{"id":474600,"date":"2026-09-24T21:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T21:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/474600\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T21:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T21:50:12","slug":"author-talk-and-presention-the-zoo-lady-how-belle-benchley-built-the-san-diego-zoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/474600\/","title":{"rendered":"Author talk and presention: &#8220;The Zoo Lady: How Belle Benchley Built the San Diego Zoo&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coronado.librarycalendar.com\/event\/sandra-bonura-author-event-42160\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-259489\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/The-Zoo-Lady.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Join award-winning historian and storyteller Dr. Sandra E. Bonura for a\u00a0fully illustrated presentation featuring rare vintage zoo photographs, archival movie clips, and historic radio broadcasts. Together, we\u2019ll celebrate her new 2026 book,\u00a0The Zoo Lady: How Belle Benchley Built the San Diego Zoo, and uncover the extraordinary, historically ignored story of Belle Benchley\u2014a middle-aged single mother who took a temporary bookkeeping job in 1925 and transformed a struggling local menagerie into the world-renowned San Diego Zoo.<\/p>\n<p>As the world\u2019s first female zoo director, \u201cThe Zoo Lady\u201d commanded a male-dominated field for nearly 30 years. She guided the zoo through the Great Depression and World War II, pioneered modern cageless habitats, and revolutionized global standards for animal welfare\u2014all right in our own backyard.<\/p>\n<p>Bring your own zoo memories for an engaging, interactive conversation on local heritage, female leadership, and the fierce grit that shaped modern wildlife conservation.<\/p>\n<p>The event will include a book signing with the author, Sandra Bonura.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/The-Zoo-Lady-book-cover.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" td-modal-image aligncenter wp-image-259488\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/The-Zoo-Lady-book-cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"601\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Join award-winning historian and storyteller Dr. Sandra E. Bonura for a\u00a0fully illustrated presentation featuring rare vintage zoo photographs,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-474600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}