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Mid-Atlantic Conservation Alliance

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware: Mid-Atlantic Conservation Alliance

Conservation at a Glance

• The Philadelphia Zoo is a founding member of the Mid-Atlantic Conservation Alliance (MACA), a group of 12 zoos and aquariums with members in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware.
• MACA’s goals are to highlight the role of zoos and aquariums in conservation, share conservation messages, build grassroots support for local conservation, and protect wildlife.
• For its 2006 pilot project, MACA developed “Terrapin Station” portable educational displays on the diamondback terrapin, a local at-risk turtle species held by all members.
• In 2008, MACA identified future conservation projects through State Wildlife Action Plans.  These include education about the Red Knot, an endangered sandpiper that feeds on horseshoe crab eggs in Delaware Bay each spring as it migrates from South America to its Arctic breeding grounds; and captive rearing of and education about the New Jersey chorus frog, an at-risk woodland frog species endemic to the mid-Atlantic coast.
• Next up will be a conservation plan for the coastal plain leopard frog.  As a first step, Zoo staff and volunteers participated in preliminary habitat restoration work at the John Heinz John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, by digging ‘test’ vernal pools at several sites.