Roseate spoonbills are colonial nesting birds with breeding grounds extending from the United States Gulf coast to the pampas of Argentina. The U.S. population suffered a severe bottleneck from 1890 to 1920. The population's recovery was slow and partially credited to migrations from Mexican rookeries, but a gene pool reduction would be expected. Five polymorphic Spoonbill autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) loci [three (GAT)n, one (AAAG)n and one (GT)n] and one Z/W-linked microsatellite exhibiting sex-specific dimorphism were isolated and characterized. The Z/W-linked STR locus accurately confirmed the sex of each bird. Allelic profiles for 51 spoonbills obtained from Dallas (Texas), Fort Worth (Texas) and Sedgwick County (Kansas) zoos revealed a non-continuous distribution of allele frequencies, consistent with the effects of a population bottleneck. Allelic frequencies also differed significantly between the isolated zoo populations. Although extra-pair copulations were suspected and difficult to document, zoos commonly used observational studies of mating pairs to determine familial relationships among adults and offspring. STR parentage analysis of recorded family relationships excluded one or both parents in 10/25 cases studied and it was further possible to identify alternative likely parents in each case. Mistaken familial relationships quickly lead to the loss of genetic variability in captive populations. Here, a decreased heterozygosity (HO) in 2nd generation captive-bred birds was observed at 3 out of 4 loci evaluated. Although these results could not be statistically validated because of the small number of individuals available for study (15 wild birds with no offspring vs. eight 2nd generation captive birds), they are considered biologically important, as decreased HO is an indicator of inbreeding and this apparent decrease occurred within two generations of removal from the wild. Collectively, the evidence obtained from this study suggests that captive spoonbill populations are experiencing rapid loss of diversity from an already depleted wild gene pool.