Conservation Breeding
Pioneering New Technologies
Partners and collaborators
All progressive zoos are active in carefully-coordinated conservation breeding programmes, ensuring animal populations in zoos are fully sustainable. At the core of the work of conservation zoos is the development, in partnership, of genetically viable populations of those species who are at risk. This ensures that there are populations in human care which can potentially be returned to the wild in the future.
Specialists
Find out more about the conservation experts who work on this project.
Science Director
Head of Science
Curator of Lower Vertebrates & Invertebrates
Lead Conservation Scientist - Behaviour & Welfare
Lead Conservation Scientist - Population Biology
Lead Conservation Scientist - Biomarker Research and Development
Laboratory Coordinator
Laboratory Technician
Reproductive Biology Coordinator
What makes us different?
What makes us unique, is our multi-faceted approach to species conservation, utilising innovative techniques and collaborating with multi-disciplined experts, both in the zoo and in the field, to fully understand a species, and the threats it faces in the wild.
If we want to release species into the wild effectively, then we must ask these challenging questions to ensure long term results and real, lasting impact. Finding solutions to complex challenges, is at the heart of what we do, striving to discover facts about species, that no one has been able to uncover before. We endeavour to make sure the animals in our care, are fit and ready for reintroduction into the wild.
Our one plan approach
Science and our passion to better understand the natural world, underpins all of this. This involves expertise from a wide range of disciplines, coming together at our Chester hub and through our global partners in order to further options for species in both human care and in the wild.
Our projects
Currently, we have more than 200 projects underway, investigating everything from social complexities among groups of primates, to analysing bioacoustics in cassowaries to better understand their reproductive behaviour, via communications which are inaudible to the human ear, to developing a range of biomarkers in faecal samples to investigate health and reproduction.