UPDATE:

While this petition is now closed, and we are extremely grateful for all your support and encouragement, you can do more to help save Knowland Park. We have two new petitions, here on change.org, asking the zoo's large-money donors and the zoo's management to reconsider their actions. They can be found at the links below, and we'd really appreciate you signing both of them!

1) Petition to the zoo's big donors

https://www.change.org/petitions/oakland-zoo-s-big-donors-withdraw-your-financial-support-for-a-theme-park-development-save-knowland-park

2) Petition to the zoo management

https://www.change.org/petitions/oakland-zoo-management-save-knowland-park-abandon-your-theme-park-expansion-on-knowland-park-s-ridgeline-2

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Your help is needed to save Oakland’s largest city park – Knowland Park – from an unnecessary and destructive zoo expansion project! Despite pleas by a wide range of conservation groups to modify their project, Oakland Zoo executives have pushed forward with plans to bulldoze and build on rare wildlife and plant habitat, putting in danger threatened species like the Alameda Whipsnake, and the wide variety of wildlife that call Knowland Park home.

At approximately 500 acres, Knowland Park is the largest remaining wildland park in the City of Oakland, California. Gifted by the State of California to the City of Oakland to be preserved in perpetuity, the park is home to numerous wildlife including mountain lions, foxes, coyote, deer, owls, hawks, songbirds, amphibians, reptiles, and many small mammals.

Conservation groups, including the East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the California Native Grasslands Association, Friends of Knowland Park, Resource Renewal institute, Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity have fought for years to preserve this important park in the East Bay hills – yet zoo executives have refused to consider alternatives that would allow for the expansion of the zoo without irreparably harming plant and wildlife species.

Please join the East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the Friends of Knowland Park and the Center for Biological Diversity in calling on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect this park from the zoo’s destructive expansion plan!

Zoo executives are now pushing ahead to seek permits from state and federal wildlife agencies to allow them to bulldoze and fence more than 50 acres of the park, destroying wildlife habitat and harming threatened wildlife species – including the Alameda Whipsnake, a local snake species which only survives in select areas of the East Bay.

The clock is running – the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must make a decision by early September on whether they will permit Zoo executives to harm this beautiful park. Please join us in calling on wildlife officials to Save Knowland Park and the species that depend on it!