Zoo outpost on front line of research

At the top of a hill lying in the middle of a grassy plain, a female cheetah seems to barely notice a vehicle full of enamored onlookers. Nearby, scimitar-horned oryx graze and a clouded leopard stalks patiently back and forth, waiting for a chance to find food.

But this is not your typical safari, and this scene is not set on the savannahs of Africa or in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. Welcome to Virginia, home of the National Zoo’s Conservation and Research Center (CRC), where you’ll find plenty of animals but far fewer amateur enthusiasts.

“We’re unique in that we can tackle problems here in a way that typical zoos cannot,” says Steven L. Monfort, the center’s associate director for conservation and science. “For a zoo, conservation is more than just about one species. It’s about understanding the ecological system.”

While most area residents know the District’s National Zoo as a place to admire pandas and take pictures of elephants on a free afternoon, this lesser-known home to vitally important programs of conservation and biology research sits outside the Beltway and out of the sight of Washington tourists.

The center, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Front Royal, is a 3,200-acre facility that houses roughly 30 endangered species and is a front line for much of the work vital to the success of the zoo and the future of animal species around the world.

The zoo took over the grounds of a former U.S. Cavalry remount installation in 1973. Dotted by warning signs and barricaded by chain-link fence, the center resembles its military roots more than its true identity - a place where avid devotees of science work to preserve nature and, in some cases, save a species.

Two-thirds of the center’s grounds have been set aside for ecological studies, and officials also grow hay on-site to feed its animals. The sprawling expanse of the estate allows scientists to do more than study one or two members of a struggling species, enabling them to take a more in-depth look at what it takes to keep animals alive.

“People think we do some weird stuff,” Mr. Monfort admits.

That perception is not entirely off-base. Among the procedures performed at the center: the boiling of animal feces in alcohol to extract and measure hormone levels and the banking of frozen reproductive cells from roughly 80 species for later use in assisted reproduction.

Such techniques have led to success. Hormones extracted from clouded leopards show that the endangered species - an unknown number of which are estimated left in the wild - are less stressed in a vertical enclosure compared with a horizontal habitat.

The information is vital for a species that has struggled to reproduce at the center and whose males have been known to kill females when put together with food nearby.

The center houses 12 clouded leopards, including four from a breeding project partnership with officials in Thailand and two - named Hannibal and Jao Chu - officials hope to soon breed.

“Every day, I walk in and think she’s going to be in estrus today,” Ken Lang, the facility’s mammal unit supervisor, says of Jao Chu. “This one has just eluded us.”

The center’s assisted reproduction recently led to the birth of two black-footed ferrets using banked semen from males dead for roughly a decade. And the facility boasted the birth of three red pandas last year, a number Mr. Lang says marks 25 percent of the North American population successfully born in 2008.

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