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For a worldwide competition After-School The student-run club took the initiative to contact
that teaches scientific COMMUNITY Innovation the enrichment experts at Brookfield Zoo. Our staff
principles, two teams from a spent time in video conferences with the students as
robotics club in Ottawa worked Brookfield Zoo is a living they learned about how to create engaging devices
with Brookfield Zoo experts to encyclopedia, a place to not only gaze and processes that get our animals moving, thinking,
create devices that would help on exotic animals but also to learn about them. playing, and eating in innovative, naturalistic ways.
enrich the animals’ lives. Zoo staff are always willing to help increase others’
understanding of the natural world. The club split into teams to conceptualize
Here at the zoo, a team is dedicated to creating two robotic food dispensers. One dispenser was
enrichment for the animals. (“Enrichment” means designed to randomly drop cardboard tubes filled
techniques that motivate the animals to act in the with treats into the Tropic World habitat of our
same way they would in the wild, maintaining Goeldi’s monkeys. The other dispenser would use
their physical and mental health.) Our enrichment compressed air to randomly and safely shoot tubes
design team of craftspeople Matthew Owens of treats out to our red river hogs. Although not
and Sarah Feliciano was thrilled to get a request actually utilized here at the zoo, both devices would
for assistance from the Robotics Club at Wallace help the animals explore their habitat and forage for
Grade School in Ottawa, Illinois. The club wanted food just like they would in their natural habitats.
to enter the 2016 FIRST® LEGO® League ANIMAL
ALLIESsm Challenge, which was asking student The team that built the treat dispenser for the hogs
teams to solve a real-world animal issue through won first place for their project and advanced to
the use of science, technology, engineering, and the state competition. The other team received the
math (STEM). Teams conceptualize, design, and Judges Award for their outstanding performance. Our
present their project to an international audience experts will continue to work closely with them so
of experts in robotics and animal welfare. that, one day, they may see their months of research,
planning, and design realized at Brookfield Zoo.

A Matter of Numbers SCIENCE Susana Cárdenas-Alayza holds a Peruvian fur
seal to be weighed, measured, and tagged
Coastal Peru is home to many of pairs, juveniles, and adults and tracking climate for tracking at Punta San Juan reserve.
change, habitat destruction, and human impact.
the world’s Peruvian fur seals and With these data, a specialty group completes an
exhaustive assessment that provides a guideline
Humboldt penguins. The Chicago for determining the level of threat to a species,
which in turn helps shape conservation action
Zoological Society’s Susana Cárdenas-Alayza manages locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally.
Many decisions about conservation, including
our ecosystem conservation program in Punta San funding, are based on IUCN assessments.

Juan, Peru. She recently spearheaded two assessments Such is the type of assessments that Cárdenas-
Alayza and her team compiled. Their findings
of South American pinnipeds and collaborated on one revealed that South American fur seals, which
cover an extensive range along the continent and
for Humboldt penguins for the International Union were thought to be at the threat level of “least
concern,” are actually two distinct subspecies:
for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a conservation Peruvian fur seals and what remains designated
as South American fur seals. The former now
organization with scientists based around the world. has been recognized as “vulnerable,” and the
assessments will help promote protection of the
IUCN relies on the expertise of some 16,000 volunteer Punta San Juan reserve and its marine life.

researchers from governmental and nongovernmental

organizations to safeguard threatened animal, plant, and

fungus species. Imagine a worldwide Justice League

whose mission is to protect endangered species.

Under the umbrella of the Union are specialty groups

that focus on particular species. On rugged coasts and

blazing savannahs, in humid tropical forests and the

frigid Arctic, they observe and count animal populations,

tallying demographics like numbers of breeding

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