Ringling Brothers circus is closing. What does that mean for zoos?

The Famed Ringling Brothers Circus is Closing. The headline caught me by surprise and it made me sad. I knew they had decided to discontinue their elephant act and figured their other animal shows would soon follow. But the other aspects of the circus—the acrobats, the human cannonballs, and the clowns—could continue to thrill audiences. Just look at the popularity of the Cirque du Soleil. But, according to forbes.com, circus attendance in the United States has dropped by an estimated 30% to 50% over the last twenty years. That, along with high operating costs, apparently made the modern circus an unsustainable business.

I suppose the animal rights activists (PETA and HSUS) can take a little credit. They protested and picketed mercilessly on behalf of the animals. And the circus shares the blame for dragging its feet on making improvements to its animal programs. While I am not convinced that circus life in inherently bad for animals, I do believe that circuses failed to recognize how passionately some people feel about animal welfare.

We are, I believe, in the midst of some significant cultural shifts—many of which were evident in the recent presidential election. How do we make sense of our collective feelings about women in politics, gay rights, the legalization of marijuana, immigration policies, and health care reform. Is the demise of the circus a reflection of a cultural shift away from a particular type of entertainment or is it simply a matter of economics—the travelling circus is too expensive to produce.

Over the same period that circuses have been declining zoos appear to have thrived, perhaps due to their aggressive programs of animal welfare and enrichment. Zoos have spent millions on large and innovative animal habitats, and they have made sure their constituents were invested in their programs.

All of this causes me to reflect on how the history of American zoos and circuses are intertwined. The traveling circus menagerie was the precursor to the modern American zoo, and circuses and zoos have coexisted and supported each other for more than a century. (See my blogs from July 2015.) Now, I wonder what the demise of the circus means for zoos. Are zoos doing enough to stave off extinction? In the coming weeks, I'll take a look.

Strange Bedfellows: SeaWorld and HSUS are Partners

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.

I have long been troubled by the keeping of orcas in captivity, so SeaWorld’s announcement that it will end its orca breeding program is welcome news. I suppose the animal rights lobby can claim a victory of sorts. I have always assumed HSUS was part of the consortium of animal rights organizations that opposed zoos, aquariums, and marine parks, but I can find no evidence of that on their website. Their main opposition, it would appear, is the use of animals like elephants, whales, and dolphins as entertainment.

Fortunately, this agreement appears to support what is good about SeaWorld and, by extension, the reputable zoos, aquariums, and marine parks. It includes collaboration and advocacy in the areas of wildlife conservation and the humane treatment of animals.

Nobody, however, should be surprised if HSUS continues to lobby against the practice of keeping whales & dolphins and apes & elephants in captivity at all. It is far better, I suppose, for us to be negotiating these issues as partners rather than as enemies, but I just can’t help but be suspicious that things are not as they appear to be. I am reminded of the apocryphal story about showman, P. T. Barnum.

Early in his career, the story goes, Barnum created an exhibit he called The Happy Family. The remarkable display consisted of a lion, a tiger, a panther, and a lamb all inhabiting the same cage. It was an amazing scene and when asked about his future plans for The Happy Family, he is said to have remarked that he would make it a permanent feature of his shows, “if the supply of lambs holds out”.

The Cecil Effect

People have been writing about "the Cecil effect" for several months, but I only came across the term in a recent article in the online UK news publication telegraph.co.uk written by Peta Thornycroft. I have already given my perspective on the killing of Cecil the lion by an American dentist last year in another blog I publish (On the Killing of Lions), so I am not going to rehash that here. But I am intrigued by the fact that the demise of a single animal is having such a lasting, and controversial, impact. 

Zimbabwe's Wildlife problem

According to Thornycroft, the outcry over the killing of Cecil the lion has caused other big game hunters to stay out of Zimbabwe where, as in many areas of the world, it is the hunters who support the economics of conservation. As a result, Zimbabwe's largest wildlife area, the Bubye Valley Conservancy, has an overpopulation of lions. Bubye's lions are decimating the populations of antelope and even reportedly attacking giraffe, cheetah, leopards, and wild dogs. As the area's top predator, their numbers will continue to expand unchecked unless humans step-in or until the food supply runs out and their own populations crash from starvation.

