Zoos and Botanical Gardens (United States)

NAICS 2022 code 712130. NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the standard the U.S. government uses to group businesses.

1. Overview

Zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, and arboreta are place-based attractions that display living animals or plants to the public and pair that display with conservation, research, and education. It is a large, visible slice of American leisure — the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) reports that its accredited members (about 240 U.S. facilities) draw more than 200 million visitors a year, and the American Public Gardens Association (APGA) counts roughly 600 member gardens drawing about 132 million visitors annually [1][2]. But it is unusual as an "industry": most of the marquee institutions are not businesses in the ordinary sense. They are tax-exempt nonprofits or units of city, state, and federal government — not companies with shareholders.

Why an investor should care anyway. The sector shows how a durable, mission-driven consumer attraction actually earns its keep — through gate admissions, memberships, philanthropy, and public subsidy — and it is quietly consolidating on its for-profit edge, the aquarium and private-attraction operators. The catch for public-market investors is that there is essentially no pure-play stock to buy. The nearest listed proxies are theme-park companies with animal collections bolted on, not zoos or gardens as such [3]. The genuine equity is private: for-profit aquarium roll-ups, family-held attraction groups, public-private operating contracts, municipal bonds that fund zoo and garden capital projects, and — for most people — philanthropy rather than equity.

2. What it is, and how it's structured

NAICS 712130 covers establishments that preserve and exhibit live collections: zoos, aquariums, aviaries, petting zoos, wild-animal and safari parks, arboreta, botanical gardens, and wildlife/game preserves run for public display [24]. The common thread is a curated living collection open to visitors, plus the animal husbandry or horticulture behind it. A zoo or garden fundamentally monetizes access to a physical site and a living collection — admissions, memberships, special events, food and retail, parking, animal encounters, education programs, sponsorships, grants, and donations.

Classification follows the establishment's primary activity: an aquarium or safari park usually sits inside 712130, while a theme park that happens to hold a zoological collection is classified elsewhere [24].

What it excludes (adjacent codes):

• Amusement and theme parks — NAICS 713110. SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, and Disney's Animal Kingdom hold zoological collections but are classified as theme parks, not zoos.
• Museums — NAICS 712110. Natural-history and science museums display specimens, not living collections.
• Historical sites — NAICS 712120, and nature parks and similar institutions — NAICS 712190 (national and state parks, caverns, and preserves that don't maintain an exhibited collection).
• Retail pet and plant sellers, nursery production and garden-center retail, animal production, and veterinary services fall in their own trade, farm, and professional-service codes.

Ownership mix — the defining feature. The sector is dominated by nonprofit and government owners, with for-profit companies a minority confined mostly to aquariums and smaller private/roadside zoos. A widely cited older breakdown put it at roughly half government-owned, a quarter nonprofit-owned, and a quarter private [11]; the mission-driven half has if anything grown since. Five arrangements coexist: government-owned and government-run; government-owned but nonprofit-managed; jointly managed; nonprofit-owned and -run; and fully private [11]. Owners span municipal and county zoos, federal institutions such as the Smithsonian's National Zoo [27], private nonprofits, university- and foundation-affiliated gardens, family-held operators, and a handful of public companies with animal attractions. The clear trend is toward public-private partnerships (P3s) — the city keeps the land, a nonprofit or private manager takes over daily operations — as with the Fort Worth Botanic Garden's 2020 hand-off to a nonprofit institute [18].

3. How big it is

Federal business statistics capture only part of this industry, and it's important to say why. Both core sources below — County Business Patterns (CBP) and the Economic Census — cover private employers, including nonprofits, but exclude government-owned establishments (tallied separately in the Census of Governments) and businesses with no paid employees (counted in the separate Nonemployer Statistics) [25]. Because a very large share of U.S. zoos and gardens are city-, state-, or federally run, and because the sector leans heavily on volunteers and donated services, the federal business numbers materially undercount the true footprint. The figures below also come from different releases and reference years, so they should not be stitched into a single-year income statement.

Our ground-truth federal figures for NAICS 712130:

That works out to average pay near $44,700 and average firm receipts around $8 million [6][7]. (SBA = U.S. Small Business Administration; a firm under $34 million in receipts counts as "small" for federal programs [8]. CR4/CR8 = combined revenue share of the largest 4/8 firms; HHI = a standard concentration index where under 1,500 is "unconcentrated.")

