Third Friday Update – April Edition
Volunteer Appreciation Week is Next Week!
April 17th – April 23rd is Volunteer Appreciation Week and the WHOLE Zoo is excited to Celebrate YOU! I will be posting in CZBG Connect every morning with fun photos and memories to honor our dedicated volunteers! If you are working next week the entire Zoo staff will be excited to Thank You for all EVERYTHING you do! Oh, one more thing…there just may also be some little surprises waiting for you!
Zoo Updates:
Zoo Blooms
April 1st is the first official day of Zoo Blooms.
Click Here to Learn More about Zoo Blooms
Tunes & Blooms
Did any of you enjoy the first Tunes & Blooms concert this week? If you missed it, no need to fear you have opportunities all month long. Tunes & Blooms presented by Hard Rock Cincinnati happen every Thursday night in April! Admission is FREE after 5pm and live music begins at 6pm.
Click Here for this year’s Lineup
Easter Celebration
Mark your calendars for Easter Celebration sponsored by Kinder Joy® on Sat. April 16th from 12-5pm. There will be treat stations for kids, fun animal enrichment, and a new Fiona scavenger hunt! Click on the photo above to watch an ADORABLE video of the Meerkats with their Kinder Joy enrichment.
Click Here for More Information
Zoo Tales
Get all the animal training tips and stories from the Zoo’s Barnyard Bonanza expert Eunice in this fun new episode!
Click Here to Listen
INSPIRED Experiences
I’m sure many of you have seen this image in buildings all around the Zoo! We are doubling our efforts to give our visitors an INSPIRED experience every day and we need your help! As time goes on you will hear more about each of the letter of the Acronym. This week, we will focus on the first letter “I” with a message from Wei!
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Hi CZBG,
With the recommitment to creating INSPIRED visitor experiences, our Visitor Engagement Taskforce wanted to help all of colleagues to better understand each of the letters associated with our principle. There are many teams here at our zoo and we work hard each day to collectively create memorable experiences for our visitors. Our approach utilizes the acronym INSPIRED as it relates to those experiences and it conveys the way in which we strive to enhance our guest interactions.
Although we are collegial and team oriented, our day-to-day connections with visitors often come down to the first tenet of I – Individualized Approach.
As we are all individuals with our own preferences, abilities and other things that are uniquely us, we should strive to recognize those things in our guests and tailor our approach with those aspects in mind.
Do you recall your own experiences when you visited our zoo for the first time? Did you feel welcomed? Seen? Did your time here leave any impressions? Were they positive? Less than ideal? What could have made it better? Did a staff member speak to you in a way that was engaging and you felt heard?
I would like to share with you all an example of I – Individualized Approach in action by our very own Liz Clemons:
Click Here to Watch the Video
The truth is that each of our roles matter and although we are not all public facing or focused staff; when we interface with a visitor we step into that role.
From working the turnstiles, caring for our animals, maintaining and improving our grounds and facilities or serving our customers in any capacity, each of our individual interactions with a guest is a potential to make a positive and lasting impression that keeps our visitors returning to support our important work.
Thank you Liz for sharing your story and thank each of you for all that you do!
Best,Wei LiuDirector, Security and Safety
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If you would like to learn more about each of the INSPIRED letters, Mollie and Kate did a wonderful job “inspiring” the staff at our recent staff meeting. Below you will find the link to the video, it is about 20 minutes long and covers all the letters with examples and a fun role play at the end!
Click Here to be INSPIRED so you can INSPIRE
Zoo Updates & Project Deadlines
As you can see in the timeline above, we have A LOT to look forward to this year! Check out more of the photos below to get more visuals on the progress!
Just For Fun
Kris
Look at this amazing photo of Kris, she is defying gravity! The Cheetah Encounter started back on April 1st, make sure you go and check out the new program this year!
Willow & the Soccer Ball
Who knew that cheetahs were soccer fans?!? Our very own Willow has found a new way to support FC Cincinnati with her new favorite enrichment activity…SOCCER!
Click Here to Watch a Video
National Garden Day
Happy National Gardening Day! Zoo Blooms is a celebration of all of our amazing gardens and things are getting seriously beautiful over here! The Zoo has never smelled better! Get your bud over to the Zoo!
Giant Fruit Bat
The giant fruit bat relies on its keen sense of smell for locating food. As the bat feeds and flies throughout the forest, it pollinates and disperses seeds, helping to regenerate plant growth in the ecosystem.
John
A playful John the lion mid-pounce on his toy!
Plant & Animal Information:
Todsen’s Pennyroyal
Todsen’s pennyroyal grows in the mountainous areas of New Mexico. We’re far from this endangered mint’s native habitat but CREW supports an off-site population! We have these plants in our garden, growing in test tubes & stored long-term in our CryoBioBank!
Stellar’s Sea Eagle
The Steller’s Sea Eagle weighs 13 to 20 pounds and has a wingspan up to 8 feet!
More Zoo Babies! Our Steller’s sea eagles have a chick!!! Listen for it’s little chirps on your next visit!
Cumberland sandwort
The delicate Cumberland sandwort is found in a special habitat known as “rockhouses” in southern KY & northern TN. CREW propagated plants in tissue culture for establishing a new outplanting site which has successfully survived & grown over the past 15 yrs.
Autumn Buttercup
Conserving any endangered species is never a straight path! Check out the video above to see the efforts made by the CREW Plant Lab to ID the root of the instability within the endangered Autumn Buttercup (Ranunculus aestivalis) population.