Contraception is not the answer

Some conservation proponents suggest that contraception is the answer, but this is hardly a workable solution. It would be too expensive and impractical to implement. Stopping breeding in any natural population is hardly the answer to a long-term, healthy population of animals. In the case of the Bubye Valley Conservancy, culling several hundred lions maybe the only solution.

Where are the "Animal Lovers", now?

Where are those animal loving protesters now? All of those people who were outraged, who wrote those angry posts, who picketed that dentist's office and tried to put him out of business. Their actions have placed hundreds of animals at risk. If they want to oppose hunters (and zoos) who support wildlife conservation with millions of dollars every year, they should be willing to step up and put their money where their mouths are.

Birth and Death at the Zoo

The two births at Chehaw WildAnimal Park caught my eye last week – a colobus monkey and an eland antelope. Zoo animal births are not an uncommon occurrence. Hundreds of animals are born at zoos around the world every week. But these two births were special to me because they occurred at my hometown zoo. I can go see these babies.

Unfortunately, deaths also occur at zoos. It is a byproduct of the circle of life. The Oklahoma City Zoo was touched last week by the death of a 37 year old Asian elephant named Chai. According to news reports, the elephant died unexpectedly and was the second to die at the zoo in the past six months. Chai became a bit of a celebrity last year when animal right activists unsuccessfully tried to block her transfer from the zoo in Seattle, insisting that she be sent to an elephant ‘sanctuary’ instead. Now these same people are railing against the Oklahoma City Zoo and calling for them to shut down their elephant program.

96 Elephants Every Day

The death of a couple of elephants at a U. S. zoo pales in comparison to what is happening every day in the wild. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, in 2012 alone some 35,000 elephants were killed in Africa, which works out to an astonishing 96 animals killed every day. The death of three elephants made the news recently when a British helicopter pilot was shot out of the sky and killed trying to stop elephant poachers in Tanzania. 

The vast majority of these wild animals die lonely, unknown deaths. If not for zoos sounding the alarm, nobody would notice. Zoos raise money for conservation and fuel the public outcry over these senseless deaths. If we do away with zoos, as animal rights activists would have us do, then we would not know that a baby colobus monkey is snow-white when it is born, that a mother eland hides its newborn baby in the tall grass, or that the life expectancy of an Asian elephant is about 48 years.

A Glimmer of Hope

Do I get emotional about the birth of a colobus monkey or the death of an African elephant in the wild? Probably not. It is the animals in my hometown, my state, and my country that draw my attention. They inspire me to care. That is where I learn about the tragedy of elephant poaching and that colobus monkeys are one of many species threatened by the bushmeat trade in Africa. The value of zoos (and aquariums) is that they personalize wildlife, stirring our emotions, teaching us respect for other creatures, and creating young conservationists in the process. We tend to care about what we know and what we know is what we see around us, not what is occurring in some far off land. In Oklahoma City, they mourn the death of an elephant while in Albany, Georgia we celebrate new birth. In both of these instances we can find a glimmer of hope for wildlife under siege.

Wildlife Refugees

Wildlife Refugees

In the fall of 2015, as the world watched a flood of Syrian refugees struggle to gain acceptance into the societies of Europe, another group of refugees from Swaziland was encountering opposition in the U.S.  Three U.S. zoos had applied to import 18 elephants that were scheduled to be culled from wild herds, and opposition by animal rights supporters was intense.

 Syrians and elephants

The comparison of Syrians and elephants may seem a stretch, but when a homeland is under siege or a specific group is being persecuted, seeking refuge in a foreign land would seem to be a reasonable alternative – for both groups.

When people argue against human migrations it is almost always on social or economic grounds. When people argue against animals being relocated to a foreign country they usually cite the need for animals to remain in their native land. Is that a double standard?

If elephant habitat is disappearing and they are being hunted to near-extinction for their ivory, is it acceptable to attempt relocation of animals to the U.S.?

Or should elephants, lions, and other creatures be forced to remain in Africa, even if that means certain extinction?

Would opponents be more accepting if zoos were more like ‘sanctuaries’ or ‘refuges’ and less like ‘prisons’?

What do you think?

In Search of Eden – Chapter 9. The Memoir of a Zoo Career

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. 

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.

