Camp REACH students contributed to the reporting of this article.
“Hakuna Matata!” a group of Camp REACH girls sang as they bounced past the warthog exhibit at the Chattanooga Zoo.
The group laughed, waved at animals and raced from one exhibit to the next, expecting a day filled with fun. But along the way, they discovered another side of the zoo—a place working to help save some of the world’s rarest animals.
“People think of zoos as entertainment venues, and they are fun,” said Jake Cash, the zoo’s director of marketing. “But we’re also a conservation organization. We have unique, rare species here, and we do real hands-on conservation work.”
As Cash led the group through the zoo, he stopped at exhibits housing animals listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the global organization that tracks extinction risk through its Red List of Threatened Species.
“Critically endangered means near extinction,” said 12-year-old camper Ester Tallman when Cash asked if anyone could define the term.
The Chattanooga Zoo is home to several critically endangered species, including the African pancake tortoise, Bali myna, Chinese alligator, Santa Catalina Island rattlesnake, spider tortoise and pied tamarin. It also houses species believed to be extinct in the wild, including the Panamanian golden frog and the Roti Island snake-neck turtle.
Among the animals drawing the most attention were the pied tamarins, squirrel-sized monkeys native to an area around the Brazilian city of Manaus.
“There are fewer than 1,000 individuals left in the wild,” Cash told the students. “Because of deforestation and expanding cities, it’s very likely they could disappear from the wild during our lifetime.”
The Chattanooga Zoo is helping prevent that from happening.
“We’ve been unusually successful at breeding pied tamarins,” Cash said. “We’ve had lots of babies over the last few years and have been able to help expand the population by sending them to other zoos.”
The zoo currently houses 11 pied tamarins, the second-largest zoo population of the species in the United States and one of only six zoos in the country to care for them.
A few steps away, another exhibit told an even more sobering story.
Inside a habitat decorated with rocks and plants lived two bright yellow Panamanian golden frogs, a species believed to be extinct in the wild.
According to Cash, a deadly fungus swept through Panama and wiped out wild populations before scientists could stop it. The surviving frogs were rescued and placed in breeding programs at zoos and conservation centers.
“If we didn’t have these populations in human care, they would be gone forever,” he said.
The frogs have another unusual trait. Instead of relying mainly on croaks, they communicate by waving their front feet.
“They’re doing sign language,” Camp Executive Administrator Elizabeth Tallman exclaimed..
Cash laughed.
“They actually live near loud rushing water, so their calls can’t always be heard,” he explained. “They wave to communicate with each other.”
For the campers, the day was filled with singing, dancing and seeing animals they had never encountered before. But it also offered a lesson in responsibility.
The Chattanooga Zoo is a place for fun and adventure, but behind many of its exhibits is a serious mission: protecting species whose future depends on conservation efforts today.
“We’re going to see lots of cool animals,” Cash told the group at the beginning of the tour. “But I also want people to know what we’re doing to protect these species here and in the wild.”