As she faced a difficult election and low approval ratings last spring, Mayor London Breed tried to pull of a political and public-relations coup: She announced a deal with China to bring two giant pandas to the SF Zoo.
Tech moguls and corporations would fund the $25 million the Zoo estimated it would cost to build appropriate habitats for the endangered animals. That effort has fallen flat.
And now the Breed is leaving office, the plan might not go anywhere anyway.
But in the process, animal rights advocates have been scrutinizing the privatized Zoo, which since 1993 has been run by the SF Zoological Society under a contract with the Recreation and Parks Department. What they have found is alarming: Not only is the Zoo profoundly unprepared to handle two Pandas; the entire place is a mismanaged mess.
We got a hint of that in 2008, when a tiger named Tatiana escaped from her enclosure, killed a Zoo patron, and then was shot and killed by police. There was, as the Bay Guardian reported at the time, no excuse; the tiger enclosure wasn’t up to national zoo standards, and senior staff knew or should have known that an alpha predator was capable of getting out.
The Board of Supes Government Audit and Oversight Committee will consider Thursday/5 a resolution by Sups. Ahsha Safai and Myrna Melger asking the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office to conduct a performance audit of the SF Zoo. That’s a pretty routine request, and I’m sure it will pass.
An. Oct. 10 report from the Joint Zoo/Recreation and Parks Commission Animal Welfare Advisors is anything but routine.
The report, included in the committee packet, suggests not only that the Zoo has no businesses trying to bring in pandas; it has no business operating the way it does, and the way it has for decades.
From the report:
Many of the Zoo’s enclosures are extremely outdated and fail to meet the criteria outlined above from an animal welfare perspective. Parts of the Zoo are best described as dilapidated. It looks like an institution that needs a comprehensive strategic re-design plan to modernize the habitats. From a visitor’s perspective, it is uninspiring. For example, we had difficulty locating the lone lion hiding under a concrete table in a WPA-era habitat (90 years old). The safety measures to meet the AZA and USDA enclosure requirements are minimal and even more frightening—unsafe for the animals and visitors.
The detailed are devastating:
[The langur] exhibit was meant to be temporary until a proper habitat was built. The langur enclosure is a series of chain-link cages with metal bars and doors to move from one side of the cage to another. The cages are imposing and dreadful, making it difficult to see the animals. Even 5 though the langurs moved about the cages as the enrichment staff hid food, the habitat is a jail from a visitor’s perspective. Zoo staff report the cages are also crawling with rodents, posing health risks for the langurs.
More:
For years, the kangaroo’s habitat has lacked running water. Keepers must carry buckets of water for the animals every morning and evening.
The gorilla habitat moat area backs up and fills with water during heavy rainfall. The koala habitat can only hold one koala at a time. Currently, the zoo has three Koalas, which means two cannot go outside daily. If it’s not warm enough, no one goes outside; instead, they sit in a small, enclosed room with a window. The orangutan yards reside in a 100-year-old circular concrete circle that’s 10×10 and has just a three-level platform. The Przewalski horses’ habitat is an old, dilapidated holding area. The Zoo was unwilling to plan for them properly; they wanted to fill a space. The Pygmy Hippo has an extra-large elevated human hot tub that was put inside his indoor holding without planning. His outdoor pool has no heater. They are a western African species that live in a warm and humid climate, not San Francisco temperatures The black rhino exhibit remains completely unrenovated year after year. When there is a viable option to double the habitat size for the current rhino that resides there. It would be a simple fence work project to double that area. The old sandbox that the Indian rhino lives in a small rectangle with just sand and a pool. The langurs live in an old concrete chain-link box. They have nothing natural in their habitat/cages leading to depression. The Mandrill night house is also falling apart and way too small for the ever-growing family there. Again, they could’ve turned the empty yard next to them and tripled their space if they planned and invested in retrofitting the available empty yard. Instead, they placed a solo grey fox in the huge habitat.
On the Breed panda plan:
The zoo is also not financially prepared to accept these animals. Recently, the Ahtari Zoo in Finland announced they are returning their giant panda couple eight years before the end of the contract due to the extreme cost to host them, and the Edinburgh Zoo decided not to renew its panda contract for the same reason. This shows the huge challenge and the financial issues zoos face when hosting giant pandas. We understand that the mayor and the zoo CEO have their fundraising plan to bring pandas to San Francisco. However, a zoo cannot rely only on donations to raise giant pandas. This is not sustainable. The costs to host these bears are excessively high and permanent. Giant pandas are rare and extremely sensitive animals that demand highly specialized care, qualified and experienced staff, tons of fresh bamboo and bamboo shoots, and substantial financial support. The donations may allow the construction of the panda house, but they will not guarantee that the pandas’ expensive demands will be met throughout their stay in San Francisco. In conclusion, we think the San Francisco Zoo is in a poor position to host giant pandas. Other more relevant issues need to be addressed, and a lot of work must be done to improve the zoo’s standards before taking on this risky challenge. Incidents with these pandas, like the ones that had already happened at the zoo, resulting in animal deaths, could cause an international crisis and worldwide anger, just like it happened with the Memphis Zoo.
When the new mayor and the new Board of Supes take office next year, they’ll get a more detailed, and probably even more damning, report about conditions at the SF Zoo. It might be time to reconsider the deal that gave the private Zoological Society, whose director makes $320,000 a year, control over 100 acres of city land and the fragile, often endangered animals that inhabit the area.