In Search of Eden – Chapter 8. The Memoir of a Zoo Career

 The Great Plains Zoo and Delbridge Museum of Natural History

When I arrived as the new executive director at the Great Plains Zoo in the spring of 1988, the first animal I encountered was the most impressive bull elephant I had ever seen. He had long curved tusks, his ears were fanned out in alarm, and his trunk reached out to smell whatever came his way. He was almost life-like -- almost. Unfortunately, this elephant was a mounted specimen in the zoo’s Delbridge Museum of Natural History, a facet of the zoo that I initially found distasteful. The museum had over a hundred animals that had been shot by a local big game hunter and placed in his hardware store in the 1960’s and 70’s. Upon the hunter's death, the collection was purchased by philanthropist, C. J. Delbridge and donated to the citizens of Sioux Falls on the condition that a museum be built to house them. The City decided to build the museum at the zoo. Fortunately, the specimens had been mounted by some of the best taxidermists in the nation, and were in lifelike poses of museum quality.

Delbridge Museum of Natural History

Managing the museum was the most memorable aspect of my time in Sioux Falls. When I arrive there, the specimens were randomly arranged as individual artifacts in a large, open indoor space. There was great potential to turn it into an educational facility if we could place them in naturalistic, diorama groupings. I enlisted the aid of a local exhibit specialist and, we traveled to Los Angeles in October of 1990 to consult with the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History. There we learned how to make molds out of silicon, latex, and plaster. We found out where to purchase artificial rocks and plants and we observed the latest advances in animatronic exhibits and robotics. The first exhibit we developed in our own museum was an African waterhole, complete with artificial water, simulated animal footprints, and, of course, our own mounted animals. In the process of developing dioramas, my research uncovered one of the most fascinating characters I have ever come across.

Carl Akeley

 

Carl Akeley had been part of a zoological collecting expedition to British Somaliland (Somalia) in 1896 for the Field Museum in Chicago. It was there that he became somewhat of a legend in Africa when he killed a leopard – with his bare hands! According to his account, he was walking through the bush when “I wheeled to face the leopard in midair. The rifle was knocked flying and in its place was eighty pounds of frantic cat. Her intention was to sink her teeth into my throat and, with this grip and with her forepaws, to hang on to me while with her hind claws she dug out my abdomen; for this pleasant practice is the way of leopards”.

Fortunately for Akeley, she missed his throat and struck him high in the chest, catching his upper arm in her mouth. He managed to grab her by the throat, stuff the other hand in her mouth, and fall on top of her. After an epic struggle, Akeley succeeded in strangling the leopard.

Akeley’s real claim to fame, however, was in the world of taxidermy. His museum dioramas (which can still be seen today) were astonishingly realistic. When he entered the profession and observed the techniques of the time, he saw a better way to mount animals than those commonly in use at the time. He was put off by the “upholsterer’s” method in which a skin was sewn up, like a pillow, and stuffed with straw or excelsior until it would hold no more, then “artistically” pulled in with thread here and there to create contour. 

His method was to take extensive measurements of the animal, often making plaster casts of the animal’s face and other parts of the body. Akeley then used modeling clay to sculpt the anatomically perfect, skinless body of the animal. The model was covered with plaster to make a two-sided, removable mold which was used as a cast for the paper mâche mannequin. Akeley would stretch the skin over the mannequin, working wrinkles and veins into the skin. When the process was completed, he would touch up the skin with paint and brush it. Akeley’s animal mounts were, and still are, uncannily lifelike. His method, with only slight variations (the use of fiberglass instead of paper mâche) is still in use today.

Akeley’s artistic eye also extended to the rest of the diorama. He photographed scenes in nature and gathered samples of bushes, plants, and other natural materials. He used these back in the studio, where he made plaster casts and reproduced some of the artifacts in wax.

Museums and Zoos

 

One of Akeley’s pioneering achievements is still a prominent exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in the heart of New York City. At the center of the Akeley Hall of African Mammals is a freestanding group of eight elephants surrounded by twenty eight habitat dioramas. One of these dioramas depicts a family group of mountain gorillas in a scene that Akeley so meticulously created that a member of the museum’s exhibits department was able to find the location 90 years later, in 2011. Akeley had visited the Virunga Mountains of central Africa in 1921, collecting animals and plants while taking photographs and painting background studies. Though construction of the hall was completed in 1936, the dioramas would gradually open between the mid-1920s and early 1940s. Sixty years later in 1999 and thirty minutes up the highway, the Wildlife Conservation Society opened its own version of a “hall of African Mammals”. The Bronx Zoo’s six and a half acre Congo Gorilla Forest also seeks to transport visitors to the heart of Africa. The zoo uses live animals and takes visitors on a simulated Congo wildlife safari beneath a canopy of leaves, through sprays of mist, and up to treetop lookouts.

