National Aviary in Pittsburgh, Inc.
Saving birds & protecting habitats
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
The National Aviary’s staff of conservationists and researchers work at home and around the world to save birds and protect habitats.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Education
The National Aviary inspires a respect for nature through an appreciation of birds. Our education team is dedicated to teaching people of all ages and backgrounds about birds, their habitats, the environmental pressures they face, and the role that humans play in creating or mitigating these challenges. If you are seeking a structured learning opportunity presented in a fun, dynamic and interactive format, we have a number of options to meet your needs! We also offer a number of classes, programs and camps for families and adults. From staff-led immersive feedings offered daily to holiday camps and summer camps, we cover a range of topics.
Our school field trip programs help students to understand important conservation and environmental concepts through engaging studies of birds from across the globe! Age-appropriate and standards-based, programs include an interactive presentation of your choice, live bird encounter, and general admission. You can add-on an exhibit tour, one or more of our Helen M. Schmidt FliteZone™ Theater Shows, or an Owl Pellet dissection lab.
We also travel to schools. From penguins to parrots, there is always a feathery friend available to brighten your classroom and inspire your students. The National Aviary has interactive programs available as classroom or assembly programs at your school, library, community center, or event.
The National Aviary offers summer camps and holiday camps to keep your school-aged children entertained and engaged in learning while they’re on breaks from school.
Bird Exhibition and Care
The National Aviary houses a collection of 500 birds representing 150 rare and endangered species, including species that are extinct in the wild. Most of our collection is displayed in walk-through free-flight rooms, including our popular Tropical Forest and Wetlands ecosystem exhibits as well as Penguin Point, an indoor/outdoor home to a colony of endangered African penguins. Bird exhibition and care program expenses include the costs of feeding our diverse collection of vegetarian, carnivorous, and omnivorous birds, and maintaining horticultural exhibit expenses for this magnificent collection.
Veterinary Care and Avian Hospital
Birds are beautiful, amazing creatures, displaying incredible diversity in size, behavior, diet and physical attributes. From scavengers like the massive Andean condor, to ocean-dwelling penguins, magnificent birds of prey, and the tiniest of finches, each of the National Aviary's 150 species requires specialized care if they become sick or injured.
Dr. Pilar Fish, Director of Veterinary Medicine, and her outstanding team provide the National Aviary's birds with dedicated prenatal, natal and preventative care, as well as cutting-edge surgical and emergency treatment in the event of injury or illness. For geriatric and special needs birds, the National Aviary provides a life-long home where they can live out their days in comfort, while playing an important role in training the next generation of veterinarians. The mission of our skilled team is always to provide the very best and most thorough treatment and therapies to every bird, young or old.
To help protect the health of the National Aviary’s collection, more than 350 vaccines are given each year to prevent common viruses. Any bird housed outside is vaccinated to protect them from contracting the mosquito-transmitted West Nile virus.
The National Aviary Hospital is a leader in bird health. New and advanced treatments are developed that help the Aviary’s hundreds of rare birds, but also is shared with the professional community to help birds in zoos, wildlife centers, and pet birds.
The Aviary’s Teaching Hospital accepts about 40 students each year in the Hospital Intern Program. These students are trained in avian medicine and become the next generation of professionals providing health care for wild and captive birds.
Just as humans face challenges as they get older, birds develop common conditions as they age. Females can become ‘egg bound’ when they are no longer able to pass an egg naturally. In such an event, immediate medical assistance or surgery is necessary to save the bird’s life by removing the egg. Another age-related problem common to birds is the development of kidney failure and subsequently gout. In order to treat this, human prescriptions for gout are modified and used with excellent results.
The National Aviary has a Teaching Hospital where pre-veterinary and veterinary technician students can train. The students directly care for the birds in the Geriatric Care Program. These senior birds require extra nursing care and provide the students with invaluable experience in avian medicine. The Aviary visitors also get a chance to meet the senior birds. Every day there is a Meet a Patient program where a bird in the geriatric Care Program is introduced to the visitors. This is an excellent opportunity for every visitor to get close to a bird and learn about the behind-the scenes care of senior birds.
In order to treat the variety of species at the National Aviary, prescription medicines are customized to each individual bird. Parrots are given banana-flavored antibiotic syrup while the Aviary’s African penguins are treated using an individually-made capsule hidden in their fish.
