Accreditation: Held Continuously Since 1987

1987 – renewed 17 September 2025

Lead: The Potawatomi Zoo was first accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 1987, and it has been accredited ever since — "continuously accredited since 1987," in the zoo's own published words, a standing fewer than a quarter of the country's zoos held when the zoo's director counted them for a county board in January 2020: one of 216 accredited institutions in the nation, as he reported that day. Accreditation is a five-year discipline, inspected and re-earned, and the course of it at South Bend was not always comfortable. Reporting to the county's Hotel-Motel Tax Board on 22 January 2020, executive director Josh Sisk said it plainly: "The zoo barely received accreditation at the last review in 2014." The 2014 renewal nonetheless came, and the 2019 renewal came in the fall of that year with the zoo itself calling it a gold-star result; a city brochure of 2017 records that the zoo had received the AZA's Quarter Century Award for its twenty-five years of continuous accreditation. The current course ends, for now, in Tampa: the AZA's official accreditation results of September 2025 list the Potawatomi Zoo among the institutions granted accreditation at the Commission's September hearings, and the zoo's own magazine dates the grant exactly — "The Potawatomi Zoo was granted accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' independent Accreditation Commission on September 17, 2025. The Potawatomi Zoo has been continuously accredited since 1987, and this accreditation is valid for another five years." Thirty-eight years unbroken, then, from 1987 through the renewal of 2025 — the professional spine on which every expansion told below was built.

Sources:

1. Potawatomi Zoo, Fall 2025 Uproar (the accreditation grant of 17 September 2025; continuously accredited since 1987; valid five years).
2. Association of Zoos and Aquariums, official accreditation results, September 2025 (Potawatomi Zoo among the institutions granted accreditation).
3. Minutes, St. Joseph County Board of Managers for Hotel-Motel Tax, 22 January 2020 (Sisk's report: one of 216 accredited zoos; the 2014 review "barely" received).
4. Potawatomi Zoo, Uproar, 2019 (the fall 2019 five-year accreditation); City of South Bend PARC Committee brochure, 2017 (the Quarter Century Award).