SF Zoo: Improvement Requires a Candid Assessment

2011 was the last time we commented about the San Francisco Zoo. The post was about the 2007 incident where an escaped tiger mauled a young man to death and injured two of his friends. Police killed the tiger, and the two injured young men received a $900,000 settlement from the Zoo. Although they taunted the animal into an enraged state, they were not held responsible because the Zoo's tiger enclosure wasn't 100% secure.

The grizzly was caught on video entering the zookeeper's area

Recent investigations into the Zoo's policies and procedures have uncovered incidents that could have resulted in more tragedies but luckily didn't. The most dangerous was one involving a grizzly bear.

One Saturday morning last May, a keeper at the San Francisco Zoo heard footsteps behind him in the grizzly bear grotto. Believing it was a co-worker, he turned, only to see the hulking brown form of Kiona. He thought he’d safely locked her in her den, but the door, which is operated from an adjoining room, had an unusual feature: Its lock could be fastened even without the door being securely closed.

The zookeeper began to run, and with Kiona in pursuit, he circled the grotto, according to people familiar with his account. He then sprinted through the door into the keeper area, according to surveillance video. When Kiona stopped briefly, the keeper escaped through a gate and closed it behind him.

At that point, the almost 500-pound grizzly ambled into the keeper area and was separated from the public by a gate, a regular door and a chain-link barrier, said Travis Shields, then the assistant curator of the zoo’s carnivores department, which includes the bears. Shields was away at the time but was briefed by workers who were involved or listening on the radio.

Zoo employees who came to the keeper’s aid found him in a panic and the grizzly roaming the keeper area, Shields said. The zookeepers managed to coax Kiona into her other outdoor habitat and locked the doors.

It's healthy that the San Francisco Zoo is undergoing an audit. It will need substantial improvements in public safety and animal welfare before the pandas come. From April of this year:

“San Francisco is absolutely thrilled that we will be welcoming giant pandas to our San Francisco Zoo,” Breed said in a statement Thursday from Beijing, where she signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese wildlife officials regarding the panda plan.

No timeline was given for the pandas’ arrival. The announcement said it depended on the completion of an enclosure for the animals at the zoo. The number of pandas was also not specified, though pandas often have been sent in pairs...

Owned by the city, the zoo is run by the nonprofit San Francisco Zoological Society. In addition to the estimated $1 million annual price tag to rent the pandas, it could cost an estimated $25 million to build housing for them at San Francisco Zoo, Peterson told ABC News in February. That would be on top of the cost of maintenance and upgrades needed for the facility’s aging structures, some of which date to the 1930s.

Oakland Zoo

Diana, 44, seems to like being hosed down.

After nearly 50 years of living in the Bay Area I visited the Oakland Zoo for the first time.

The initial impression was favorable.

The Zoo looks well-designed and well-maintained. Wherever we wandered on the 100-acre property a staff member or volunteer was always in sight. On a Wednesday afternoon most of the customers were families with children.

It needs to be mentioned that the Zoo is in the Oakland hills. The Zoo is close to regional parks and golf courses; it's only ten miles from crime-ridden downtown Oakland, but it may as well be in a different world.

Though we (try to) exercise regularly, we had enough after a couple of hours in the 88°F heat and the hilly terrain. In contrast we have spent the entire day in the flat, cool, sometimes foggy environment of the San Francisco Zoo.

We wanted to see more, so we upgraded to an annual family membership. We'll come back in the fall.

A Fun Saturday Back in the 1950's

The banyan will also be there after I'm gone.

My parents often took me to the Honolulu Zoo. By the standards of today the Zoo was primitive, but it did have the basic bigs: lions, tigers, giraffes, seals, rhinos, gorillas, and elephants.

The hippos were usually submerged, and it was a treat to catch one of them in full view. I also liked to stare at the Galápagos tortoise, who, when they did move, moved with a slowness that was excruciating to a hyperactive child. The tortoise, like the redwood trees in California, would be there after I grew old and died.

One of my favorite things to do was to feed peanuts to the bears--yes, feeding was permitted. The bears would sit upright and wave their right front paw in a human-like gesture. I needed to make a long (for a 7-year-old) accurate throw to hit the bear in the chest, else the peanuts would fall into a pond, be snatched by a pigeon, or tumble into the moat surrounding the enclosure.

If I behaved, at the end of our excursion Mom would buy me a strawberry shaved ice, then use the exit-only revolving gate (now gone) by the concession stand to go to the car.

And that, kids, was a fun Saturday back in the 1950's.

Afternoon in the Sun

Gibbon exhibit: decline and fall not apparent

The youngster said he wanted to check out the Honolulu Zoo.

Later I discovered that he was looking for virtual animals, not real ones. The Zoo has rare Pokémon used in the augmented-reality Pokémon GO game, which seems to have gotten a second wind.

While the youngster was off looking for fake creatures, I enjoyed meandering about looking at the real ones. The Zoo seemed a lot smaller than I had remembered it; not only are childhood memories different from adult perceptions, but everything in Hawaii seems smaller once one has lived on the Mainland. The animal enclosures were much improved over the simple fences and cages of 60 years ago.

After finding the animals we were looking for, we both got shaved ice, the perfect Hawaiian ending to an afternoon in the sun.