The bird prescriptions are made by modifying drugs intended for use in dogs, cats, horses, and even human medicines. The National Aviary has developed a novel treatment for penguin pneumonia using human drugs. A penguin is placed in a clear ICU box for a few minutes to breathe a human nebulization medication. This is a very safe, easy, and effective treatment to control serious fungal pneumonia in penguins.
Because birds are generally fragile and many species are very small, it can be difficult to handle them for tests and treatments. The Aviary Hospital has developed many new techniques, including microsurgery, for working with tiny patients. Microsurgery is frequently performed on smaller birds, even patients as small as 12 grams (the size of a red grape). Because surgical instruments used by animal vets on dogs are too large, Aviary vets use human heart and eye instruments to handle delicate bird tissue.
Anesthesia is needed for surgeries, but is especially challenging when working with birds. Gas anesthesia is administered first through a mask and then via a breathing tube. But because breathing tubes do not exist for animals that are smaller than a kitten, Aviary staff makes tiny breathing tubes from intravenous catheters. Anesthesia masks are also hand-crafted to fit each bird. For example, a 2-liter soda bottle is modified to make an anesthetic mask that will fit a toucan’s bill.
Another challenge is that birds usually don’t breath under anesthesia and must be manually ventilated throughout the entire surgery. The veterinary technicians breathe for the bird and monitor its vital signs carefully using an ECG, pulse oximeter, and other equipment. After surgery, the patient is placed in an Intensive Care Unit where it receives extra supportive care, such as fluids and hand-feedings to aid in its recovery. These ICU patients receive around-the-clock medical care until they are stable.
Chips and breaks to the beak are a common injury in birds. In the wild, a damaged beak can mean that a bird will be unable to eat or hunt, but at the National Aviary, a quick response from the medical team means that in short order the injured bird is not only eating comfortably, but also looking good in front of his friends.
Beak repairs are made using a specialized process that incorporates the same dental acrylics used for human teeth. At the National Aviary, our veterinary hospital staff go a step further by mixing pigments with the acrylic to match the color of the beak so that the repaired area is not obvious. If the damage is too severe to be corrected with acrylic, then bridges or even prosthetic beaks are made.
Conservation and Field Research
The National Aviary works to save birds and protect their habitats. Our Department of Conservation and Field Research, lead by Dr. Steven Latta, is comprised of experienced researchers and ornithologists who partner with organizations around the world to advance conservation research.
The National Aviary, recognizing the importance of education and the need for advance training of the next generation of conservation leaders, also mentors and colloborates with Research Associates and Student Researchers.
The Department of Conservation and Field Research is dedicated to advancing the National Aviary’s crucial role in saving birds and protecting habitats. The department was created to study the impacts of human population and resource consumption on birds and the environment. We address these issues with targeted programs to maximize our impact for protection of biodiversity and to address conservation priorities not being addressed by other organizations.
The National Aviary conducts conservation research programs in the United States and abroad, including Marianas Islands, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, and islands across the Caribbean Basin. In addition, the department oversees the peregrine falcon banding program in the City of Pittsburgh in collaboration with the PA Department of Fish & Wildlife
Our national and international conservation and field research projects span a range of topics and perspectives, from classical ecological research, to applied conservation, to more traditional zoo-based reintroduction activities. Projects are founded on the belief that field research, conservation and education are fundamentally linked and are best done in concert.
Our Department of Conservation and Field Research is founded on the knowledge that human populations and our patterns of consumption of natural resources are dramatically impacting birds and their habitats. Our research and education efforts specifically target neglected conservation priorities to understand how human populations impact bird populations. The goal in this approach is to promote bird conservation and biodiversity protection to foster a sustainable environment and to help insure quality of life. At the National Aviary, we take steps to conserve birds and their habitat and to make our communities better places to live.
The growth of human populations and the ever-increasing demand for scarce resources to support economic expansion and higher standards of living are the dual drivers of this loss of habitats and biodiversity. The research and conservation agenda of the National Aviary is focused on determining how these threats impact birds. By studying the ecology and population dynamics of birds across a range of human population densities, we can better understand how human-caused threats impact bird populations. For example, we have investigated how the diversity of songbirds changes as human population increases in urban areas, how the Louisiana Waterthrush is affected by pollution impacting streams in Pennsylvania, and how increasing numbers of rural residents can impact Neotropical parrot populations. With this knowledge, we can then make recommendations and establish management guidelines to mitigate negative consequences of human activities.
