My Conversation with Utah's Hogle Zoo

In doing our research about a nursing room at the zoo, we discovered that in 2001 Utah's Hogle Zoo became the first zoo in the United States to provide a room solely designated for nursing mothers. When we discovered this, we were really surprised, and a little saddened, that zoos did not commonly provide a facility for nursing mothers.

This morning I spoke to Doug Lund, Assistant Director of Administration/Finance at the Hogle Zoo. Up until December 2008, Mr. Lund had been their Capital Projects Associate Director. I learned some very interesting information during my discussing with Mr. Lund.

First, I feel it is important to note that Mr. Lund was not aware that the Hogle Zoo was the first zoo in the country to provide a nursing room. He was actually pretty surprised by this information. I had been hoping that he would rattle off a bunch of statistics and information for me about their reasons for adding a nursing room, but he said that reason was mostly that it seemed important to the demographic using their zoo. Something to which we mama's can certainly attest!

Secondly, they consider the Oregon Zoo to be their "sister zoo" because they have a similar layout and demographic. In fact, when they were planning their 2001 entrance remodel (in which they added the nursing room) they had a team visit the Oregon Zoo to get ideas for their layout and design!

Mr. Lund also informed me that the room, which is located off of a woman's restroom, has quieters to eliminate outside noise and has wall sconces, as apposed to overhead lights, to make it more comfortable. They also have family restrooms throughout their zoo.

While I was hoping to get a few more statistics about their nursing room, I was encouraged by the fact that the Hogle Zoo considers our zoo to be their a "sister". Although, I have to say that the Hogle Zoo has done a lot more to make their zoo family-friendly.

I hope that the Oregon Zoo can use their "sister" as a model of what a family-friendly zoo looks like. After all, we families make up a very large portion of their demographic.