In March, the Texas State Aquarium will unveil its new Port of Corpus Christi Wildlife Rescue Center, which will be the largest coastal wildlife rescue facility in Texas.
The Texas State Aquarium’s Wildlife Rescue Program began in 1995. Since then, the program has operated out of a small warehouse building on Rincon Road owned by the Port of Corpus Christi. The program has returned more than 4,000 animals to their natural habitat since its inception.
“Around 2019, we began putting a plan together for the design and eventual construction of the new center,” said Jesse Gilbert, president and CEO of the Texas State Aquarium. “The Port of Corpus Christi Wildlife Rescue Center will house our wildlife rescue program, which is one of the largest in the country, and will also house our workforce development program and our aquarium research program.”
In 2021, the Aquarium began construction on a new 26,000-square-foot Wildlife Rescue Center on the Aquarium’s current campus. The aquarium will not use its original facility to save wildlife after the new aquarium is completed.
“The most exciting part is that people will be able to walk around and see all of the work,” Gilbert said.
According to Gilbert, the project was funded by donors, including the Port of Corpus Christi, the Dobson Family of Foundations, the City of Corpus Christi, the ExxonMobil Foundation, the Katherine and Bob Hilliard Foundation, the State of Texas, the Brown Foundation, Valero, and the Earl C. Sams Foundation.
The new center, which is set to become the largest in Texas and one of the largest in the country, will be the only wildlife rescue facility in Texas permitted to treat marine mammals, birds of prey, shorebirds and sea turtles. The center will have state of the art veterinary medical equipment, a demonstration exhibit, an emergency operations center, and the only CAT scan used for Texas wildlife.
The center will house 3,000 sea turtles at one time, Gilbert said, making it the largest sea turtle capacity in the country.
“If we had a major cold-shock event like Winter Storm Ore had in 2021 or if we had a major hurricane event, the rescue center would have the largest sea turtle capacity in the entire country,” Gilbert said. “Corpus Christi, Coastal Bend, and in fact, Texas is the leader in sea turtle conservation.”
Gilbert hopes the center will spark interest in the next generation of Texans who might be interested in wildlife conservation jobs.
“Texans can watch the rehabilitation of these endangered species and they can be there when those sea turtles are returned to the Gulf of Mexico, so it’s a unique opportunity that doesn’t really happen anywhere else along the Gulf of Mexico coast,” Gilbert said. “It really is one of the only places in the country where guests can enjoy this kind of viewing.”
The Aquarium will host a grand opening of its new Wildlife Rescue Center on Thursday, March 2, from 10:30 a.m. to noon. The event coincides with Texas Independence Day and the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, which protects fish and wildlife listed as threatened or endangered.
The center will be free for public viewing, and all aquarium ticket sales will fund the Wildlife Rescue Center’s wildlife conservation efforts.
“When people come, they can have a great time in the aquarium but they can also know firsthand that they are saving endangered species,” Gilbert said.
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