American Museum of Natural History

 The gorilla diorama at the museum is beautiful, and carefully crafted, like a piece of exquisite artwork, but it is static and never changes. The zoo gorilla exhibit is also carefully crafted but it is dynamic and constantly changing. The museum viewers stand in hushed reverence while zoogoers are raucous, like the jungle.  And like the two sides of the same coin, both museums and zoos have similar purposes – to communicate a message to a variety of audiences. The Bronx Zoo’s tagline is “connecting people to wild nature” while the American Museum of Natural History seeks to “discover, interpret, and disseminate … knowledge about … the natural world”. In short, they are both committed to education.

Bronx Zoo

It took some time, but eventually I came to appreciate the educational value of our museum in Sioux Falls. We had a number of rare animals that our local citizens would otherwise never have an opportunity to see. It is difficult to appreciate the height of a giraffe or the mass of an elephant until you are directly underneath one. The collection even had a Giant Panda. It was not part of the original “hunted” collection, but had been donated later. If we could link the zoo collection with the museum collection there was, I felt, an opportunity to provide a uniquely complete animal experience. This is one of the reasons that, when the Toledo Zoo came calling with a job opportunity, I had to take it. They also had a museum, although one with no mounted animals, and on August 8^th, 1991 I departed Sioux Falls for the next chapter of my life in Toledo, Ohio.

In Search of Eden – Chapter 6

The Louisville Zoo

Sergei, the male Siberian tiger at the Louisville Zoo, never liked me. When I entered his holding area he would stalk me relentlessly. I am not sure what his intentions were, but I was never comfortable in his presence, even with a fence between us. I expect the animosity went back to one of my first tasks when I arrived as the new curator in 1979. It was to move the 3 Siberian tigers in preparation for the grand opening their new exhibit.

The female Morgana went into her crate readily but the other female, Tanya, fought tooth and nail and was tranquilized for the move. Tanya’s immobilization went very smooth and she was down in seven minutes. The male, Sergei, on the other hand, took 2 hours. He refused to go down and the vets kept giving him more drugs – first with the dart gun, then with a pole syringe, and finally with a hand syringe. When we thought he was finally asleep, Dave Marshall, Ray Doyle, and I went in to tie his feet, but he woke up and chased us out! We finally got him moved around lunchtime and weighed him at 400 pounds. I don’t recall what he thought of Dave and Ray, but he never liked me after that.

Being the General Curator of a zoo meant I was in charge of the entire animal collection. It was the ideal job for an animal person, but it was not without its drawbacks. I enjoyed the responsibility of buying and selling animals, except when the director reprimanded me for buying at too high a price and selling too low. I was responsible for the animal collection 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which meant that when a night watchman called in sick, I was often the one who had to pull an all-nighter.

The Louisville Zoo, in those days, was a medium sized zoo with a significant collection of mammals (elephants & rhinos, lions & tigers, seals & sea lions), but few birds and reptiles. The zoo was only ten years old, so most of the animal exhibits were modern and spacious.

Most of my time in Louisville is not well documented. I was involved in Cub Scouts with my boys Mike and Jason; my youngest son, Steve, was just beginning to walk; and my marriage was coming to an end in 1982.

Also in 1982, I met the person who would share the adventures of the rest of my life. One of my first dates with Karen Liebert was to visit the Louisville Zoo and see our newest acquisition, the two year old African elephant named Jana.

Jana the Elephant

Jana was the byproduct of extensive culling operations in southern Africa and had most recently been living with a bunch of other baby elephants at a holding compound in Ohio. She would need to be trained for a life in captivity which, at the time, meant “broken”, tamed for human contact, and taught various commands – not unlike house-breaking a dog to live indoors. In order to accomplish this training, the zoo hired legendary circus man and elephant trainer Robert “Smokey” Jones. At the time, Smokey was in his mid-fifties – a gruff, no-nonsense, bear of a man. He lived in a camper near our hay barn with Jana tied to a stake outside his door. His methods of training were rough, but he did get results and, at the time, I wouldn’t have known of any other way to do it. She was completely wild. In the early days, he would place a rope around each leg and have four, sturdy zookeepers hold onto each rope for dear life as she dragged them around. I wasn’t there for most of the actual training, but I do know he was successful because she eventually worked her way into our system. I also know that these cruel methods are, thankfully, no longer condoned in the zoos of today. Jana later went to live at the zoo in Knoxville, Tennessee and I moved to Tampa, Florida to lead the efforts to renovate the aging zoo at Lowry Park.

