Nine Santa Barbara Zoo employees have received the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2018 Recovery Champion Award recognizing their collective work to advance the recovery of endangered and threatened species on the California coast.

Every year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) honors employees and conservation partners who exemplify dedication and commitment to endangered species recovery.

This year’s award recipients are Rich Block, Aaron Marshall, Estelle Sandhaus, Julie Barnes, Rachel Ritchason, Carol Hunsperger, Nadya Seal Faith, David Meyer and Erin Arnold.

They represent the Pacific Southwest Region, covering California, Nevada and parts of Oregon.

For the past 20 years, the Santa Barbara Zoo has worked with the USFWS to recover federally protected species such as the California condor and Channel Islands fox through research, hands-on fieldwork, and education and outreach that benefits local, rare wildlife.

“The zoo is very engaged in on-the-ground conservation for a wide range of endangered species,” said Steve Henry, field supervisor for USFWS in Ventura.

“They really do an exceptional job of educating visitors about local threatened and endangered wildlife through educational programs and exhibits, and we are extremely fortunate to have them in our backyard and to call them our partners in conservation,” he said.

Santa Barbara Zoo biologists work side-by-side with USFWS California Condor Recovery Program biologists in the field to monitor condor nests and movement throughout their range.

They also trap the birds for health checks, navigate treacherous terrain to install and operate live streaming nest cameras, and engage with volunteers and the public.

The zoo is instrumental as well in the award-winning Condor Kids curriculum, which uses the California condor to teach children in the Fillmore Unified School District about history, geography, biology and conservation.

“The California Condor Recovery Program would not be what it is today without the Santa Barbara Zoo. They play an active role in the hands-on management of the wild population in Southern California,” said Joseph Brandt, supervisory wildlife biologist with the California Condor Recovery Program.

“They are also great partners in educating the next generation about conservation through the Condor Kids program,” Brandt said.

For the last three breeding seasons, the zoo has taken the lead in rearing, rehabilitating, banding and releasing abandoned and rescued federally protected western snowy plover eggs and chicks in the Santa Barbara and Ventura area.

In collaboration with the National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Geological Survey, California Department of Parks and Recreation, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority and the USFWS, the zoo works to reintroduce California red-legged frogs to their native habitat in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The reintroduction program saw success in 2017 with the first wild-breeding frogs in the Santa Monica Mountains since the 1970s.

The unarmored threespine stickleback, a small, imperiled fish that exists in an extremely limited area in the upper Santa Clara River watershed, has new hope because of the Santa Barbara Zoo.

The zoo is currently investigating the possibility of a captive breeding program that could play a key role in the species’ recovery.

The zoo has previously seen success in captive breeding, most notably with the Channel Islands fox: the zoo assisted in the development of captive breeding methodologies.

In 2016, after a decades-long partnership with the NPS, The Nature Conservancy and the USFWS, the team celebrated the removal of three subspecies of island fox from the endangered species list.

“We are honored and humbled to receive this special recognition from our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service partners,” said Block, the zoo’s CEO.

“We are not in this for the accolades, but see the conservation of local species as a primary responsibility of the zoo,” he said. “We are proud to be considered conservation partners with the service,”

For more about the Santa Barbara Zoo’s wildlife conservation programs, visit https://www.sbzoo.org/conservation/.

— Robyn Gerstenslager, for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.