Pachyderm people, Saturday is your day. 🐘 💗 🎉
As part of World Elephant Day, Reid Park Zoo, 3400 E. Zoo Court, will have crafts for your kiddos and an elephant education for the whole family.
Kids can make handprint elephants and enormous ears throughout the morning and everyone can make a pledge to support elephant conservation.
Started Aug. 12, 2012, World Elephant Day is meant to bring awareness to the struggles facing Asian and African elephants, including the loss of habitat, poaching and cruelty in captivity.
Also, save this away: If a monsoon happens to down one of your trees, you can actually recycle it by donating the browse (branches and leaves) to the zoo. Elephants and other animals will munch their way through your donation. Make sure you check this list of edible vegetation you can donate.
The Reid Park Zoo has five African elephants — Lungile and Semba, adult females, and Punga, Sundzu and Nandi.
The three young elephants were born to Semba and Mabu, a male elephant who was moved from Tucson back to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in fall 2016.
On August 20, Nandi will turn 3.
For World Elephant Day, zoo staff will drop browse and possibly other enrichment items into the Expedition Tanzania exhibit at 8:30 a.m., says Candis Martin, the manager of marketing and communication for the Reid Park Zoological Society.
At 10 a.m., a zookeeper will do a training demonstration with an elephant, and other staff will give you an elephantine education throughout the morning. Activities end at 10:30 a.m.
Standard admission rates apply: $10.50 for adults ages 15 to 61 and $6.50 for kids ages 2 to 14. Visit reidparkzoo.org for more information about the zoo.
