Buenos Aires Zoo Has Gone to the Dogs : Wildlife: Caged animals suffer in an overcrowded, decaying facility in a city preoccupied with financial troubles.

Rocky the lion roars with hunger, and Josefa the polar bear sweats in front of a fan. Porota, the only hippo, stands in a concrete water tank not much larger than she, looking doleful.

The Buenos Aires zoo is in bad shape.

About 1,800 animals are crowded onto 47 acres of land. The budget of $2 million a year is hardly enough to feed them, let alone provide mates or enough living space and caretakers.

“The worst is that, a year ago, we had to kill the goats and cows to feed other animals,” said Juan Romero, a veterinarian who is the zoo’s director.

Five years ago a hippo died after eating a can, and its head was sold for $5,000 to buy food for other animals. Now, the head is displayed in a trendy disco called Hippopotamus.

A flamingo choked to death on a coin tossed by a visitor. Toto the giraffe died after swallowing a plastic bag. A condor, once accustomed to soaring over mountains, can barely spread his great wings without hitting the bars of his cage.

Porota is not the only solitary animal. The zoo also has only one rhinoceros, one giraffe and one elephant.

Replacing animals is too expensive for municipal administrations that have encountered inflation, recession and near-bankruptcy in recent years. An elephant can cost $70,000 and a rhino $150,000.

When it opened 102 years ago, the Buenos Aires zoo was an oasis of shady paths and exotic animals in the noise and pollution of a city that would grow to a population of 10 million.

Now, the grass is gone from many enclosures, leaving only dust and concrete. Some buildings are boarded up, and there are few attendants to remind visitors not to feed the animals, try to catch them or poke them with sticks.

In October, the city leased the zoo to Gerardo Sofovich, a television host and animal lover, who said he would invest $5 million to buy new animals and spruce up the place.

Among his plans are building an aquarium and conducting public education programs about animals and the outdoors.

Some critics say Sofovich’s motives are more mercenary than philanthropic. They claim that his proposed admission fee of about $2 would recoup his investment in a single year and effectively close the zoo to the poor.

“Sofovich . . . doesn’t want to improve the quality of life of the animals, but rather enrich himself,” said Raquel Celoria, who leads a neighborhood group opposed to the deal.

The Assn. for the Defense of Animal Rights believes the number of animals should be reduced by half rather than increased.

Other opponents cite Sofovich’s friendship with President Carlos Saul Menem and the zoo’s director, Romero, a former business partner, in claiming favoritism.

Romero responded: “Those who are protesting now--why didn’t they do anything when the animals were starving?”

“People say stupid things,” Sofovich said. “It’s not as if we’re going to put in a disco, like some people say. We are going to do what . . . governments could not” because they did not have the money.