Important message: CNN claim, in an article written by CNN journalists Kay Jones and Hollie Silvermanthe on August 3, 2020 on the website of CNN.com the following: There are less than 3,500 Asian elephants left in the wild and they face extinction because of ivory poaching and habitat destruction, the zoo statement said..in the article Baby elephant dies 27 days after his birth at St. Louis Zoo, but the article doesnt really state why ivory poaching should be an immediate threat to Asian elephants, and their claims of the world population of Asian elephants, is however also something to doubt.. Although IUCN seems to have forgotten to state the world population of Asian elephants at Their fact sheet about the Asian elephant, while the Asian Elephant Specialist Group state that there are elephants in 13 range states, but AESG seemingly also forgot to mention how many Asian elephants there are today, and on their website https://www.asesg.org it is also not easy to find a record about the world population of Asian elephants, but International Elephant Foundation state on the page Elephas maximus: Endangered due to loss of habitat. Numbers are currently around 30,000 – 50,000 (one-tenth of the population of African elephants, and no mention about ivory hunting in Asia), which is a number far, or rather more than ten times higher than the claim from cnn.com =There are NOT less than 3,500 Asian elephants left in the wild, as cnn claim.//Dan Koehl
The zoo originally began in 1894 as Riverview Park Zoo. Just four years later it had over 120 animals. In 1952, the Omaha Zoological Society was created with aims to improve the zoo.
In 1963, Margaret Hitchcock Doorly donated $750,000 (approximately $4.5 million in 2005 dollars). In doing so, she stipulated that the zoo be renamed in memory of her late husband, Henry Doorly, chairman of the World Publishing Company.
Union Pacific helped the zoo lay down 2.5 miles (4.0 km) of track in 1968 with the inaugural run of the Omaha Zoo Railroad made on July 22, 1968.
The Lied Jungle opened on April 4, 1992 at a cost of $15 million. It is the largest indoor rainforest in the world; it occupies an 80 foot tall building that spans 1.5 acres and is located just inside the main entrance.
