Events

Children help plant and water trees during Dallas Zoo’s Forest Wildlife Weekend event.

Dean of Dallas Zoo’s Wild Earth Academy, Ben Jones, guest blogs on ZooHoo!

Thank you for an extraordinary Forest Wildlife Weekend filled with wild inspiration, family fun, and conservation action at the Dallas Zoo. Our animals inspired 3,613 new conservation commitments for wildlife here and around the globe. Couple those with the 4,074 pledges made over Endangered Species Weekend this summer, we’re in striking distance of making 10,000 personal pledges for wildlife conservation this year.

Thousands of guests enjoyed activities inspired by our amazing forest animals. They balanced like a gibbon, sniffed like an okapi, planted trees with the Zoo’s Green Team, and much more. Our three community partners: City of Dallas Office of Environmental Quality, The Texas Trees Foundation, and The Trinity Trust, highlighted Dallas’s own Great Trinity Forest. At 6,000 acres, it’s the largest, urban, bottomland, hardwood forest in North America.

When it comes to saving animals from extinction, no strategy is complete without a focus on forests. Forests cover only about 30% of the world’s surface, yet they’re home to about half of all terrestrial biodiversity. Forests play a critical role in regulating the Earth’s climate; by removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, they form the world’s largest terrestrial store of atmospheric carbon. It’s hard to believe, but the destruction and degradation of the world’s forests accounts for a higher share of global CO2 emissions than the entire transportation sector.

Even if you didn’t make it out for Forest Wildlife Weekend, you can still make high-impact commitments at home to save our forests and the animals who call them home:

Action for Vultures

• We’ll choose shade-grown coffee & tell 3 people why.
• We’ll choose organic, fair-trade chocolates.

Action for Gorillas

• We’ll extend the life of our mobile phones & recycle them.
• We’ll reuse paper and buy sustainable forest products.
  

  Zoo staffers pledge to buy candy made with sustainably harvested palm oil to save gibbons.

Action for Gibbons

• We’ll make sure palm oil in our sweets is deforestation-free.
• We’ll choose recycled paper products.

Action for Okapi

• We’ll reuse and recycle paper products.
• We’ll only buy gold certified from conflict-free zones.

Action for Turtles

• We’ll pick up 10 pieces of plastic pollution every Tuesday.
• We’ll make sure our reptile pets are captive-bred.

Making tree cookie necklaces with Texas Trees Foundation.

Action for Opossums

• We’ll keep our trashcan lids on tight.
• We’ll feed our pets inside.

Action for Wildlife

• We’ll use reusable grocery bags.
• We’ll pick up 10 pieces of litter pollution every week.

Action for Tigers

• We’ll support companies committed to deforestation-free palm oil.
• We’ll choose FSC certified wood products.

Action for Texas Forest Animals

Texas A&M Aggies pledge to protect forest wildlife.

• We’ll plant a native tree this year.
• We’ll care for our neighborhood trees.

Get ready to honor wildlife conservation with us again Nov. 21-22 for Savanna Wildlife Weekend. We’ll activate around animals like elephants, giraffes and African vultures, from grasslands, savannas, and prairies. We’ll even work to protect our own Blackland Prairie, which is the most endangered ecosystem in North America.

Together, we’re changing the world for wildlife!

Check out our Instagram hashtag #DallasZooWildlife to see photos from this past weekend’s event.