The federal file does not provide industry-wide attendance, admission pricing, profit margins, capital spending, debt, growth rates, or an ownership-share breakdown — those must be evaluated at the operator or facility level. For scale on what the business survey leaves out: the AZA reports its accredited members generate more than $22.5 billion in annual U.S. economic activity and support nearly 200,000 jobs [1] — far above the $5.7 billion of surveyed receipts, precisely because so many big institutions are government-run and outside the business survey. (That AZA figure is a network benchmark, not a measure of NAICS 712130 revenue.) The APGA's roughly 600 gardens draw about 132 million visitors a year, up from ~70 million in 2014 [2].

4. The investable universe

For public-market investors this is close to a blank page — the largest operators are nonprofits and government agencies with no tradable equity, and every listed name is mixed leisure/attraction exposure, not a 712130 pure play.

Public companies

No listed pure-play zoo or botanical-garden company exists. Treat all public exposure as diversified leisure/experiential spending, not the industry itself.

Major private and nonprofit owners

Ownership and management often differ — a city or nonprofit may own the land while another organization operates the facility.

Takeaway: the biggest names — San Diego, the Bronx/WCS parks, the Smithsonian's National Zoo, Chicago's Lincoln Park and Brookfield, the U.S. Botanic Garden, and the New York and Missouri botanical gardens — are unbuyable by design [10][27]. The for-profit layer is real but almost entirely private, and it clusters in aquariums, which have better unit economics than land-and-animal-heavy zoos.

5. How the money works

Owners live off a visitor funnel and three revenue streams, and the mix is the whole game [13]:

1. Earned revenue — gate admissions, memberships, parking, food and gift concessions, seasonal events, animal encounters, and facility rentals. This is the largest pot for most institutions.
2. Contributed revenue — annual donations, major gifts, corporate sponsorship, and endowment income. The wealthiest institutions run near-billion-dollar balance sheets (San Diego's net assets are ~$800M [9]).
3. Government support — city, county, state, and federal appropriations, plus dedicated grants (New York, for example, funds a Zoos, Botanical Gardens and Aquaria operational support program) [14].

For AZA-accredited zoos, government money typically supplies 25–40% of the operating budget, though across the sector the range runs from roughly 5% to 50% [13]. The Maryland Zoo draws ~45% from the state; the Minnesota Zoo about a third [13].

The metrics that matter for this specific industry:

• Attendance and per-capita ("per-cap") spend. Revenue = visitors × what each spends at the gate, on food, and in the shop. As a public benchmark, United Parks earned about $78.54 per visitor in 2025 (roughly half admission, half in-park) [3], though individual facilities vary enormously by mission, geography, and subsidy. Institutions increasingly use airline-style dynamic pricing — the Monterey Bay Aquarium lifted adult admission from ~$60 to $65 and individual membership from $95 to $125 in 2024 — to raise per-cap without chasing off families [15].
• Membership base. Prepaid annual memberships are the sector's recurring revenue and its recession cushion: they smooth cash flow, pre-sell repeat visits, and convert casual visitors into donors.
• Cost structure is heavy and fixed. Payroll dominates — the Minnesota Zoo runs ~68% of its budget on personnel [13] — and animals must be fed, housed, and given veterinary care whether or not anyone comes through the gate. Utilities, insurance, security, compliance, and habitat maintenance run on regardless. That fixed-cost load creates operating leverage in strong years but is why the 2020 shutdowns were near-fatal for many institutions.
• Capital intensity. New habitats, filtration systems, and greenhouses cost tens of millions and depreciate slowly; deferred maintenance is a chronic strain.

For-profit operators emphasize attendance, revenue per visitor, operating days, labor productivity, and cash flow after capital spending; nonprofits add donor retention, grant restrictions, endowment support, and the share of expenses covered by earned revenue. Botanical gardens carry the same model with a friendlier cost base — no round-the-clock animal care — which helps explain their faster attendance growth and their embrace of high-margin add-ons like ticketed nighttime light shows [2].

6. What drives demand

• Household discretionary income and leisure spending. These are family day-out purchases; when budgets tighten, visits and memberships are among the first cuts.
• Family demographics and tourism. Households with young children, drive-to leisure, and inbound travel to a metro drive gate volume; zoos and gardens are staples of the local tourism menu.
• Weather and seasonality. Outdoor attractions live and die by good-weather days; a rainy spring can dent a whole year, and off-season cash generation is weak.
• "New attraction" pull. A panda arrival, a baby-animal season, or a blockbuster orchid or dinosaur exhibit reliably spikes attendance and membership.
• School and education demand. Field trips and K-12 programs anchor weekday attendance; APGA gardens alone educate several million schoolchildren a year [2].
• Seasonal events. Light shows, festivals, and behind-the-scenes experiences increasingly extend the calendar and lift per-cap.
• Philanthropy and public budgets. Donor generosity, corporate sponsorship, and municipal fiscal health set the ceiling on the non-earned two-thirds of the model. Accreditation adds credibility that helps with donors, partners, and school bookings.

