Santa Ana : Zoo Gets U.S. Funding for Education Program

The collecting of skeletons, microscopes and other items for the Santa Ana Zoo’s fledgling education program will continue as a federal agency has matched the $36,000 grant it awarded to the zoo last year.

The Institute of Museum Services selected the zoo as one of 449 libraries, museums and zoos to receive funding nationwide. The first-year cash helped develop programs such as the training of volunteer tour guides and the hiring of Jennifer Rigby, the zoo’s curator of education.

Rigby’s salary will be paid by the city this year, said Claudia Collier, zoo director, and most of the second grant will go to setting up a laboratory. “Before we received the funding last year, the zoo didn’t have a formal education program,” she said, adding that the laboratory would primarily be used by school groups touring the zoo and not for research.

Some of the money will pay for a graphic artist to design laboratory displays and to collect plastic molds of animal skeletons. Collier said she hopes to open the laboratory in November.

She said costs of the project will shrink drastically after the laboratory is opened although funding for next year isn’t assured. The Institute of Museum Services, she said, “isn’t likely to fund a particular program over and over again.”