Lincoln Park Zoo

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums Population Management Center (PMC), hosted at Lincoln Park Zoo, provides assistance to zoo and aquarium professionals across the country by conducting demographic and genetic analyses of Species Survival Plans (SSPs), resulting in recommendations for animal breeding and transfers among nearly 500 species across 230 zoos and aquariums. The Lincoln Park Zoo will make key programming enhancements to PMCTrack, a software program widely used by zoos and aquariums. The plans generated by PMCTrack are intended to create sustainable populations by maintaining demographic stability and genetic diversity. Building on lessons learned from the past six years, the zoo will conduct comprehensive research analyses on PMCTrack's dataset of 347,000 recommendations, yielding broad insights to improve the SSP system, and conduct additional PMCTrack trainings for the zoo and aquarium community. The project will result in better recommendations, more efficient SSP processes, and, ultimately, more sustainable zoo populations.