Founded in 1952, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is widely recognized throughout the world as a model institution for innovative presentation and interpretation of native plants and animals featured together in ecological exhibits. The Museum is regularly listed as one of the top ten zoological parks in the world because of its unique approach in interpreting the complete natural history of a single region, the Sonoran Desert, and adjacent ecosystems. This represents a significant achievement, as the Museum's collections and size are smaller than many of its counterparts. Not a "museum" in the usual sense, it is an unparalleled composite of plant, animal, and geologic collections with the goal of making the Sonoran Desert accessible, understandable, and treasured.