Brookfield Zoo is owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County and is managed by the Chicago Zoological Society.

Brookfield Zoo opened on July 1, 1934, and quickly gained international recognition for using moats and ditches instead of cages.

The zoo was also the first in the United States to exhibit giant pandas, one of which (Su Lin[4]) has been taxidermied and put on display in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

[6] In 1919, Edith Rockefeller McCormick donated land she received from her father as a wedding gift to the Cook County Forest Preserve District for development as a zoological garden.

[13] The zoo experienced a decline in the 1960s until a large bond issue from the Forest Preserve District allowed it to expand.

The incident gained worldwide attention after Binti Jua, a female western lowland gorilla, tended to the child until zoo staff rescued him.

Disney World partnered with the zoo by giving a $25,000 grant assigned specifically to the work in Punta San Juan, Peru, which helped the Chicago Zoological Society conservationists gain clearance into the highly restricted and protected area.

Samples are taken from wildlife such as South American sea lions, Inca terns, Peruvian boobies, guanay cormorants, Grey gulls, and the endangered Humboldt penguins.

Team members also continuously have groups of children, of varying ages, go out to clean up garbage that accumulates on the beaches of Punta San Juan from the Pacific Ocean.