The Toledo Zoo, America’s most complete
zoo
The words Toledo Museum of Science are etched into the facade above the
entrance to the massive brick and stone building at the Toledo Zoo. The museum was built by the Works
Progress Administration (WPA) between 1934 and 1937, and it was one of the
factors that led me to Toledo. Museums, as I had come to appreciate in Sioux
Falls, can be a powerful tool in the conservation message of zoos, especially when
live animal exhibits are interspersed with the static displays. In the Diversity
of Life section of the Toledo museum, for example, live animals ranged from
naked mole rats to fruit bats to koalas, while in the main hall, we regularly
developed temporary displays of insects, robotic dinosaurs and other subjects.
It was because of this unique museum, along with the aquarium and greenhouses,
that Toledo called itself “America’s most complete zoo”.
One of my first projects as the
zoo’s deputy director was the $3 million Kingdom of the Apes that
opened in 1993. Toledo had an impressive collection of great apes that included
chimpanzees, orangutans, and two families of gorillas. They lived in a
symmetrical, rectangular, 1970’s era facility with each of the four groups housed
in a section that consisted of off-exhibit holding cages, a small, indoor,
glass-fronted dayroom, and a slightly larger open-air outdoor space with a
concrete floor. No animals had access to grass. The renovation would improve
the holding cages; add an 18,000 square foot outdoor gorilla meadow;
and an indoor, three-story dayroom. The
old outdoor spaces would have a tall, cage-structure added to increase the
vertical space, and grass would be planted to replace the concrete floor. It
was a remarkable transformation, both visually and from the standpoint of the
animals’ quality of life.
Another memorable project for
which quality of life for the animals would be key was the Arctic Encounter, my
last project in Toledo. The goal of this exhibit, according to my notes, was
“to set a new standard in the captive management of Polar Bears and other
Arctic animals”. We also decided that the overall interpretive message was to
be that “the exhibit is designed for the animals”.
The planning process was
extensive, beginning in December 1996 and continuing until construction began
in early 1998, and included visits to similar facilities at zoos in
Indianapolis, North Carolina, and San Diego. I was also fortunate to visit
Churchill, Manitoba in July 1997, where I observed polar bears, Arctic fox,
beluga whales, ptarmigan, yellow legs, and swarms of mosquitos.
After all the research, a plan
began to develop. We had concerns over stereotypic animal behavior. We talked
about the sizes of both pool and land space. We debated fences, water quality,
and animal holding areas. We knew we wanted the bears and the seals visually
linked. And we knew we had to stick to our original purpose of promoting the
well-being of the animals while providing a quality viewing experience for our
guests and, by the time it opened in early 2000, I believe we achieved that.
The polar bears had nearly four thousand square feet of quality land space and
a 90,000 gallon chilled, salt-water pool. They had an air conditioned
cave they could retreat to in hot weather and a “blow-hole” area that had small
holes in the floor of their exhibit allowing them to smell the seals from next
door that swam underneath.
The First 100 Years
The Toledo Zoo was founded in
July 1900 with an unlikely first animal – a woodchuck. That meant the year 2000
was the zoo’s Centennial. A look back at the history of the zoo for our
Centennial was both fascinating and sobering. Many of the conditions for the
animals in those early years were appalling. Cages were small and animals were
treated as objects of amusement. As zoos became more popular, significant
buildings were built. In the 1920’s, for example, the Toledo carnivore and
elephant buildings were constructed. But it was the 1930’s Works Progress
Administration (WPA) era really put the Toledo Zoo on the map. It was one of
the most remarkable transformations of any zoo in the country, and it was the
result of good timing, good planning, and good luck.
After the stock market crash of
1929 and the massive unemployment that followed, the federal government was
offering relief in the form of monetary support to projects that could put
people back to work. The Toledo Zoo, as it happened, had a building plan that
was already underway, or shovel-ready in modern parlance. Once the federal
funds began to flow into the zoo, the projects took off. The list was impressive
and many of the facilities are still in use today.
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| Carnivore Cafe |
The reptile house, the bird
house, the museum, the amphitheater, and the aquarium all had special
architecture, including priceless sculptures. It would have been impossible to
think of moving the zoo to open spaces outside of town as other zoos were
doing. Instead, the zoo would remain where it was and the buildings would be
renovated to modern standards. The bird house,
for example, was gutted and reopened in January 1998 as an award winning
facility that was still suitable for its original purpose as a bird house. If
buildings could not be renovated for the animals, they were repurposed. The old
carnivore building (or lion house) became the Carnivore Café in 1993 and the
old elephant building was turned into a meeting and rental facility known as
the Lodge.
Training, Enrichment, and Animal Welfare
It was during my time in Toledo
that we began to focus on a program of animal training, enrichment, and
welfare. Zoo managers around the word were taking an interest in something we
had long-known but done little about – the psychological well-being of our
animals.
When zoos began to take animals
out of cages twenty years earlier and place them in naturalistic areas, the
illusion was for the benefit of the public, not necessarily the animals. In
fact, if we looked at some of these large, glass-topped jungle-type exhibits
with all of the plants stripped out, the space for the animals was appallingly
small. At Toledo, we tried to rectify that with facilities like the Arctic
Encounter, but how do you replicate hundreds of square miles of Arctic tundra?
One way is to focus on other ways of enriching the lives of the animals. At the
same time we wanted to encourage the animals to submit to certain activities
voluntarily by training them to do so. To accomplish that, we turned to marine
mammal trainers who had been using positive reinforcement techniques for
decades.
The Toledo Zoo began its training
and enrichment program in the early 1990’s with the development of the Kingdom
of the Apes. We wanted to train the animals to come and go on cue and we were
hopeful that they might voluntarily submit to certain routine medical
procedures. We hired a team of consultants to come in and work with our
zookeepers, and they soon had gorillas trained to lean against the front of the
cage, submitting to injections in exchange for a food reward, and they were
fanning out into other areas of the zoo. Everything from rhinos to crocodiles,
it seemed, could be trained at some level. The program was so successful and
transformative, the zoo decided to hire a full-time animal behavior coordinator
in 1999.
Today, animal training, animal
enrichment, and animal welfare are stated requirements in accreditation
standards for zoos worldwide. But what does animal welfare mean? Can we provide
an enriched and humane captive environment for all non-human animals? Or do we
need to devise a different ethical standard for some animals, standards that
may mean we should not keep them in captivity at all? I wish I knew all the answers.
I am not sure what to make of this. It is
the most significant and far-reaching animal welfare announcement in years. SeaWorld and the Humane Society of theUnited States (HSUS) are now partners, “working together as advocates and educators for the
ocean and its animals”. The partnership follows Seaworld's decision to end its orca breeding program.
