Volunteers at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance get the chance to help Mother Nature

Marco Wendt was 16 when he got a summer job at San Diego Zoo Safari Park, then known as the Wild Animal Park.

A first-generation Mexican American, the first of his family born in the U.S., Wendt says as a kid he perfected his English by watching television, including wildlife programs such as “Animal R&R” with Joan Embery.

“I knew right then and there that this was the life for me, the zoo life,” he says of his first job at Safari Park.

It grew from there. He was an animal trainer, did shows and presentations, joined the bird department and also worked in hands-on conservation. For about three years, he’s been the wildlife ambassador for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA), an international, nonprofit conservation organization.

“I also love talking to people — you know, conservation always begins with human beings,” he says.

The native San Diegan says he’s really proud of the work the alliance does both locally and internationally. In Southern California, SDZWA has two conservation sanctuaries: the San Diego Zoo, which first opened in 1916 in San Diego, and Safari Park, an 1,800-acre conservation park in Escondido.

“I am very proud of the rich diversity that we have in California, and particularly here in San Diego County, also including Orange County, of course,” he says. “There’s more biodiversity here in Southern California than any other place in the contiguous United States.”

Animals

There are many current, ongoing science-based conservation projects going on in what the nonprofit calls the Southwestern Hub, spanning generally the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

The area’s smallest animal that the alliance has focused its conservation efforts on is the Pacific pocket mouse.

“This is a very tiny, very adorable little mouse species found in the native coastland scrubland. So think of dunes and riverbanks, maybe about a 2.5-mile radius from the ocean, but this generally was a range before the extinction rate that had been happening in Los Angeles to Tijuana and the river areas there,” he explains.

This is also prime real estate for a lot of human beings as well — which has negatively impacted the species. The Pacific pocket mouse is named after the special pockets outside of their mouths where they can store seeds. As they move in between plant areas and burrows, they transport different seeds and help the growth and the biodiversity of plant life in that larger area.

“It’s one of the tiniest little creatures that most people have never even seen in their lives, but it’s such an important species for these really unique coastal ecosystems,” he says. “We thought this was an animal that was extinct.”

But in 1993 in the Dana Point headlands, a small group of the species was discovered. In 1994, the mouse was deemed endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The alliance began a reintroduction program with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The mission was to monitor the mice’s natural resources to figure out what they need.

Behavior is one area of focus. Animals raised in a conservation center don’t have all the usual threats they experience in the wild. Scientists need to guide them to where they should hide when they see the shadow of a hawk — or in how to react when smelling a snake, for example.

“So there’s many different aspects, not only genetic diversity, but behavioral nuances that the teams had to work with for many years with this species to help reintroduce them,” he says.

Last year, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance reintroduced a group of the endangered pocket mice into an area just outside of Camp Pendleton.

“This is going to be an ongoing effort, but I’m really hopeful that we can bring this animal back from the brink of extinction,” he says.

Another species they’re working with is the desert tortoise, whose population has declined about 90 percent in the last 20 years.

“Which is devastating,” he says.

This tortoise species lived in areas like the Mojave Desert and the Sonoran Desert of California, Nevada and Arizona. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the desert tortoise as critically endangered in 1989. The alliance has since partnered with The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens, Edwards Air Force Base and the U.S. Geological Survey to help.

“There are a lot of issues happening with desert tortoises,” he says. “Climate change is really affecting them. Even animals that are habituated to living in the desert are finding issues with the rising temperatures, even for desert animals.”

They are using a program that’s been implemented with other species, like the California condor, called Headstarting. It involves taking adult females laying eggs under human care. Once they lay their eggs, scientists help raise those babies for about one to two years.

“In the wild, naturally these animals have a lot of predators, right? They could be a coyote, it could be a raven, as an example, maybe a roadrunner,” he says. “There’s a lot of animals in the deserts that would actually include a young baby desert tortoise as part of their diet.”

They raise them until they’re three to four times larger (the size of an English muffin) so that they’re not as easy to eat by predators.

“We give them a fighting chance at survival, basically is what we’re doing to help reintroduce these animals,” he says. “Which I think is an awesome project.”

Plants

Plants are also a key part of the alliance’s conservation efforts.

“Plants matter,” Wendt says. “Plants keep us alive, right? Plants create so many wonderful ecosystems for us.”

The San Diego Zoo is home to about 700,000 individual plants, representing close to 13,000 specimens and about 3,100 species. The Safari Park has about 1.3 million plants, representing about 3,700 species.

“We’re known to be an accredited botanical garden,” he says. “Both are conservation parks. We’re not only growing food for our animals or some of the plant species, but many are projects of conservation.”

The endangered Torrey pine is one example. This is a rare pine species listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It has been devastated by a beetle infestation and drought.

They’re working with the California Department of Parks and Recreation, Cal Fire and U.S. Forest Service for both the Torrey pine and native oak species.

“Here in Southern California, we have so many different oak species, so we’re really unique in that regard, especially in San Diego County,” he said. “Overall, a third of the world’s 450 oak species are at risk of disappearing, and so many different threats.”

The oak benefits insects and other animals. It serves an important role in ecosystems around the world and locally. It’s so significant, in fact, that it was added to the alliance’s Frozen Zoo, which is having its 50th anniversary this year. Alliance scientists successfully acquired preserved samples of 18 endangered Nuttall’s scrub oaks.

“It’s the first time ever that we’ve had a plant contribution to our Frozen Zoo,” he says. “The Frozen Zoo, it’s the largest, it’s the most diverse collection of cryopreserved or frozen living material in the world.”

Other conservation efforts for plants include Seed Banks, dry storage of seeds of different plant species.

For more information, go to San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.