America’s AI hunger has reached the Nashville Zoo and its endangered animals may be the ones to pay the price

More than 3,700 furry and feathered residents of the Nashville Zoo are on the verge of getting a new, and unwelcome, neighbor—a data center a little bit bigger than a football field. In staunchly pro-development Tennessee, the data center plan spearheaded by Atlanta-based DC BLOX is drawing widespread criticism because of its potential size and location. The initial data center facility will span 69,000 square feet with plans for an additional building to be built later on that would span 261,000 square feet—all next to one of the country’s most acclaimed wildlife institutions and conservation hubs. DC BLOX says the data center is essential to meeting the digital needs of central Tennessee. However, the nonprofit zoo has said it is concerned about how the data center will affect its 350 different species of animals, many of which are a protected species. The zoo, which opened in its current location in 1997, hosts a successful breeding program for the endangered clouded leopard. It also houses rare species like the Amur leopard, of which fewer than 200 remain in the wild. Courtesy of the Nashville Zoo The zoo is not yet rolling over in the fight against the data center development. A spokesperson told Fortune that its land use attorney has filed a zoning appeal with the city with hopes to overturn the permits filed by the company behind the data center. The zoo is also working with an environmental rights lawyer to see if it can take any legal action regarding the protected species it houses. A petition the zoo started earlier this month to protest the data center plans has also collected more than 533,700 signatures as of Monday afternoon. “How are we to know this new data center will not lead to irreversible damage to the animals we exist to protect?” the petition reads. Stars take sides The zoo’s fight against the proposed data center has attracted the support of celebrities like country music star Brad Paisley, whose wife, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, previously s