is a small part of the giraffes’ diet, but it’s a huge part of our guests’ experience. The long-term goal is to grow about 55% of the Zoo’s lettuce using systems like this one, by expanding the number of shipping container farms at the Zoo.

The team is learning through trial and error. They’re testing how often they need to replace the water in the hydration tanks, which kinds of seeds grow well, how the automatic climate controls work (and don’t!), and how they could potentially improve growing conditions by altering the climate and nutrients in the system depending on the plants’ stage of development. That’s down the line, though, and only if this testing phase is deemed successful.

“Right now, we can grow about 2,500 plants at a time,” said Patton. “We’re testing how to make this as energy-efficient and water-conservative as possible. We’re even looking into different grow racks, because we might be able to double the number of plants we can grow at once by shuffling around some of the shelving.”

The single shipping container farm should produce about an acre’s worth of lettuce using only 40 gallons of water per day. The system also uses a dehumidifier to capture excess water from the air and filter it back into the watering reservoirs. The ebb-and-flow hydroponic system uses less than a typical shower to fuel hundreds of heads of lettuce.

“We’re planting on a weekly schedule,” said Patton. “On any given week, you’ll see brand-new seedlings, growing heads of lettuce and mature lettuce, ready to be fed to our animals. It’s a constant cycle, which we hope will eventually reduce the Zoo’s dependence on outside food sources.”

The team’s commitment to mastering this art-and-science project is paying off. They’re producing about 230 heads of lettuce a week – that’s between 30 and 50 pounds – for CMZoo’s animals, at a 90 percent success rate. Having nailed down a successful growing plan for romaine lettuce, the team is expanding the menu. They are also growing kale, which was a treat for our orangutans recently.

“The orangutans’ keepers said they didn’t usually eat the store-bought kale, but they gobbled our Zoo-grown kale right up,” said Patton. “I don’t think there’s a better compliment than that.”

Lettuce and kale aren’t the only things growing – much to our animals’ delight.

“Browse is a huge part of our animals’ diets, but its availability is limited in our state – especially in the winter months,” said Patton. “When you come and peek through the shipping container’s window, you’ll see some tiny sticks in there. We’re attempting to grow our own tree branches and leaves through propagation. We did a batch of native coyote willow for our wallabies, and they loved it!”

The horticulture team will continue testing the efficiency of the growing system, and sharing the fruits of their labor with CMZoo’s animals. Guests are welcome to check out the project, next to the carousel, on their next visit.

Back to The Waterhole
 

Have you experienced the magic of CMZoo in the winter yet? Some people think there’s less to see and do at the Zoo in the cooler months, but the CMZoo giraffe tower stays busy all year long, regardless of the weather.

Thanks to Colorado’s famous 300 days of sunshine, the 17-member herd explores its outdoor spaces more often than you might think. One member, Ohe, seems to like the additional natural snow ‘enrichment,’ while others get lots of yummy browse and lettuce snacks from guests.

When they’re indoors, keepers get creative with enrichment activities and spend time training the giraffe for husbandry behaviors, like hoof care. Guests can feed the herd from inside their warm barn, too, so there’s no excuse for leaving the Zoo without making a memorable connection with a new tall friend.

We’re open all year, so come and see for yourself! Advance tickets are required: cmzoo.org/visit.

Back to The Waterhole
 

It has been six months of Omo goodness, so we’re taking a little trip down memory lane AND showing you some new up-close Omo footage. Spoiler alert: incoming Omo window boops.

From watching Zambezi embrace motherhood for the first time with such a gentle nature to seeing Omo wild out in the pools, and every nap, plop and ear wiggle in between, it’s been a joy sharing these two with you all. Happy six-month birthday, Omo!

Back to The Waterhole
 

Join Bhutan, our 13-year-old snow leopard, and his keepers for snow day enrichment and training! Learn about Bhutan’s personality, his favorite scent-masking seasoning, which husbandry behaviors he’s working on, and how Bhutan is contributing to the future of his species. Make sure your volume is up to hear Bhutan’s impressive growls during his training session.

Snow leopards’ wild populations are listed as ‘vulnerable,’ according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List. Bhutan’s genetics are extremely valuable to the Snow Leopard Species Survival Plan, but he prefers a life with plenty of his own space, so traditional breeding isn’t in his future. Bhutan’s sperm is valuable because he doesn’t have offspring and has an extremely high sperm count. His sperm has been collected and is kept in a ‘frozen zoo.’ If the need arises, conservationists can pair Bhutan with a genetically valuable female snow leopard without having to involve Bhutan.

Back to The Waterhole
 

CMZoo’s four hippos have access to multiple indoor and outdoor climate-controlled pools, grassy yards, a waterfall and indoor land areas, which they take turns sharing. Omo and Zambezi chose to spend time in their privacy pool the other day, and the adorable duo had quite the pool party!

Surveillance camera footage caught 5-month-old Omo jumping, splashing, playing with floating enrichment and climbing on Zambezi. 29-year-old Zambezi, Omo’s mom, gets in on the fun, too, encouraging him to ‘chase’ her in the water and having her own fun with the floaties.

Learn more about Omo here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUd9bK-IbrIMxpwuRlrLaZfU4fFwB9cPG

Winter break is coming to an end, and that means spring break will be here before you know it. Spring Break Zoo Camp registration is open now at cmzoo.org/camp. Young explorers from first to sixth grade can sign up now for fun (and educational) opportunities with Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

Spring Break Zoo Camp is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, March 21-25, 2022. Campers can sign up for one day, or all five! Each day features new activities, so campers who attend for multiple days will have unique animal experiences every day.

This year’s Spring Break Zoo Camp theme is Incredible Innate Behaviors! Innate behaviors are unlearned, instinctual acts, like geese migrating or opossums ‘playing dead.’ The animal world is full of incredible actions that animals are born to do. Come discover how these almost involuntary acts help animals throughout the wild world!

Campers should sign up for the camp that reflects the grade they are currently enrolled in. All camps include hands-on experiences, up-close animal encounters, games, and more every single day! Register for the whole week, or just a few days. Camps will fill up fast, so don’t delay.

Space is limited, so visit www.cmzoo.org/camp to register your campers today!

Back to The Waterhole
 

Search