7. Regulation

• Animal Welfare Act (AWA), enforced by USDA APHIS. Every facility exhibiting warm-blooded animals must hold a Class C exhibitor license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, meet minimum housing/feeding/veterinary standards (9 CFR Part 3), keep records, and submit to unannounced inspections. Licenses now run three-year terms for a flat fee [16]. (USDA = U.S. Department of Agriculture; APHIS = Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.)
• Endangered Species Act (ESA), administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Activity involving listed species — imports, exports, interstate commerce, breeding, or acquisition — can require federal permits [19].
• Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), administered by NOAA Fisheries. Importing marine mammals or taking them from the wild generally requires a permit; maintaining them in an eligible public-display facility does not, by itself, require a separate display permit [20]. (NOAA = National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
• Trade and species law. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the Lacey Act govern which species can be held, moved, bred, or acquired.
• Botanical-garden-specific rules. Plant-focused institutions face far less animal regulation but must comply with USDA plant-import and invasive-species controls, CITES for protected plants, and the Lacey Act.
• State and local layer. Zoning, construction, fire safety, water use, food service, public health, accessibility, animal handling, and emergency response; government-owned institutions also face public-agency budgeting and transparency rules.
• AZA accreditation is voluntary and separate from the law. Of roughly 2,800 USDA-licensed exhibitors, fewer than 10% are AZA-accredited [17]. Accreditation is a five-year cycle judging animal and veterinary care, safety, finances, governance, and conservation — a quality mark and a gate to breeding cooperatives and partnerships, not a legal requirement [17].

Regulation is both a cost and a competitive barrier: a strong compliance record supports trust and financing, while a single animal-welfare incident can hit attendance, fundraising, permits, and financing at once.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

By federal concentration measures the industry is highly fragmented: the top four firms hold just 15.2% of surveyed receipts, the top eight 21.8%, the top twenty 36%, and the top fifty 58.5%, with an HHI of only 123 — well inside the range regulators consider unconcentrated [7].

That fragmentation is structural. These are place-based institutions; you cannot merge two zoos the way you merge two banks, and most are nonprofits or government units that no one can buy. Competition is local first, national second — a facility competes for a regional audience, school groups, tourists, and donors. So the contest that matters is not for national market share but for three scarcer things:

1. The leisure dollar — versus theme parks, streaming, sports, and every other family outing.
2. The donor dollar and public appropriation — the non-earned majority of the budget.
3. Iconic collections and location — the real moats: a panda loan, a great aquarium tank, a historic garden, a deep membership base, or a large endowment is hard to replicate.

Scale still helps with marketing and ticketing, procurement, veterinary and conservation expertise, membership and donor systems, exhibit design, and overhead. Where consolidation is happening is the for-profit and outsourced edge: private operators like Herschend, Landry's, and Ripley's are rolling up aquariums, and cash-strapped cities increasingly outsource zoo and garden operations to nonprofits or private managers under P3 contracts [12][18]. Consolidation is far more likely through multi-site nonprofit platforms, P3 agreements, and family-owned groups than through any nationwide zoo chain. Barriers to new entry are high — land, capital, animal-welfare compliance, and permitting. The federal data contain no mergers-and-acquisitions series, so track transactions individually rather than inferring consolidation from the concentration figures alone.

