And that's a wrap...2024!

Ngā mihi o te tau hou Happy New Year! It’s almost 2025, a perfect time to share some highlights from ‘the year that was’ and say a sincere thank you for all your support.

This year we achieved some significant milestones! A huge highlight was signing our strategic partnership agreement with the Department of Conservation – cementing what has been a three-decade-long conservation relationship for the benefit of wildlife in Aotearoa New Zealand. We look forward to identifying new areas for collaboration in 2025 and beyond.

Another massive milestone this year was successfully relocating Asian elephant Burma to Monarto Safari Park in South Australia. Our Aussie neighbours lined the streets in Adelaide to welcome her to her new home – and we’re pleased to say she’s settling in well under the continued care of our elephant keepers. In August, we also shared the exciting news that Asian elephant Anjalee is pregnant with her first calf at Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, which all going well will be due in 2026!  

We kicked off 2024 with a few momentous Zoo births – Sumatran tiger Zayana gave birth to twin cubs. Sadly, the male cub had to be euthanised following a head injury sustained through misadventure but female cub Cahya is thriving and is soon to celebrate her first birthday! Soon after, giraffe calf Enzi was born to Kiraka and first-time dad Billy on 13 January. In what is almost certainly a first for New Zealand, Asian arowana – an endangered Southeast Asian fish – successfully bred at the Zoo, and a new approach to clutch management resulted in an extremely successful flamingo breeding season with five healthy chicks hatching! To top it off, just in time for Christmas, rhinoceros Jamila gave birth to her third calf – a male – who will receive a fitting name in the new year.

In what we believe to be the first time in our 101-year history, manuhiri can now see a snake at the Zoo! Sea kraits can arrive here on warm currents but are unable to survive in our colder waters, which is what happened with this female yellow-lipped sea krait. She now lives in a complex climate-controlled habitat at our Veterinary Hospital viewing gallery – and from May this year we’ve had travellers from all over the motu come in to see and learn about her. We also welcomed Tasmanian devil sisters Wiri and Wayana and female meerkat Adia this year, as part of a zoos advocacy programmes for these charismatic species.

What is over 5 feet tall with a smell like a decaying rat? The Amorphophallus titanum or corpse flower of course. In early December, our visitors were able to experience this Southeast Asian flower bloom up close and personal – a rare treat!

We celebrated our kaimahi in all their various roles! This includes the mahi of our animal care and conservation team and how they use science to care for animals like zebra, red panda and ectotherms from the smallest native skink to the largest land tortoise. We shone a light on the work of our dedicated pest control coordinator Sian and her 20+ years in conservation, bird keeper Sarah’s scholarship that saw her travel to San Diego Zoo to visit their globally renowned Avian Propagation Centre, and Jez from our animal experiences team wrote a kid’s book!

We said a fond ‘see you later alligator’ to the irreplaceable Christine who retired after an incredible 44 years at Auckland Zoo – caring for animals and inspiring the next generation of conservationists. For Mental Health Awareness Week we interviewed some of our wonderful volunteers to discuss how volunteering fosters learning, belonging and community. We chose places in nature that had a special resonance for our staff for a kōrero on how they connect to Papatūānuku, and we sat down with Dr. Sarah Thomas, our head of conservation advocacy and engagement, to talk about the Zoo’s role in contributing to the positive wellbeing of our communities.  

Our conservation learning team knocked it out of the Zoo this year, launching ‘Eco Detectives’ – a fun and educational conservation-focused game available through Minecraft Education – and New Zealand’s first zoo-based online conservation learning platform! Conservation Learning Online offers accessible and interactive learning through a range of free and paid modules, with each module created by our expert education team.

We’ve achieved a lot for wildlife conservation this year with your help – continuing our vital work out in the field in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This includes caring for nationally critical awakōpaka skinks in a special facility at the Zoo following an urgent translocation in May, our fifth year of hatching and hand-rearing tara iti chicks as part of the recovery programme with our partners at the Department of Conservation (DOC), the third year of assisting the Wildlife Hospital in Dunedin with hand-rearing and treating vulnerable hoiho (yellow-eyed penguin) chicks, furthering research into the incubation parameters of kiwi eggs on an island in the Hauraki Gulf, a multi-year research and monitoring programme for the critically endangered Korowai gecko in Muriwai, supervising a radio telemetry study into the movements of the northern striped gecko – part of a wider long-term study we’ve been leading since 2016 with Mahakirau Forest Sanctuary, joining forces with penguin conservationists to locate penguins and add to population data for kororā (little penguins), helping DOC with health checks and transmitter changes for takahē and kākāpō, assisting with a study into the habitat use and roosting preferences of pekapeka tou poto (short-tailed bat) in Franklin, understanding the habitat use, population size and distribution for the Ōkārito skink which was first determined to be a new species in 2022 – a great addition to our fieldwork on the West Coast which includes our annual surveys for the Alborn skink. All this is just a snapshot of the work our kaimahi lead or contribute to across the length and breadth of our beautiful country – ka rawe!

A little further afield on Fatu Hiva Island, our partnership with Polynesian Ornithological Society (SOP Manu) achieved the first breakthrough in hatching and rearing a critically endangered Fatu Hiva monarch chick.

We also continued to support conservation projects around the world through the Auckland Zoo Conservation Fund via long term partnerships in Asia, Africa, South America and the Pacific. This year in addition to these existing partnerships, we were able to organise emergency funding for hurricane-hit conservationists in the Caribbean and the flood/landslide that devastated the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme. We also joined efforts to support Turtle Island.org who are urgently working to save Mexico’s tiny and terribly imperilled Vallarta mud turtle.

As always, our incredible Zoo veterinary team lent their conservation medicine skills to care for wildlife from the wild.

This year the team cared for numerous sick or injured taonga species that were brought for their specialist attention. These patients included a wild tūturiwhatu (New Zealand dotterel) that was successfully cared for and released in Te Haruhi Bay, a light-mantled sooty albatross, a southern giant petrel that arrived in a dire condition and was able to be released to open waters near The Noises islands, a severely emaciated kekeno (fur seal) and a kākāpō VIP that spent four nights with us on his way to a picturesque sanctuary island. While it is common for our skilled team to care for sea turtle patients in a given year, this year we have had an unprecedented wave of sea turtle patients – 14 and counting. One such patient was hawksbill turtle Hine Kopenu who arrived in our care in early November and is now at SEALIFE Kelly Tarlton’s Aquarium for the next stage of it’s rehabilitation. All of this Wild Work is in addition to the regular care our veterinary team provide for the Zoo’s animal whānau – like this check up for beloved cockatoo Captain!

To further share who we are and what we do with our communities, we were excited to screen season two of our Auckland Zoo TV series Wild Heroes (which aired live on TV Three in early 2024 and is now available to stream on Three Now) – stay tuned for more news in 2025. 

You support all of this work and more every time you visit us, and if you would like to contribute even more please consider becoming a member, donating to us or purchasing an item from our Zoo Shop. We look forward to seeing you over the summer!