An education center that happens to hold animals

Las Vegas Reptile Zoo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Las Vegas, Nevada. The collection is reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates, and every animal in it is a permanent resident.

The distinction that matters is what the animals are for. They are not stock and they are not a display. Each one is here to make a specific point about the pet trade, habitat loss, disease or captive breeding, and the whole place is built around making those points land with somebody who walked in for a nice afternoon.

Protect, educate, conserve, and what each one commits us to

Mission statements are easy to write and hard to be held to. Here is what ours means in practice, so you can check whether we are doing it.

Protect

We provide permanent, species-appropriate care for reptiles and other animals that have been surrendered, displaced, or cannot be returned to the wild. Every animal in our care is provided a safe and secure environment designed to support its long-term health and well-being.

Educate

Through educational programs and meaningful animal encounters, we help people better understand reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. Our goal is to replace fear and misinformation with knowledge, appreciation and respect for these remarkable animals.

Conserve

We support conservation through responsible captive management, education and breeding programs that promote healthy, sustainable captive populations. By encouraging responsible ownership and increasing public awareness, we strive to help reduce pressures on wild populations.

The animals nobody fundraises for

Reptiles and amphibians are among the most threatened groups of animals in the world and among the least funded. Conservation money follows public feeling, public feeling follows familiarity, and almost nobody grows up feeling warm about a tarantula.

That gap is the whole opportunity. Ten minutes with a Goliath birdeater teaches three things. It very rarely eats birds. The name came from an eighteenth century engraving. Its first response to a threat is to make a noise and run. Nobody walks out of that with the opinions they walked in with.

Changing that opinion is worth more over a lifetime than any single donation, because that person then makes different decisions in a pet shop, in their back yard and at the ballot box.

Meet the animals Read the conservation case

What you can hold us to

On our animals

Permanent residents, not stock

No animal in this collection is for sale. Where an animal's individual history has not been recorded yet, its page says so rather than filling the gap.

On our claims

Verified or marked

We would rather a page read "not recorded yet" than carry a number somebody guessed. Every species fact on this site can be checked, and anything still being confirmed is labeled.

On our money

Open books as they exist

We publish what we have as we have it. A small organization should not be judged for being small, but it should be judged for being unclear.

Transparency and reports

On what we are not

Not a rescue, not an agency

We are an education zoo. For native Nevada wildlife there are agencies with the authority and the permits, and we point people to them rather than pretending otherwise.

Found a reptile?

How this started

Las Vegas Reptile Zoo was founded by Joseph Patinio, who serves as CEO, and is governed by a board of directors. The organization was recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) charity under EIN 33-2811809, which you are welcome to look up.

Meet the board and leadership Transparency and reports

He grew up in Hawaii, where most reptiles and amphibians are prohibited from private ownership, so the animals he wanted to know were the ones he could not have. What he had instead was National Geographic, library books, and parents who let him keep the species that were legal: frogs, newts, turtles and tortoises. He spent his childhood watching and releasing wild green anoles, and hunting Jackson’s chameleons with his father.

At ten he started writing to the Hawaii Department of Agriculture, asking permission to import reptile species. The requests were refused, which was the correct answer and not the point. His grandfather noticed how serious he was and gave him a copy of The Encyclopedia of Reptiles and Amphibians. He still owns it.

He joined the Army at seventeen in 1998 and the Marine Corps in 2002. Stationed at Camp Pendleton in California, he could finally keep and work with the animals he had spent his childhood only reading about. That was when the interest turned technical: genetic morphs, the mechanisms behind color and pattern, selective breeding, and captive propagation as a discipline rather than a hobby.

After the service he returned to Hawaii for a few years, then moved to Las Vegas and founded Sin City Exotics. There he bred a long list of reptile and amphibian species, including rare, endangered and critically endangered ones.

Then the priorities moved. Breeding and genetic diversity stopped being the end of the work and became a means to it, and what he wanted to do with decades of accumulated knowledge was help people understand why any of these animals matter. This zoo is that change of mind, built into a building.

This is more than a zoo. It is a commitment to conservation, education, and the future of wildlife.

Hawaii ended up with a permanent wild population of Jackson’s chameleons because pet keepers released them, inside living memory. He was one of the children hunting them in those hills, which is roughly how a person ends up spending thirty years on the other side of that problem.

The useful things you can actually do

Book a presentation for a school or group, sponsor the care of one animal for a year, offer materials or trade work toward the build, or tell us about a reptile that needs somewhere to go. All of those move this further than a general donation does, though a general donation helps too.

Get involved Meet the people