ZooTampa at Lowry Park — Tampa, Florida

ZooTampa at Lowry Park is the zoo on the Hillsborough River north of downtown Tampa, at 1101 W. Sligh Avenue. According to its About page, the zoo is run by the Lowry Park Zoological Society of Tampa, Inc., an independent 501(c)(3) charitable organization, and now encompasses 56 acres of naturalistic animal exhibits arranged in realms devoted to Asia, Africa, Australia and Florida. The society reports that it cares for more than 1,000 animals and takes part in nearly 100 Species Survival Programs run by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

The Tampa institution has had three distinct lives: a small city zoo in Plant Park, a municipal zoo and fairy tale park at Lowry Park from 1957, and the rebuilt nonprofit zoo that reopened in 1988. Each change was driven by the City of Tampa, first as owner and operator and later as a partner that handed management to a private society while keeping a financial stake in the rebuild.

The zoo's own history timeline dates the start to 1930, when the City of Tampa opened and maintained a zoo at Plant Park on the grounds of the University of Tampa. The early collection was mostly native Florida animals, such as raccoons and alligators, along with an aviary of exotic birds. Clio places that first zoo across the Hillsborough River from downtown, on the grounds that now belong to the university.

As the collection outgrew Plant Park, Mayor Nick Nuccio moved the Tampa City Zoo to Lowry Park in 1957, where the city Parks Department maintained it. Clio reports that land further up the river near the neighborhood of Seminole Heights was chosen, and that the combined zoo and park was named Lowry Park after General Sumter Loper Lowry, a Tampa resident known for civic work and military service whose political views were also controversial.

For three decades the Lowry Park zoo shared its grounds with Fairyland. Clio describes it as a place where concrete statues depicting fairy tales and nursery rhymes were along a winding maze of paths beneath sprawling oak trees, reached across a large rainbow bridge. As the animal collection grew, the city added rides, and by the early 1980s Lowry Park had a small roller coaster, a skyride and a kid-sized train.

The animal side did not keep pace. ZooTampa's timeline says the zoo grew gradually but struggled to meet the developing professional standards of modern zoos, and Clio records that the cramped concrete enclosures drew sharp criticism from the Humane Society. Almost nothing of Fairyland survives at Lowry Park today: the timeline notes that the Florida Environmental Education Center, known as Zoo School, opened in 2000 on the area once occupied by Fairyland.

The rebuild began with a new governance model. In 1982 community leaders created the Lowry Park Zoo Association to take over management of the Zoo for the City of Tampa, according to the About page, with the goal of a public-private partnership. The timeline credits the Tampa Parks Department, Mayor Bob Martinez and private citizens with proposing the association, which embarked on a $20 million capital campaign while the City of Tampa committed $8 million. A 24-acre master plan for Lowry Park followed in 1984.

Clio reports that the original Lowry Park Zoo closed on September 7, 1987 for a $20 million reconstruction, and that nearly all traces of the old zoo, Fairyland included, were removed. The zoo re-opened on March 5, 1988 with a Free-Flight Aviary, Asian Domain, Primate World and a Children's Village petting zoo, and the association became the Lowry Park Zoological Society of Tampa, Inc., the private nonprofit that still manages it. Accreditation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums followed in 1989.

Growth on the Sligh Avenue site continued through the next three decades. The timeline lists Safari Africa in 2002, state recognition of the zoo as a center for biodiversity and conservation in 2004, Penguin Beach and the Ituri Forest in 2007, more than one million visitors for the fiscal year ending September 2006, and attendance above 1.2 million in 2021. In 2018 the institution adopted the name ZooTampa at Lowry Park.

The zoo's best documented public program is manatee rescue. The timeline records that the Manatee and Aquatic Center opened in 1991 and is home to the David A. Straz, Jr. Manatee Critical Care Center. ZooTampa's Florida conservation page describes it as one of just four federally permitted manatee critical care facilities in the US, and one of only two able to take in orphaned calves, working inside the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership of nonprofit, state and federal entities. In 2024, the page says, the Lowry Park team assisted FWC with 67 rescues, transports and verifications.

WMNF reported on January 21, 2026 that in 2025 the Tampa center took in 28 manatees and released 26 back into Florida waters, a record for the program, and that the zoo is one of only two critical care centers for manatees in Florida. WFLA described the Straz center in the same month as the largest nonprofit facility of its kind in the U.S., staffed in part by two USFWS-certified manatee critical care veterinarians.

Hillsborough County recognized the work in April 2026. According to a county news release, the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners awarded ZooTampa the 2026 Theodore Roosevelt Hillsborough Forever Conservation Award for the Straz center, noting that since 1991 the zoo's manatee team has rescued more than 635 sick, injured and orphaned manatees. The release adds that the completed Florida Waters expansion at Lowry Park added critical care pools that the public can see into.

Veterinary care at Lowry Park is centered on the Jacarlene Animal Care Campus, opened in 2017, which holds the Catherine Lowry Straz Veterinary Hospital and the Tiedemann-Cotton Animal Care Annex. ZooTampa's timeline states that the 12,000 square foot hospital was completed in 2014 and became the first ever zoo hospital to receive American Animal Hospital Association accreditation. The same year the zoo set up a two-year clinical fellowship with the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine focused on manatee health.

Education is the other long-running program. The About page says the zoo's Zoo School, formally the Florida Environmental Education Center, was the first full-time, licensed childcare center operated by a U.S. zoo, and that ZooTampa has educated more than 1.8 million school-aged children across Tampa Bay since 1988. The zoo also publishes its Form 990 filings and audited statements on the About page, a record of the Lowry Park Zoological Society's finances as a public charity.