S.F. Zoo's history of mismanagement

S.F. Zoo's history of mismanagement; morale down under new director

Saturday, December 29, 2007

A koala is kidnapped. Sheep are molested by a human intruder. An
elephant does a headstand on a technician, breaking her pelvis. A
tiger ravages its keeper's arm. A year later, on Christmas Day, the
same feline escapes, kills and gets killed.

This is what life can be like at the San Francisco Zoo, a 78-year-old
institution saddled with a history of mismanagement and scores of
injuries to animals, employees and visitors alike - yet still beloved
by generations of Bay Area residents.

It's almost as if the place is cursed.

Tuesday's attack by Tatiana, a Siberian tiger that broke out of her
yard, fatally mauled a teenager and injured two of his friends before
being shot to death by police, has captured international attention.
From Paris to Beijing, people are asking: How could this happen?

"For the next 50 years, it's what the San Francisco Zoo will be
remembered for," said one high-ranking former employee.

The very public tragedy overshadows decades of problems - and the
troubles of the current zoo administration, which began in February
2004 when Manuel Mollinedo became director of the 100-acre facility.

Almost four years later, attendance has increased, celebrations built
around ethnic holidays have drawn crowds, new arrivals such as
KuneKune pigs have proved popular, and two splashy exhibits - Hearst
Grizzly Gulch and the long-planned African Savanna - have opened.
However, problems have multiplied and employee morale has plummeted.

"It's never been this bad," one worker said.

For this story, Mollinedo declined to talk. "Manuel is not doing
interviews," Lora LaMarca, the zoo's director of marketing and public
relations, said Friday.

The director's tenure has been highly eventful.

Three of the zoo's four elephants have died since March 2004 - two at
the zoo, a third at a Calaveras County sanctuary where it was sent,
broken-down and ailing. The lone survivor still lives there. The fight
over the pachyderms' fate, taken up by the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors and animal rights activists, enraged the national
Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which tabled the zoo's
accreditation for a year.

Puddles, a venerable 44-year-old hippopotamus, died in May, a day
after a move that some employees say was bungled and others say should
never have been made.

This summer, two giant elands, valued at $30,000 apiece, were killed
by their peer soon after all three arrived at the zoo, during a
quarantine that sources say was doomed and mishandled. Two black
swans, introduced with much fanfare in May 2006, also didn't last
long.

A year ago June, some parakeets in the zoo's big summer blockbuster,
Binnowee Landing, tested positive for psittacine beak-and-feather
disease, which is contagious and often fatal to other birds, including
family pets. The zoo knew about the problem but did not warn visitors
until it was reported in the press.

In April 2005, even a grizzly bear naming contest turned into a public
relations nightmare when some zoo officials heavily promoted the event
while others canceled it, preferring to auction the naming rights to
the highest bidder.

Meanwhile, plans were quietly killed for the Great Ape Forest exhibit,
highlighted in a $48 million city bond measure approved by voters in
1997 to upgrade the zoo. And four would-be inhabitants - aging wild-
born chimpanzees- are still living in a concrete grotto while their
handler continues her lonely quest to make sure their rare and
invaluable genes are passed on through breeding.

The chimps' longtime zookeeper, Lisa Hamburger, has occasionally
appeared at monthly meetings of the Joint Zoo Committee, a city panel
that oversees the zoo, to plead her case. As she prepared to speak one
afternoon, Mollinedo got up and walked out of the room.

That kind of behavior is no surprise to Mollinedo's current and former
employees, as well as those who worked under him at the Los Angeles
Zoo, where he was director from 1995 to 2002.

"It would appear that his management style - which downplays the value
of staff and the welfare of animals - remains in place," said a former
worker from the Los Angeles Zoo.

A departed San Francisco Zoo manager concurred.

"It's a top-down mentality that the zoo has adopted," he said. "And I
think it's very dangerous."

Since Mollinedo took over, there has been a steady exodus of
employees, including the deputy director, education director, two
successive public relations managers, development director, curator of
birds, marketing manager, events director, human resources manager,
general manager of concessions and a number of veteran keepers.

Michele Rudovsky, associate curator of hoofstock and pachyderms,
starting working at the zoo as a teenager but quit in August after
more than a quarter-century. Head veterinarian Freeland Dunker also
resigned and will depart in early January for the California Academy
of Sciences.

Most of those who left, sources say, were fed up or pushed out.

"What walked out the door was 200-plus years of incredible animal
experience - and you can't afford that," said former penguin keeper
Jane Tollini, who quit in 2005 after 24 years.

Still, she misses her old life a lot.

"The zoo is my home away from my home," Tollini said. "And I felt like
it was always an honor, every single day, to go to work and feel
accepted by the animals. I could call to one of the lions, one of the
gorillas. There was a recognition; they knew my voice. And the little
kids who'd go, 'I want to be a penguin' - you just hope to God these
kids will get touched, and that they'll look at animals in a different
way."

Nanette Taraya-Vonk was on her way to the zoo Wednesday with her
children when she heard about the attack and headed for the Oakland
Zoo instead.

She summed up the feeling of many patrons when she told The Chronicle:
"I know they're going to get a lot of bad publicity after this, but I
hope people still go to the zoo. You could cross the street and get
hurt. Kids love the zoo."

There's something about the zoo that is magical. It's why many
employees who have left want to remain anonymous when they speak out.
Some hope to return one day - but under a different administration.

Employees characterize the current regime as arrogant, autocratic and
dismissive of those with experience and institutional knowledge.
Keepers, who know the animals and their habitats inside and out, say
they have little input and are not listened to by Mollinedo and Bob
Jenkins, the zoo's director of animal care and conservation. Workers
of every variety fear they're being spied upon and will not speak
publicly, afraid of reprisals. Even before the Christmas rampage,
information was tightly controlled.

For example, a complex lease and management agreement with San
Francisco and the Zoological Society determines how the zoo operates.
The city owns the animals and the zoo, while the private nonprofit
operates and manages everything. Although the public is entitled to
see most information, media requests for routine data have been deemed
"confidential" - requiring calls to the city attorney's office and
public records requests to pry loose.

One ex-employee said worn-down zoo workers would sometimes say: "It
won't change until somebody dies."

On Dec. 22 of last year, 300-pound Tatiana severely injured keeper
Lori Komejan inside the Lion House, "degloving" her arm, as the
state's workplace safety report put it. That agency, Cal/OSHA blamed
the zoo, citing defects that the zoo knew about but hadn't fixed, and
imposed an $18,000 penalty.

Although tiger experts agree that there was no reason to euthanize
Tatiana, Mollinedo described the 4-year-old tiger - a day after her
death - as having been "at the top of her game." A former management
person at the zoo said, "Here you've got a young cat that's testing
her environment - very agile, very strong. A cautious zoo manager
would call other zoos and say, 'How big is your moat?' ... This is
like having Hannibal Lecter. There's a reason they put that mask on
him."

The zoo had reinforced Tatiana's indoor cage after Komejan was mauled
- but the fatal attack Christmas afternoon took place in her outdoor
quarters.

"That place is a whirling dervish," said a onetime keeper. "And it's
ready to spin out of control."

Maybe it already has. The zoo, now grappling with a lawsuit by
Komejan, could be sued by the victims' families, lose its
accreditation, incur heavy fines or even face criminal charges. City
officials are calling for hearings and possible changes in how the zoo
is operated.

And it's not at all clear what might have provoked the attack.

"Animals being taunted was always an issue," an ex-employee said. "But
you should be able to walk down there slathered in raw meat and not
have them get out."

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