Paul Simon put it together in 1967: “Something tells me it's all happening at the zoo.”

The El Paso Zoo is one of the most popular attractions in Texas' desert-mountain city. More than 300,000 people visit each year.

They see African lions, meerkats, Asian elephants, Malayan tigers. There's the thrill of the exotic, and an initiation into the planet's stunning diversity of life.

But among the zoo's core aims is to connect visitors to the very ecosystem in which they live – and to protect that ecosystem's most endangered creatures. Chihuahuan Desert programs are already central to the zoo's mission, and in February 2018, the zoo started construction on an ambitious new Chihuahu...