Situated on 29 acres (12 ha) in Tacoma's Point Defiance Park, the zoo and aquarium are home to over 9,000 specimens representing 367 animal species.

[4] In Pierce County, Washington, this is said to be one of the most popular tourist destinations, bringing in over more than 600,000 visitors per year.

The Point Defiance Park Aquarium opened on the waterfront in 1936 as an entity separate from the zoo.

[7] By the end of the decade, a breeding program was begun for red wolves, which had been declared an endangered species in 1967.

After a $7 million bond measure was passed in 1977, the Zoo opened the Arctic Tundra complex in 1981 and the Rocky Shores area in 1982.

Another bond, passed in that year, and a local sales tax increase shored up funds for improvements.

None are scheduled to arrive any time in the foreseeable future and Rocky Shores currently (temporarily or permanently) houses harbor seals and California sea lions where belugas used to swim.

Since 1988, the zoo has hosted an annual holiday light display within the park called Zoolights.

This 5 acre (2.0 ha) exhibit complex which opened on July 1, 2004[7] simulates the forests of southeast Asia with a waterfall, streams, and plants native to the region such as bamboo.

Viewing is provided by a wide glass window along a gravelly stream bed and into a heated den.

[18] Completed in 1982,[2] this exhibit is based on the shoreline of Cape Flattery, Washington and serves as home to harbor seals, California sea lions, sea otters, horned puffins, common murres, and tufted puffins in separate pools.

It also contains Pacific walruses Balzik and Lakina, half siblings from Aquarium du Quebec, born in 2016.

[26] Botanical Garden The certified Point Defiance Zoo Botanical Garden displays a collection of a variety of bamboos (over 50 species), massive meadows filled with Lobelia tupa, fragrant perennials to attract pollinators, and many varieties of trees and shrubs planted throughout the grounds.

The collection boasts a variety of flora from the Baja Peninsula, the Southern Hemisphere, Alaskan landscape, plants from South Eastern United States, wildflowers, desert garden, Asian Forest Sanctuary, and the Native Northwest.

Fish and Wildlife Service had removed the last fourteen wolves from the wild by 1980, and in 1984 the zoo received approval from the AZA to start a Species Survival Plan.

This was an attempt to save the endangered species considering there are roughly only four hundred Sumatran tigers left in the wild.