Community Zoos

Philanthropist T. Denny Sanford gifted $1 million in 2018 to the Great Plains Zoo and Delbridge Museum’s “Building Our Community Pride” capital campaign. The campaign is a fundraising effort to build a new lion exhibit at the Great Plains Zoo. The exhibit will feature a pride of up to 10 lions. It will also include expanded seating at the Maasai Market Café (a climate-controlled viewing area), habitat for leopards and a new outdoor exhibit for the meerkats.

First PREMIER Bank and PREMIER Bankcard helped fund extensive renovations to the Great Plains Zoo brown bear exhibit, which opened in 2018. “The Fortress of the Bears” provides enhanced viewing and educational opportunities for visitors. New features include an underwater viewing area, a bear habitat, improved water filtration and more “bedrooms” for the bears.

Renovations to the lemur exhibit, located in the PREMIER Way area of Watertown’s Bramble Park Zoo, provided new stimulation for one of the world’s most endangered animals. PREMIER’s $10,000 donation allowed the zoo to renovate an outdoor enclosure that features plenty of new toys, branches to climb and nooks to explore.