White people must oppose those who preach hate

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Albany Herald, EDITOR'S PICK - Aug 18, 2017 

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I grew up in the segregated south to a poor family — but a family favored with what has come to be known as the power of whiteness.

My dad’s family goes back generations in south Alabama and the Florida panhandle. They probably even owned slaves. But, I can’t turn back the clock and undo the past.

Slavery was an abomination that ended in the United States 150 years ago. What really makes me sad is that we Southern whites found a way to keep slavery alive for another hundred years. I saw the evidence with my own eyes. I remember the “colored” restrooms and drinking fountains, and the “white only” waiting rooms and country clubs. It makes me uncomfortable to remember that it took heroic effort and bravery for African Americans to earn the rights that a free people should have had all along.

So, what heritage am I, as a white Southerner, allowed to be proud of?

I am proud of the people, both black and white, of my generation and older who are able to put all of that behind them and work together in friendship and brotherly love.

I am proud of a Southern heritage of politeness where we say hello to strangers on the street and we teach our youngsters to say “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” to their elders.

I love it that we make Northerners uncomfortable when we move in for a hug.

And I am proud of my parent who in the 1970s, when the schools in St. Petersburg, Fla., were integrating, sent my younger brother to a high school that had been all-black for generations. While the rest of the white community was huffing in indignation, my parents had the courage to stand up to the “white-flight” that caused others to flee to the suburbs.

My brother was an athlete who excelled at football and basketball. He was the only white player on the football and basketball teams his junior year. That meant my parents were the only white faces in the stands.

I can be proud of my Southern heritage without being proud of everything my ancestors did. But my Southern heritage is complicated. It is a heritage of white folks versus black folks, and a heritage of Southern gentility alongside the ugliness of racism.

I can’t change who I am – a white, Southern male – and I can’t change the past, but I don’t need a Confederate battle flag or the statue of a Confederate general to remind me of who I am.

I know there are plenty of good, decent white people who are appalled by the message of the Neo-Nazis and white supremacists. But this issue is not going to be resolved by more marches and sit-ins by people of color. This particular brand of evil needs to be squashed by white people standing up to other white people and telling them they don’t speak for us.

As for me, I’ll write about it. I’ll shout about it. And, if need be, I’ll stand up against those who preach hatred. It just makes me sad that nearly 50 years after the death of Martin Luther King, we are still having this conversation. “Make America Great Again” rings kind of hollow right about now.

Animals & Money

Shares of SeaWorld Entertainment plunged 33% Wednesday after the company's earnings missed Wall Street expectations. The Orlando, Fla.-based company also conceded for the first time that attendance at its theme parks has been hurt by negative publicity concerning accusations by animal-rights activists that SeaWorld mistreats killer whales.

Latimes.com, August 13, 2014

In the fall of 1971, Busch Gardens Tampa won the prestigious Edward H. Bean Award in the mammal category for the first captive breeding of the roan antelope. The Bean Award was presented by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (currently known as the Association of Zoos and Aquariums – AZA) in recognition of a significant captive propagation effort that clearly enhanced the conservation of the species. The roan is a medium-sized, African antelope that stands about five feet at the shoulder and weighs-in at 5 or 6 hundred pounds. It is light brown all over with

Roan Antelope

the most distinctive markings being the black mask that covers most of the face. Ears are long and pointed, and horns are short, stout, and swept-back in a gentle backward arch. I was proud of the award, even though I had only worked at the Gardens for less than a month. I loved hoofed stock and this award, according to the criteria, was supposed to “demonstrate an exceptional institutional commitment”. So imagine my disappointment when it was announced the very next year that a new attraction was to swallow-up the roan antelope breeding pen. The section of the park known as "Stanleyville" opened in 1973 and was home to the park's first water ride, the Stanley Falls Flume. Animals, it appeared, would need to take a backseat to rides and other attractions as Busch Gardens faced some stiff competition up the road in Orlando where Walt Disney was opening his new Magic Kingdom.

In 1971, zoos were modest affairs, little better than the menageries of a century earlier. It is difficult to blame the planners at Busch Gardens for failing to appreciate their animal assets. For the next twenty years they chewed up animal areas and replaced them with rides, show arenas, and themed villages, but in the 1990’s things began to turn around. Zoos were thriving and building

Toledo Zoo Hippoquarium

innovative animal exhibits, like the Toledo Zoo’s hippo exhibit with underwater viewing. In 1992, Busch Gardens finally reversed course and opened the 3 acre Myombe Reserve as home to families of lowland gorillas and chimpanzees. In July of 1997, they opened the Edge of Africa, a section of the park where guests could walk through parts of the African veldt and get an up-close view of the animals, including underwater viewing of the hippos. Not to be outdone, Disney opened its newest theme park the very next year, spending what some reports claimed was a staggering one billion dollars on Disney's Animal Kingdom. The floodgates were open on zoo spending and zoos have not been the same since.

There are, it should be noted, more than one category when it comes to defining zoos and aquariums, most of which serve a local community. Large facilities, like SeaWorld, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and Busch Gardens, are tourist attractions. They spend lavishly on their animals, but they also have annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. A January 2014 CNN report, for example, reported that “SeaWorld expects an estimated $1.46 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2013”. A single attraction, Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin, a first-of-its-kind motion-based, trackless dark ride, opened in 2013 with a reported price tag in excess of 40 million dollars.