9. Risks

• Discretionary and weather sensitivity. Attendance falls in recessions and bad-weather years — wildfire, hurricanes, extreme heat, poor air quality — straight into a mostly fixed cost base.
• Fixed costs against variable revenue. Animals need care regardless of the gate; the 2020 closures showed how fast that turns into an existential cash crisis, and high seasonality weakens off-season cash generation.
• Incomplete post-pandemic recovery. Barely half of U.S. museums, zoos, and science centers had returned to pre-COVID attendance by the mid-2020s [15].
• Rising input costs. Labor and wage inflation, plus feed, veterinary, utility, insurance, and construction costs.
• Government-funding and donor risk. Municipal and state budget stress can cut a quarter-to-half of many institutions' revenue [13]; nonprofits also face fundraising weakness and donor concentration.
• Capital and deferred-maintenance overhang. Aging habitats and infrastructure demand large, lumpy reinvestment.
• Reputational and animal-welfare pressure. Activist campaigns and shifting sentiment — the "Blackfish" backlash against SeaWorld, debates over elephants and cetaceans in captivity — can force costly changes to what may be exhibited; permit and species-transfer rules can tighten.
• Biosecurity and climate. Avian influenza has forced bird collections indoors; extreme heat, storms, and drought threaten both animals and living plant collections.
• Liability and, for public operators, leverage. Animal escapes and visitor injuries carry safety and insurance exposure; listed operators also carry refinancing risk.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes. There is no clean one. The practical listed set is United Parks & Resorts (PRKS), Parks! America (OTCQX: PRKA), and the broader Six Flags (FUN) — all mixed amusement/attraction businesses, so an investor gets theme-park economics with an animal-collection overlay, not zoo or garden economics [3][4][5]. The relevant questions: Is attendance growing without heavy discounting? Is revenue per visitor rising? Is in-park spending offsetting softer attendance? Are memberships renewing? Is capital spending maintaining the asset or just adding rides? Are labor, insurance, and animal-care costs contained? Is debt survivable through a weak-attendance year? Normalize valuation for weather, closures, and unusual exhibit spending. Enterprise value (EV = equity value plus debt minus cash) against normalized EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) is the usual frame — but EBITDA overstates cash generation when big habitat or infrastructure projects loom.

Private routes. This is where the genuine equity lives — and it is not open to everyone:

• For-profit aquarium and attraction operators (Herschend, Landry's, Ripley's, Zoofari) are privately held; exposure requires private-market access [12][21].
• Public-private operating contracts (P3s) let private managers run public institutions — a business-services angle rather than owning the assets [18].
• Municipal bonds frequently finance zoo and garden capital projects, offering fixed-income exposure to specific institutions' expansions.
• Philanthropy and membership remain the primary — and for most people the only — way to "participate": you fund the mission, you don't hold equity.

Private underwriting should focus on the facility, not the NAICS label — multi-year attendance and membership trends, revenue per visitor, donor concentration and grant restrictions, land and lease/contract terms, deferred maintenance, USDA inspection history, collection and veterinary health, and the governance alignment between owner, operator, and mission entity.

Near-term outlook (forward-looking judgment). Cautiously constructive but highly selective. Demand for family nature experiences is durable and only mildly cyclical, but the model is under real cost pressure: labor and animal-care costs are rising, attendance is not fully recovered, and deferred capital is mounting. Expect institutions to keep leaning on dynamic pricing, premium experiences, and membership to lift per-cap, and expect the P3-outsourcing trend to continue as cities offload operating burdens. Botanical gardens look like the sector's bright spot — cheaper to run than animal collections, with attendance up sharply since 2014 and event-driven revenue (light shows, festivals) growing fast [2]. Established facilities with strong locations, differentiated collections, recurring memberships, credible conservation programs, and adequate capital are best placed; the weaker assets are seasonal, maintenance-starved, or dependent on a single subsidy or donor. The conservation mission is moving from marketing to core identity — AZA members channel about $160 million a year into wildlife conservation across 2,650+ projects in 130 countries [1] — an increasingly load-bearing part of why donors, governments, and visitors keep showing up.