Sentry Milkvetch
The endangered Sentry milkvetch grows to only 1in tall & is only in a few locations on the rim of the Grand Canyon. It doesn’t reproduce well in the wild, so CREW has developed a tissue culture propagation method for the species & cryopreservation methods
Fiona is going to be a BIG Sister
You guessed it – Fiona is going to be a big sister!! Bibi’s big bundle of joy is expected to arrive late summer 2022!
Click Here to Learn More
Four Petal Paw Paw
The endangered four-petal pawpaw is known from only 2 counties in southeastern FL. Normal seed banking is not workable for this species so CREW has developed a procedure for cryopreserving tissues of this species & it is safely stored in CREW’s CryoBioBank.
American hart’s tongue
The endangered American hart’s-tongue fern is found in the northern U.S. & in 3 sinkholes in AL & TN, which provide it a cooler habitat. Starting with spores collected by rappelling, CREW has used tissue culture to develop propagate this very rare fern.
Butterfly Aviary
Stop in the Butterfly Aviary on your next visit to the World of the Insect building. We have over 30 species of butterflies! From blue morphos as large as your hand to tiny Mexican bluewings and in an array of colors from iridescent blue, to turquoise, red, yellow, green, and white.
Alani
Alani (Melicope mucronulata) is one of the many Hawaiian species CREW works on with the Lyon Arboretum. These tiny (5-10mm) plantlets are recovering & growing after being frozen in liquid nitrogen. CREW banks many species like this in its Frozen Garden
Florida jujube
Florida jujube is known from only a few locations in south central Florida. CREW is developing propagation methods for this species, to provide plants to increase their numbers in the wild.
Zoo Birthdays
3 Little Pigs
Happy 10th Birthday to Cinder, Magnolia and Thatcher! Their birthday was on April 1st and the Zoo celebrated with the cute video below, check it out! Isn’t that throw back photo above ADORABLE!
Click Here to Watch the Video
Rico
April 2nd was Rico’s 6th Birthday! Rico’s celebrated his birthday with a porcu-picnic with of his friends & favorite snacks provided by Simple Truth.
Click Here to Watch the Video
Teeny
April 3rd was Teeny’s Birthday. Teeny is a 3-banded Armadillo
Fiesta
Happy 31st Birthday Fiesta. On April 5th, she got to celebrate with some of her friends that are all part of the Ameritas Wings of Wonder Bird Experience!
Click Here to Watch the Video
Lana
Every day is special at the zoo, but this week has been quite the celebration in Jungle Trails! Today is Lana’s birthday & the festivities feel extra special due to recent major conservation successes from Friends of Bonobos in the DRC.
Click Here to Learn More
Opportunities:
Rain Barrels:
Have you seen the Rain Barrels at the Zoo…they are BEAUTIFUL! You have a chance to bring one home with you – Bidding for rain barrels goes through April 21st!
Click Here to see them all
Plant for Pollinator Kits:
The Plant for Pollinator Kits go on sale April 1!
Have you ever wanted to create a pollinator garden or perhaps add more pollinator-friendly plants into your landscape? Our horticulture experts have created two pollinator-friendly kits to get your garden ready for Spring!
Kits are limited – we only have 80 available! So, get your green thumb on! These make a wonderful Mother’s Day gift!
Each kit contains 15 quality pollinator-friendly plants. The price per kit is $99.99 (plus tax). Kits will be available for pickup at the Zoo and you will receive detailed pick up instructions in your confirmation email.
Click Here to Order a Kit
Native Plant Sales at Bowyer
The 2022 Native Plant Sale dates are here! Located at the Zoo’s Bowyer Farm (2210 Mason Montgomery Road, Lebanon, OH), these sales offer a wide selection of reasonably priced, well-grown, hard to find, and ecologically important native plants.
Native plants, including ones found throughout the Bowyer Farm ecosystem, will be for sale. The preferred payment for all sales is credit card.
Dates: April 23, May 14, May 28, June 11, July 9, August 13, September 10, September 24, October 8
Time: 9:00am-1:00pm
Barrows Lecture Series:
This week we hosted our second speaker in the Barrows Lecture Series. If you missed Arnaud, no need to fear, a little birdy told me that there may be a Zoo Tales Podcast headed our way!
There are still 2 more lectures in the series and it isn’t too late to buy tickets. There are 2 options to hear the lectures, in-person and virtual.
Click Here to Buy Tickets
Upcoming Events
| April 15th | Kanga Climb re-opens |
| April 16th | Easter Celebration- Animal enrichment |
| April 21st | Earth Day Celebration |
| April 21st | Tunes & Blooms! |
| April 23rd | Breakfast with the Animals: Elephants & African Penguin |
| April 27th | Barrows lecture Nilanga Jayasinghe- Human-wildlife Conflict: The Elephant in the Garden |
| April 28th | Tunes & Blooms! |
| May 2nd | Zoo Golf at Maketewah |
| May 4th | Sip n’ Stroll for Donors (Development)- after hours |
| May 5th | Animal Department Bimonthly Meeting – 11:30-12:30 at Treetops |
| May 7th | Breakfast with the Animals: Hippo and Kangaroo |
| May 8th | Mother’s Day- Free admission for all mothers |
| May 12th | Bourbon Flights |
| May 18th | Barrows lecture Dr. Doug Tallamy- Nature’s Best Hope |
Contact Information:
Brittany Garera-Stapleton
Volunteer Relations Coordinator
(513)559-7768
[email protected]
**My in-office hours have been varying week to week to accommodate staff meetings. The best way to reach me day-to-day is through e-mail.