Stabilizing both the number of the world’s people and the amount of resources they consume are the twin pillars required for effective conservation. Science at the National Aviary helps to develop a complete picture of factors responsible for the loss of biodiversity. Understanding these factors is necessary to develop practical solutions so that future generations can prosper and lead happy and healthy lives.
Where we work
Accreditations
Association of Zoos and Aquariums - Accreditation 2015
Association of Zoos and Aquariums - Accreditation 2021
Awards
Renaissance Award for "marketing communications" 2009
Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)- Pittsburgh Chapter
Four Star Charity 2018
Charity Navigator
Quarter Century Award 2015
Association of Zoos and Aquariums
External reviews
Photos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of students educated through field trips
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth
Related Program
Education
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
The National Aviary did not offer/allow field trips after March 14, 2020, and only began offering them on a limited basis in 2021 due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
The National Aviary is staffed by environmental educators, conservationists, veterinary professionals, and business leaders whose goals are to:
• Provide high quality, science-based conservation education programs for diverse audiences
• Offer exceptional family recreational programs which incorporate interactive experiences with birds
• Sustain populations of vulnerable avian species and habitats through scientific breeding programs and targeted field research
• Maintain avian welfare through the practice of advanced veterinary medicine and research
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
National Aviary programs range from age-appropriate classes designed to supplement public school science curricula, to encounters which teach social responsibility, to projects involving conservation of natural resources.
Regarding social responsibility, many of the families and children who participate in National Aviary programs live in urban environments which tend to be inhospitable to wildlife, and where respect for nature and habitat preservation are not strongly valued.
While a visit to the National Aviary is not likely to fully counteract the social forces and values which shape the lives of these individuals, the National Aviary's programs provide a positive and wholesome influence that may broaden their outlook for the better.
By educating our visitors in ways that are highly interactive, personal, and entertaining, the National Aviary helps instill conservation values that can last a lifetime and hopefully help protect and sustain our natural resources.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Our walk-through open exhibits allow visitors of all ages and abilities to interact with free-flying birds and meet species rarely found in zoos anywhere else in the world. Education comes first as our mission to inspire respect for nature through an appreciation of birds carries over into cutting-edge programs for children to teach them to protect and conserve our environment!
Open 363 days a year and fully ADA-accessible, the National Aviary's central location within the City of Pittsburgh makes us easily reachable by a high percentage of the region's residents.
The National Aviary serves a diverse audience without regard to age, physical ability, or economic status. In this regard, the National Aviary makes a concerted effort to offer programs to economically disadvantaged individuals and families by obtaining grants to underwrite program costs, offering advertised free days throughout the year, and providing free admission to special needs groups who make written requests.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
A key measurement for determining if an investment in the National Aviary is a good use of Foundation funds is an organization's audit performance. In 2014 the National Aviary received zero audit adjustments during our annual independent audit, the eighth consecutive year in which the National Aviary maintained this standard of excellence.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
National Aviary in Pittsburgh, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 02/20/2024
Mrs. Jane Dixon
Mount West Investments
Term: 2020 - 2024
Michael J. Flinn
Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney LLP
Jane Dixon
Mount West Investments
John E. Graf
Priory Hospitality Group
Thomas A. Kobus
Dollar Bank
Michael Mascaro
Mascaro Construction Company, LP
Timothy R. Goetz
Grant Street Associates, Inc.
Kathleen Testoni
Community Leader
Jennifer L. Bertetto
Trib Total Media
Harold F. Balk
Eckert Seamans
Maris A. Dauer
UPMC Health Plan
Michael P. Hart
Armstrong Group
Timothy D. Adams
Schneider Downs
Bryan C. Brantley
McGuire Woods
Patricia L. Dodge
Meyer, Unkovic & Scott LLP
Yarone S. Zober
McKnight Realty Partners
Robert Rodgers
Hefren Tillotson
Richard Caruso
Self-Employed
Robert Rossi
The Athletic
Narahari Sastry
University of Pittsburgh
Quynh McGuire
Koppers
James Lehman
AAA East Center (Ret.)
Bevi Powell
AAA East Central
David Paulson
FHLBank Pittsburgh
Ricardo Maiz
Vitro Architectural Glass
Lori Calhoun
Dollar Bank
Karen Adkins
Allegheny Conference on Community Development
Brian Williams
PPG
Kaitlin Donahoe
Pittsburgh Penguins
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
No data
Transgender Identity
No data
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data