The Lowry Park Zoo

Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo was a fast-moving, high-profile project when I arrived in 1984 and one of the first challenges found me, once again, in the elephant business. Sheena had been donated to the zoo in 1961 by the Park’s namesake, General Sumter L. Lowry, Jr. She had been just 18 months old when she arrived. The new master plan had been designed around her and the building she inhabited, but in order to build her new facilities, she would need to be moved to another zoo for a few years.

After searching far and wide, we found a good facility at African Lion Safari near Toronto Canada that would take her. They had proper facilities, other elephants, and a highly competent staff. A deal was struck that would send her to Canada and bring her back when her new home was completed. All we had to do was figure out how to get her there. I described the process in my article for the Zoo’s newsletter in the fall of 1985.

Though highly trained, Sheena had not been handled in over ten years. She had become quite unmanageable and even dangerous to those who worked around her. But after a few days with the experienced elephant handler, Charles Gray, she was performing all of her old tricks and even seemed to enjoy the change in routine and the companionship of her handler. The next problem was how to get her out of the enclosure. So complete was Sheena’s incarceration, that there was not even a gate into her enclosure. Our friendly workmen moved in with their cutting torches and bulldozers, and after nearly an hour of cutting the heavy iron rails, an opening was made in the pen.

The next problem we faced was the uncertainty of Sheena’s reactions to her new found freedom. Would she respond to her handler’s commands, or would she run away at the first opportunity? The moment of truth arrived. As Sheena walked out of her pen for the first time in nearly 15 years, it became obvious that she was happy to be outside and yet very responsive to her handler.  She quickly gained his confidence, and was soon allowed to wander happily around and explore the zoo she had lived in for most of her life. The rest of her loading and transporting was so uneventful as to appear routine. But that was not the end of the story.

In order to make transportation less traumatic, another elephant was brought from Canada to keep her company. A large male Asian elephant named “Buke” became the first elephant ever to share Sheena’s enclosure. Though she was coy to his advances at first and turned her back whenever he came close, she soon warmed up and remained close by his side as they explored the zoo grounds. 

The zoo, at that time, was being demolished. Most of the cages and sidewalks were gone and the elephants had plenty of sand to throw on themselves and few opportunities to get into any trouble. Buke was an impressive beast with massive tusks. He seemed gentle enough, responding to his handlers like an anxious child as the two elephants wandered the property untethered. He was so gentle that I took a photo of my twelve year old son, Jason, riding on his back. The next time I saw Buke was at his home in Canada later that summer. He was in musth (a period when bull elephants are sexually active and very aggressive) and chained to a tree – ready to kill anyone who came too near.

Sheena did well in Canada and we were hopeful later that summer when we were informed that breeding was taking place. Our hopes were dashed, however, when we received word that she had died of heart failure on January 17, 1986.

Bringing Down the Bars

I had been hired by the City of Tampa Parks Department in the spring of 1984 for the newly created position of Zoo Superintendent. A national humane society had dubbed Lowry Park one of the worst zoos in America a few years earlier and Tampa residents had called for it to be fixed up or shut down. The Lowry Park Zoo Association was formed in 1982, at the suggestion of the Tampa Parks Department, to raise awareness of the zoo and to promote a public-private partnership to fund its renaissance. After having worked at modern zoos in Toronto and Louisville, the Lowry Park Zoo was quite a let-down. Colleagues still tease me about my first office – a round, blue building that had been a birthday party house and was decorated to look like a birthday cake. There was promise of improvements, but that was small consolation to the animals. The zoo architectural firm, Design Consortium, Ltd., was also hired in 1984, to develop a 24-acre master plan. 

Our first event was in August of that year when we unveiled what was touted as a $10 million master plan that would use water barriers and dry moats to create naturalistic habitats for the animals while increasing the size of the zoo from 11 acres to 24 acres. The City was committing $1 million to fund the initial site preparation and infrastructure improvements as well as another $5 million for phase 1 of the zoo development. With the City firmly committed, the Zoo Association embarked on a $20 million capital campaign to build a new zoo for the City of Tampa.

Next Week: The Lowry Park Zoo is transformed