Dan Wharton

Dan Wharton, Ph.D. Senior Vice President of Animal Programs for the Chicago Zoological Society.

"Most recently, Dr. Dan Wharton served as the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Director of New York’s City Zoos, namely the Central Park Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo, and Queens Zoo. He began his career with WCS as a mammal curator in 1979. As a mammalogist and population biologist interested in the management of small populations in zoos, Dr. Wharton has worked extensively in establishing North America’s captive gorilla and snow leopard populations, serving as chairman of the AZA Species Survival Plans for these two species for more than 15 years. Dr. Wharton is also the Executive Editor of the zoo science journal "Zoo Biology" and is an adjunct scientist and associate professor with the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) program at Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in biology from Fordham University and a Master’s Degree in International Administration from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. As a Fulbright Scholar to Germany, Dr. Wharton studied population genetics and zoological garden management of German zoos."


 * Steering Committee, Conservation Breeding Specialist Group