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Sources

1. Association of Zoos and Aquariums, "Zoo and Aquarium Statistics," economic-impact release, and conservation-funding release (2022–2026) — 200M+ visitors, $22.5B+ economic activity, ~198,000 jobs, $160M/yr conservation. https://www.aza.org/zoo-and-aquarium-statistics; https://www.aza.org/aza-news-releases/posts/aza-zoos-and-aquariums-contribute-24-billion-to-us-economy-; https://www.aza.org/aza-news-releases/posts/aza-accredited-zoos-and-aquariums-generate-160-million-annually-for-wildlife-conservation-
2. American Public Gardens Association, "Benchmarking" (600 gardens; ~132M visitors, up from ~70M in 2014). https://www.publicgardens.org/benchmarking/
3. United Parks & Resorts Inc., 2025 Form 10-K (SEC EDGAR) and "Corporate Name Change" (per-visitor revenue, visits, name change from SeaWorld). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1564902/000119312526088288/prks-20251231.htm; https://unitedparks.com/media/press-releases/corporate-name-change/
4. Parks! America, Inc., 2024 Form 10-K (SEC EDGAR) and OTCQX listing. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1297937/000149315224049988/form10-k.htm; https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/otc-markets-group-welcomes-parks-america-inc-otcqx-2025-05-02
5. Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, 2025 Form 10-K (SEC EDGAR) and "Six Flags Discovery Kingdom." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1999001/000199900126000048/fun-20251231.htm; https://www.sixflags.com/discoverykingdom
6. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, NAICS 712130 (2023) — establishments, employment, annual and first-quarter payroll (via Histometrics ingested federal statistics). https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
7. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Concentration statistics, NAICS 712130 — receipts, firm count, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI (via Histometrics ingested federal statistics). https://api.census.gov/data/2022/ecnsize/groups/EC2200SIZECONCEN.html
8. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards, NAICS 712130 ($34 million in receipts) (2023) (via Histometrics ingested federal statistics). https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
9. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, 2023 Form 990 / ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer and "About" — total revenue and net assets. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/951648219; https://sandiegozoowildlifealliance.org/about-us/about-san-diego-zoo-wildlife-alliance
10. Wildlife Conservation Society, "Financials" and "Parks" (Bronx Zoo and NYC parks/aquarium). https://www.wcs.org/about-us/financials; https://www.wcs.org/parks
11. Reference for Business, "SIC 8422 Arboreta and Botanical or Zoological Gardens" (ownership breakdown). https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/industries/Service/Arboreta-Botanical-or-Zoological-Gardens.html
12. For-profit aquarium/attraction operators — Herschend (Adventure Aquarium, Callaway Resort & Gardens), Landry's (Downtown Aquariums), Ripley's Entertainment — company and industry reporting (2020–2026). https://www.hfecorp.com/; https://www.callawaygardens.com/the-gardens/about/callaway-roots/our-growth/
13. AZA "Conservation Funding"; Maryland Department of Commerce, "Economic Impact of the Maryland Zoo"; Minnesota Zoological Garden Biennial Budget (revenue-mix and cost-structure figures). https://www.aza.org/conservation-funding; https://commerce.maryland.gov/documents/researchdocument/economicimpactofthemarylandzooinbaltimore.pdf; https://mn.gov/mmb-stat/documents/budget/2024-25-biennial-budget-books/base-budget-november/minnesota-zoological-garden.pdf
14. New York State Parks & Historic Sites, "Zoos, Botanical Gardens and Aquaria Operational Support Grant Program." https://parks.ny.gov/grants/zoos-botanical-gardens/default.aspx
15. NBC News, "Museums, zoos and aquariums are embracing dynamic pricing" (2024) — pricing, membership increases, attendance recovery. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/museums-zoos-aquariums-are-embracing-dynamic-pricing-rcna210877
16. USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, "Licensing and Registration Under the Animal Welfare Act" and AWA inspection reports. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/awa/licensing-rule; https://www.aphis.usda.gov/awa/annual-inspection-reports
17. Association of Zoos and Aquariums, "Accreditation FAQs" (fewer than 10% of ~2,800 USDA-licensed exhibitors are AZA-accredited; five-year cycle). https://www.aza.org/accred-faq
18. Fort Worth Report, "Two years after nonprofit takeover, Fort Worth Botanic Garden boasts higher visitor numbers and less city funding" (2022). https://fortworthreport.org/2022/07/05/two-years-after-nonprofit-takeover-fort-worth-botanic-garden-boasts-higher-visitor-numbers-and-less-city-funding/
19. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "Endangered Species Permits: Frequently Asked Questions." https://www.fws.gov/page/endangered-species-permits-frequently-asked-questions
20. NOAA Fisheries, "Public Display of Marine Mammals" (Marine Mammal Protection Act). https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/permits/public-display-marine-mammals
21. Zoofari Parks, "About Us." https://www.zoofariparks.com/about
22. Zoo New England, "About Us" (Franklin Park Zoo, Stone Zoo). https://www.zoonewengland.org/about-us/
23. New York Botanical Garden, Amended Form 990 TY23. https://www.nybg.org/content/uploads/2025/07/New-York-Botanical-Garden-Amended-990-TY23-PD.pdf
24. U.S. Census Bureau, "NAICS 2022 Definition: 712130 — Zoos and Botanical Gardens." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=712130&year=2022
25. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns" coverage notes and "2023 Nonemployer Statistics." https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/about.html; https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2023-nonemployer-statistics.html
26. Georgia Aquarium and CauseIQ, "Zoos & Aquariums nonprofits in the U.S." (largest operators by revenue). https://www.georgiaaquarium.org/; https://www.causeiq.com/directory/zoos-and-aquariums-list/
27. Smithsonian Institution, "About the Smithsonian" (Smithsonian's National Zoo). https://www.si.edu/about/