From zoo visitor to zookeeper

Jackson Tucker, who works in the inaugural class of zookeepers at the St. Louis Zoo’s new WildCare Park in North County, has been connected to this zoo for almost all of his 24 years on Earth.

His family celebrated his first birthday at the St. Louis Zoo. At 20, he landed his first internship at the zoo’s River’s Edge attraction. Now, after graduating from Michigan State University with a degree in zoology, he is helping prepare the zoo’s new 425-acre safari and conservation campus for its grand opening next year.

WildCare Park is one of the largest expansion projects in the zoo’s history and a major investment in North St. Louis County. According to the Saint Louis Zoo, the project is expected to generate more than $660 million in regional economic activity over the next decade, support hundreds of jobs annually and attract more than 420,000 visitors each year.

Zookeeping is both manual labor and dirty work. Tucker feeds the animals — giraffes and rhinoceroses are his primary responsibilities — and cleans up their waste. He grooms the pastures where they roam and graze.

This is unavoidably dirty and smelly work.

“There is a lot of cleaning up poop,” he said.

More goes into feeding these animals than simply stuffing lettuce fronds into holes cut in the sides of plastic buckets. A zookeeper has to learn and manage the internal dynamics of animal populations to make sure more vulnerable animals receive as much nutrition as the more dominant.

“You have to play by their rules,” Tucker said.

In less routine moments, Tucker helps keep the animals entertained through what zoos call enrichment activities. For giraffes, that means encouraging them to stretch and move their necks and tongues in different ways. For rhinoceroses, it often means extended wallowing sessions in mud.

He also helps train the animals.

The rhinoceroses, for example, are being conditioned to tolerate human touch because WildCare Park’s future safari experiences are expected to include close-up encounters between visitors and some of the animals.

Then there are moments Tucker calls “once-in-a-lifetime, insane experiences.”

One day, he became a first responder when an addax — a critically endangered desert antelope — gave birth in a pasture at WildCare Park.

“Have you ever provided the first neonatal examination of an addax?” Tucker said with a laugh. “I have.”

WildCare Park, located in Spanish Lake, is designed to expand the zoo’s conservation and breeding capabilities beyond what is possible at its Forest Park campus. Plans include safari-style attractions, research facilities, educational programming and large naturalistic habitats for endangered species. Zoo officials say the project is expected to become both a conservation hub and a major tourism driver for the region, with nearly $184 million in projected off-site spending tied to hotels, restaurants, retail and transportation over the next decade.

For Tucker, the chance to help build the operation from the ground floor is just as exciting as working with the animals.

“When my hands aren’t feeding animals or cleaning up after them, I’m taking notes,” Tucker said. “I’m learning how to build up a zoo from scratch.”

Perhaps that first birthday party at the zoo helped set him on this path, but Tucker said he has loved animals for as long as he can remember. Growing up, he owned nearly every animal his mother, Dana Redwing, would allow in the house — from dogs and cats to a fire-bellied toad. His father, Mark Tucker, stretched those boundaries a little further with a snake.

His internship at the zoo showed him animals could become more than a hobby.

His mentor at River’s Edge, Katie Pilgrim-Kloppe, encouraged him to pursue zookeeping professionally. At Michigan State, Tucker deepened his interest in wildlife conservation, particularly during a study-abroad experience in South Africa, where he learned how species interact within larger ecosystems.

“There is so much we still do not know,” Tucker said. “We don’t know what the existence or extinction of a species may ultimately mean for human beings.”

His interest in conservation was also shaped by his grandmother, Eleanor Tucker, an avid news consumer who followed stories about endangered species. Watching coverage surrounding the extinction of the northern white rhinoceros helped Tucker understand how fragile some animal populations had become.

Tucker also understands how uncommon his career path remains for Black professionals.

“No one who looks like me does what I do,” he said.

He believes the profession is slowly diversifying, but said conservation and zoology still lack Black representation at many levels.

“I want to see more people who look like me doing this so I’m not the last one,” Tucker said. “Once you’ve opened a door, you should not close it behind you. I know what it’s like to be the first one in the room and the only one in the room who looks like you.”

He hopes to eventually pursue graduate studies and move into zoo management and conservation leadership.

“I don’t always want to be the only one.”

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