A Wild Place in Our Midst

Should you want to see a red panda scooting about its open air shelter in a thicket of bamboo, or maybe a white-naped crane bossing a bunch of ducks around, check out www.millbrook.org/trevorzoolive, any time, day or night. Well, not exactly any time of day or night. Red pandas (also known, ignominiously, I’d say, as the lesser panda) are crepuscular creatures, zoo director Alan Tousignant tells me.They are liveliest at the edges of the day, early or late. 

The pandas and cranes are just two of the 150 exotic or indigenous animals in Millbrook School’s Trevor Zoo, which is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the only zoo in the country attached to a high school, it is said. Started in 1936 by Frank Trevor, a biology teacher at Millbrook, it is part of the school’s science and community service curriculum, Tousignant says, and the animals and their spaces are tended by 40 students, acting as stewards of the natural world, as he puts it.

Some of the animals in this zoo, like the red pandas and the white-naped cranes, are members of endangered species. (Although the numbers of cranes living in Korea’s 24-mile-deep demilitarized zone have advanced since the fighting ended. War is hard on wildlife, Tousignant says.) But here, in peaceful Millbrook, endangered species are fostered, in part, to increase public interest in conservation matters and to take part in breeding and research programs. 

Like all the other animals at the Trevor, endangered or not — the imperious emus and the bobcats and red wolves and boas and the archer fish that catch food by shooting bugs off overhead branches with sprays of water, the scarlet reef hermit crab, the owls that eat chicks and baby mice, swallowing their prey head first, the Japanese Sika deer, the golden poison dart frog (species terribilis) the wallabies bouncing about their preserve, and the adorable ruffed lemur (another endangered species) to name just some — these fascinating and wild creatures in their various settings are visited by 35,000 people each year.

Some of the animals, like the snowy owl and the red-tailed hawk, were injured in the wild and rehabilitated at the zoo. If, Tousignant says, they recover, but not enough to survive in the world outside, and if they can adapt to zoo life (as parrots and primates, animals with big brains, do especially well) they can spend the rest of their days there.

Then there are the black vultures, visitors all, many dozens and dozens of them, perching in the trees, milling around the open spaces on foot, landing on posts, then taking off with a sound like whipping sails. They have become numerous of late, Tousignant says because as the climate warms, these birds have expanded their territory from Virginia into New England. Of course there is more to mild winters than the appearance of new creatures. Temperature changes can interrupt breeding patterns, and Tousignant and his staff are watching the red pandas and the sheep closely, hoping for progeny in the spring.

“We  see signs of global climate change, like a very mild winter, and we know it’s wrong, but life is easier, we have to admit. That’s why we have to work hard to get people to understand this is not a good thing.”

Tousignant, age 54, has made his entire career at this zoo. “I wanted to teach young people the importance of wildlife and what it tells us about our environment.”

He first came to the Trevor Zoo applying for an internship while a student at Vassar, majoring in biology. He said the director of the zoo took little interest in him until he found out Tousignant “practically grew up driving a tractor.” That got him the internship, he says. After graduating from Vassar, he worked at the zoo, leaving for a time to gain a Ph.D. in zoology and endocrinology at the University of Texas. He returned to Trevor, and two years ago he was named its director. 

A vital part of his job, he says, is making the zoo animals and activities accessible to the world outside the school. The zoo is open to visitors every day of the year, and activities can be followed at www.trevorzoo.org, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and, of course, animals can be watched live at millbrook.org/trevorzoolive.

Don’t miss the live feed of red pandas on the Internet.