Few zoo and aquarium projects can compare to that, but they are still spending some pretty impressive amounts for new animal exhibits. Detroit zoo announced its opening of a penguin exhibit in 2015 at $29.5 million, which is double the amount spent by the Kansas City Zoo on its Penguin Exhibit just two years earlier. In 2014 alone, as reported in the news media and on websites, we saw the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City open an African savanna at $16 million, the Indianapolis Zoo open its International Orangutan Center at $26 million, and the Columbus Zoo open its forty three acre Heart of Africa at $30 million.

Some attractions, like the Georgia Aquarium, are not quite theme park but are larger than a standard zoo or aquarium. Billing itself as “the world’s most magical aquarium”, the Georgia Aquarium officially opened its doors to the public on November 23, 2005. It claimed to feature more animals than any other aquarium in more than 10 million gallons of water, with more than 60 exhibits. Attracting more than 2 million visitors per year, it is an anchor for downtown Atlanta’s revitalization efforts and a benefit to both the city and the state. But with such an ambitious vision and an initial investment of over $200 million, the pressure on the Georgia Aquarium to succeed must be enormous. In fact, all zoos and aquariums are under pressure to generate revenue in every possible manner. Public food services are built into new animal areas, often with an after-hours catering component. Souvenir shops are strategically located near exits for those last minute purchases. Per capita spending is monitored down to the last penny and one zoo is even experimenting with something called “dynamic pricing” in which prices increase at peak times. Zoos and aquariums may be focused on conservation and education, but the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Government agencies that once supported zoos and aquariums are struggling financially and cutting back their funding of “quality of life” programs. Zoos and aquariums need to run like businesses or they won’t survive to do all of that good conservation work.

But Zoos and aquariums aren’t the only ones making money from the business of animals. The 2013 documentary movie Blackfish made a relatively modest $2 million at the box office and

was seen by 25 million viewers, although director Gabriela Cowperthwaite claims to have taken none of the profits. Both the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) report revenue in excess of $100 million per year, which makes animal charities comparable to children’s charities like the Boys and Girls Clubs and the Make A Wish Foundation at around $200 million and around $70 million in annual contributions respectively. Images of abused puppies and hungry children apparently elicit similar positive responses.

Money is, as always, both a blessing and a curse. Many zoos and aquariums are blessed with generous supporters and plenty money for capital improvements—at least for now—but they must continue to attract new visitors and generate more and more revenue to support their operations. The cost of doing business is increasing and, as new animal exhibits are added, it will only go up. Whether or not revenue can keep up with expenses remains to be seen but, as the Ringling Brothers Circus can attest, this can be a slippery slope.

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.

A Gorilla Dies at the Cincinnati Zoo - Who is to Blame?

A few months ago, a zookeeper at the Palm Beach Zoo in Florida was killed by a tiger. The circumstances surrounding her death were not immediately forthcoming, but it was revealed early-on that zoo officials elected to tranquilize the animal rather than shoot it as it stood over the woman’s body. This resulted in a ten minute delay in allowing first responders to reach the woman. Condemnation of the zoo for not taking quicker action was furious. Fast forward a couple of months. A three-year-old boy falls into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati zoo and is dragged around for ten minutes by a four hundred pound, adult male gorilla. Zoo officials elected to shoot the animal rather than tranquilize it, in order to retrieve the child. Now people are criticizing this zoo for shooting to save a person and not attempting to tranquilize the animal. Zoos, it would appear, are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Who is to blame for the gorilla incident—the zoo, the parents, the child? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But here is what I do know. I worked with gorillas for forty years at three different zoos. Gorillas are gentle but unpredictable animals and they are immensely powerful. I have also seen hundreds of animals tranquilized and know how unreliable this can be. Tranquilizer guns are not nearly as accurate as rifles. A miss is not at all uncommon. Darts can misfire or an animal can pull out the dart before it injects a full dose. And an animal under stress can counteract the effects of the drug, even if it does receive the full dose. Attempting to tranquilize an animal can take an agonizingly long time, if it works at all.

It is a sad fact that, in today’s world, we find ourselves constantly second guessed and making decisions based on anticipated reactions on social and in mainstream media. I am sure the officials at the Cincinnati zoo made the right decision in saving that little boy, and I am also sure that they are shedding buckets of tears over their decision. To the zoo people who cared for him every day, that gorilla was part of their family—think about pulling the trigger on your own dog or cat.

So, what is the take away in all this? Maybe the zoo needs to beef-up its barriers. Maybe parents need to keep a close eye on their children when they enter a place where danger might lurk—like a public playground, a swimming pool, or a zoo. As for the little boy, there’s not much to be done about that. As the oldest of four boys with four sons and four grandsons of my own, I recall many times that, if I turned my back for a moment, someone would be too high up that tree or too far out in the lake—and we had the broken bones and stitches to prove it.

Ian Porter and gorilla 'Shani' (Toledo Zoo, 1992)

The sad fact is, accidents happen every day. Sometimes the results are tragic and often there is no one to blame. To quote one of my favorite children’s authors, Lemony Snicket, maybe it was just A Series of Unfortunate Events.

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.