The Zoo Today

Verified November 2026

Lead: The zoo stands at 500 South Greenlawn Avenue, twenty-three acres in Potawatomi Park, owned by the City of South Bend and operated by the Potawatomi Zoological Society under the arrangement of 2014. It is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, renewed 17 September 2025, continuously accredited since 1987, and participates in more than fifty-six Species Survival Plans. Its executive director is Josh Sisk, who came to the zoo as General Curator in 2015, returned to his home zoo in Los Angeles, and came back to become executive director in 2019, by his own account in the zoo's magazine; his senior staff, on the zoo's November 2026 listing, are Director of Development Margie Anella, General Curator Jami Richard, and Curator of Education Amanda Brunson Cruz. Sisk first came to South Bend, as he tells it, to "a little zoo in South Bend, Indiana that needed a zoo curator and a lot of help," and in his first eighteen months as curator the zoo added 135 animals and 25 new species; the collection today stands at more than four hundred animals. The 2026 season ran from late March to late November — the Tribune's preview gave the season as 28 March through 22 November 2026 — with Frankie the rhino newly arrived from Florida, the three Andean bears housed together, the giraffe calf Hadassah past her first birthday, Zoo Luminate's second run finished in June, Zoo Boo held in October, and the fences of Big Cat Tracks up around the master plan's last work. The zoo that began as Erskine's single deer holds, as this history closes, the largest crowds and the longest accreditation run of its life — and a founding date it still states two ways, which is where this account ends.

Sources:

1. Potawatomi Zoo staff list and published descriptions, November 2026 (Sisk, Anella, Richard, Brunson Cruz; 400+ animals; Species Survival Plans).
2. Potawatomi Zoo, Uproar, fall 2023 (Sisk's account: General Curator 2015; executive director 2019); South Bend Tribune profile of Josh Sisk, 24 June 2026 (the 135 animals and 25 species of his first eighteen months).
3. South Bend Tribune, season preview, 26 March 2026 (the 2026 season dates; Frankie; the train; Big Cat Tracks).