Find out how you can help out and donate to The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens

It’s typically a magical time at The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens during this time of year.

Not only did they have big plans to celebrate its 50th year here in the desert, but administrators were also excited to introduce the community to their new interactive Australia exhibit.

However, with a pandemic on our hands, those plans canceled forcing the zoo to close its doors.

“We planned for almost any kind of emergency you can think of, whether it was earthquakes or fires but we had never planned for a pandemic so this took us a little bit by surprise,” President and CEO of the zoo, Allen Monroe told News Channel 3 on Sunday.

The financial loss for the zoo huge.

“As a nonprofit organization, we rely almost entirely upon gate generated revenue to operate the park and as soon as that revenue got to zero we got into a little bit of a difficult situation financially,” Monroe said.

Over the course of what would have been three busy months for the zoo, they’re losing $3.5 million.

“We have been looking into some of the federal stimulus loans and we’ve been knocking on the door with our application,” he said. "Today, we’ve only received $10,000 from one of those loan programs,” Monroe shared.

During our coronavirus questions answered segment, when asked what should be open, Indian Wells Mayor, Tye Peabody said his focus was on the zoo.

“Right now, Gina and I are particularly focused on The Living Desert, which my concern is that The Living Desert’s losses are not sustainable and if we don’t get them open, they’re perfectly willing to follow all of the guidelines and the rules but we need to get them open pretty quickly or we may lose one of our best entertainment features in this valley,” Peabody said.

We spoke with Mayor Peabody afterward to learn more about how he’s helping out the zoo.

“Once we knew they were losing this money, myself and Gina Nestande and Chad Mayes wanted to do something to help them get open under the proper guidelines and that’s what we did. We sent a letter yesterday [Friday] with a copy of all of the guidelines that Allen Monroe put out to us of what they will do and to get it open and get it open safely,” he Peabody said.

That letter went to the county supervisor Manuel Perez’ office.

The zoo is following along with the county for when it says it’ll be safe to re-open.

We asked Monroe how the community can help support The Living Desert during this crisis.

“Obviously go through our website or Facebook page and there is a 'Donate Now' on there where people can make donations of any kind on there that they’d like," he said.

Monroe also shared a touching story. "You know we got one donation that was only for five dollars and you might wonder about a five dollar donation and obviously every little bit helps but what I thought was most important was the little note that went with that donation was that was from someone who was laid off and that was all that they had to give us a surplus. They supported The Living Desert enough that they still thought that was important even though they had lost their job and so I know that we are connecting with our guests and audience on that level and it tells me how meaningful The Living Desert is to the local community,” he said.

You can also help out the animals by adopting them.

“Adopt a fennec fox or meerkat or a painted dog and that money will go to help support and care for those animals that are here,” Monroe said.

Adopt an animal here!

As a community, if we come together to support them, we can help make sure The Living Desert stays in the Coachella Valley for many years to come.

“We’re all going through a very difficult time," Monroe said. "We’ve got to figure out how to do this safely and uh re-open in a gradual fashion and bring our community back in line so we can all enjoy the wonderful things that the Coachella Valley has to offer,” he added.

Visit https://www.livingdesert.org/ to donate!