HOT TOPIC! - Zoo Hires Exhibit Visionist - Alittle Too Late For Wishbone

Last Night an article was posted to sfgate.com

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Zoo-turns-to-consultant-for-habitat-vision-3677807.php

Copied and Pasted:

Terry Maple could sense that Jasper the hedgehog, whom he cradled in his arm while posing for a photo, was uncomfortable with his surroundings.

"I think his stomach is making noises - this could be trouble," he said.

Sure enough, the spiny creature urinated on his crisp blue dress shirt hardly a minute later.

It is Maple's knowledge of the environments animals need to thrive that led the San Francisco Zoo to hire him as its first professor-in-residence. Maple, a former zoo director on the East Coast with a doctorate degree in psychobiology, will advise the zoo on how to put its animals before people when redesigning some of the outdated animal habitats.

"As we build new exhibits, we're putting the animals' wellness first and the visitor experience and other things secondary," said zoo Director Tanya Peterson. "It's kind of a new look at exhibit design."

The zoo has come under fire in recent years for its old and rundown exhibits and charges that animal welfare has not been a priority. Voters approved a $48 million bond in 1997 to rebuild most of the zoo, but critics allege that the money was used to improve the experience for visitors instead of animals.

Bringing in an academic tasked solely to think about how new exhibits might affect animal welfare is an approach no other zoos are taking, according to Maple.

In 1984, Atlanta's mayor asked Maple to take over the city's zoo, which had just been named one of the 10 worst zoos in America after several animal deaths and was described by the Associated Press as an "animal concentration camp."

"The zoo in Atlanta was an embarrassment to the city," said Maple, who served as director in Atlanta for 17 years. "The gorilla was in a terrible cage of bars, steel and cement. He looked like he was in prison, and he was."

Redesigning the exhibit to more closely resemble the wild by adding four habitats for the gorillas to roam proved wildly successful for breeding, and Zoo Atlanta's gorilla collection is now the largest in the nation.

He hopes to have a similar impact on the gorilla exhibit here.

"The gorillas are good, but they're not fully exercising the opportunities that we would give them if we could retrofit that exhibit to make it more natural," Maple said of the more than 30-year-old pit that allows visitors to look down at the five gorillas from a 360-degree perimeter. "That's considered to be just too much looming on the gorilla."

Maple's goal is to make the gorillas and the rest of the animals more active. When talking with architects, he's looking for exhibits that encourage the animals to reach, stretch and jump.

"Just having a lion sleeping in the corner isn't exciting for you or the lion," Maple said.

Building or reconfiguring new exhibits is not cheap. The zoo has raised about half of its $10 million goal to fund a new squirrel monkey exhibit, updates to the South American Tropical Forest building, and additional renovations to its North American region. No funding has been found yet to retrofit the gorilla exhibit.

While serving as a professor in residence, Maple will continue living in Florida, where he is an affiliate professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University, and come to the zoo for about a full week each month. He will consult for the zoo for six months, with consideration for another six months, Peterson said. She declined to say how much the zoo will pay Maple because his tenure is being supported by an anonymous donor.

It's been almost five years since the zoo's reputation and financial status were imperiled by a fatal animal attack on Christmas Day, when Tatiana the Siberian tiger leaped out of her enclosure and mauled a 17-year-old San Jose man, killing him and injuring his two friends. There is evidence, however, that the zoo may finally be emerging from the tragedy's shadow. Peterson said attendance this year just surpassed 800,000, a number not seen in five years, and that the budget is operating on a "slight surplus."

Local animal activist and zoo critic Deniz Bolbol, who said in an online statement shortly after the tiger incident that "animal welfare problems are at the heart of the San Francisco Zoo's troubles," is not convinced that Maple's hiring will help. In 2008, she was unsuccessful in her efforts to make the zoo a rescue facility.

"They're not interested in changing things at the zoo, they are just interested in keeping the status quo," she said.

Vice President of Animal Care David Bocian, who worked as a keeper at the zoo in the 1980s and was the first to approach Maple in August at a conference on zoo welfare, said animal wellness "is a higher priority than it used to be."

"We can achieve better, and we have achieved better in just these past few years," he said, noting that a new lemur exhibit features the high trees and spacious environment that Maple endorses.

<End of article>

Of course I commented, even though I try not to get too involved with sfgate commenting anymore.

>I'm not sure what to think about this. Of course its a good thing, but why didn't the Zoo management seek help sooner? I was on a crusade to get the Andean Bear some grass in his home for over a year before they let him die on concrete. Its awful that the management team there over the past two decades has not recognized the needs of some of the Animals living spaces, instead paying architects to draw up plpans for new areas when existing areas are suffering and the Animals like Wishbone (Andean Bear) along with them. They have been starting to do some much needed things, like finally get Inti the Bobcat out of the cages he'd been living in for ten years. I just hope they are now putting building any new exhibits to bring in new Animals on the back burner until upgrades are made for the existing Anmals.<

My comment says exactly how I feel in short.  I could go on and on, but readers of my blog know how I feel.  I will add that it does seem curious (I was going to do a post about this)  that all of a sudden I see the Zoo fixing things up.  It is also curious that this comes after they let poor Wishbone pound his bones to a literal death in that concrete killer grotto.  AND only after Wishy passed did they finally get Inti out of the cages they had him living in for ten years.

The Zoo patted themselves on the back once again for that move and sure got alot of press out of their new home for Inti.  Yes it looks great, but its years overdue.  Poor thing was living in a series of cages for a decade.  They don't put that in the press release.  I think it was about time they gave him a proper space to live in.

Next up will be Wishbones areas.  I'd bet they will only being doing something with it so they can bring in a new animal to house there, when the focus should be something similar to what I suggested in a previous post so that Pike and Ulu the Polar Bears can live on a natural surface 100% of the time, not less that 50%, which is what they get now rotating between a meadow and a concrete space.

http://iamnotananteater.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-to-do-at-bears-not-question-but.html