The Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. serves as the backdrop for this look at captive breeding as a conservation tool. Zoo scientists work to breed endangered species with the explicit goal of reintroducing offspring back into the wild, part of the institution's stated mission to conserve wildlife and habitats through research. The film moves through the zoo's grounds and behind-the-scenes facilities, showing keepers and researchers at work with animals that count among the zoo's best-known residents. Produced for public television by Great Museums TV, the special stays close to its central claim: that a zoo can function as more than a place to view animals, acting instead as a working link between a captive population and a species' survival outside the fence line. It offers a plain, institutional account of that process rather than a dramatized one, following the breeding and release effort as the zoo itself describes it.