Battle Intensifies Over Zoo’s Elephant Exhibit : Animal Care: Humane Society attacks credibility of park’s spokesman, who denies enclosure is inadequate following the death of a 51-year-old mammal.

In the latest tit-for-tat exchange with the San Diego Zoo, investigators at the Humane Society of the United States on Friday attacked the credibility of the zoo’s spokesman and restated their belief that the elephant exhibit is badly in need of repairs.

“There is no nice way to put this,” David K. Wills, a vice president in the Humane Society’s Department of Investigations, said in a press release rebutting several published statements made by Jeff Jouett, the zoo’s spokesman. “He’s just not telling the truth.”

To support that claim, Wills provided documents that appear to show that top zoo officials sought in 1984 to widen a narrow cat walk and in 1985 assessed how much it would cost to install heaters in the elephant barn. As yet, neither improvement has been made, and Jouett has said that heaters are unnecessary because the elephants’ body heat is furnace-like.

Wills and Jouett have been trading charges in the press since Thursday, when The Times reported that the Humane Society was seeking an investigation of the exhibit after the death of Maya, a 51-year-old Asian elephant that was euthanized after she fell into a moat and injured herself. Wills charged that Maya’s death proved that the elephant enclosure is “grossly inadequate.”

But, on Friday, Jouett said Wills’ allegations stemmed solely from “a disgruntled employee who now makes a profession out of zoo-bashing”--a reference to Lisa Landres, a former elephant keeper at the San Diego Zoo who is now a Humane Society investigator based in Washington. Landres resigned in 1989 because, she said, the zoo was punishing her for being outspoken about the beating of the elephant Dunda.

Jouett, who has acknowledged that the elephant exhibit is “not perfect,” said that, by necessity, repairs at the 100-acre zoo must be done in order of priority. Although the zoo plans to widen the cat walk eventually, he said, it is not an urgent need.

“If there’s an immediate concern for animal health or safety or human health or safety, then it rises to the top of the priority list,” he said.

Wills, meanwhile, provided a copy of an internal zoo memo, dated Aug. 9, 1984, in which zoo officials listed, in order of priority, what they called “modifications requirements” in the elephant mesa.

Alan Roocroft, the elephant supervisor for the zoo and Wild Animal Park, said the first priority was improved access for heavy-duty vehicles--an improvement that Jouett said has since been completed. The second priority, in a list of six, suggested replacing a large pool with a smaller one in order to accommodate wider walkways.

“Currently it is not possible for more than one animal to safely negotiate its way around the pool,” Roocroft’s memo said. “In addition, the space is so narrow that the possibility always exists that an animal might lose its footing and tumble into the moat.”

Another memo a month later estimated that it would cost $4,000 to make those changes to the pool and cat walk.

When asked whether Roocroft’s safety concerns would classify the walkway-widening project as urgent, Jouett said no. He said that, although no one witnessed Maya’s fall on Sunday, he believes she did not fall off the cat walk.

“An elephant can be bumped into the moat from any point in the exhibit, whether on the cat walk or not,” he said. In response to the memo, he said: “It doesn’t say the elephants were at risk if they were walking in single file. It doesn’t say that one animal is in danger. Yesterday I saw two elephants there--they walked the whole length and lived to tell about it.”

But Steve Friedlund, an elephant keeper who was the first to rush to Maya’s aid after she fell, said that it is “almost an absolute sure bet” that Maya fell from the cat walk. When Friedlund found the elephant, her back legs were in the moat and her front elbows were resting on the cat walk, indicating that she had fallen head-first from the walk and was trying to right herself.

“The walkway is a death trap,” said Friedlund, who estimated the cat walk is 2 1/2 feet wide. “The zoo has known the problem for a long time. They’re defending their Disneyland image that everything is safe and sound here. It’s time to get on with the business of solving the problem.”

Another inter-office memo provided by Wills estimates the cost of installing elephant barn floor heating. In the September, 1985 memo, Hella Winter, a project coordinator in the zoo’s architecture and design department, estimated that it would cost $15,000 to install a 12-foot-wide heated strip in the concrete floor that would run the full length of the barn.

The memo was addressed to Friedlund, Carmi G. Penny, the zoo’s curator of mammals, and another animal care specialist who has since left the zoo. At the bottom, Winter has written: “Please call us & let’s decide ASAP what to do!”

According to Wills, Winter’s memo came in response to keeper documentation of frigid temperatures--40 degrees and lower--in the elephant barn at night.

“Without heating in the floor, the concrete draws the body heat away from the elephants when they lie down,” Wills’ press release asserts, adding that the keepers recorded the cold temperatures when there were seven elephants in the barn. “With only four left, Mr. Jouett’s idea that they are ‘furnaces’ loses even more credibility.”

Jouett responded that he had heard that Landres and Friedlund measured the temperatures in a zoo office, not in the barn, “in an attempt to prove their point.”

Friedlund countered that in fact, Curby Simerson, the zoo’s assistant animal care manager, was the person who held the thermometer in the barn. It read 34 degrees, he said.

But Jouett said that was impossible.

“It’s not 40 degrees in the barn with the elephants,” he said. “Consider the source. . . . Two years gone and 3,000 miles away, Lisa (Landres) is still trying to push through her pet projects, and she’s using (The Times) to do that.”

Reached in Washington on Friday, Landres said, “That’s just a lie. You wouldn’t believe how cold it is in there. Whether I worked there or not, why don’t they focus their energy on making the place better?”

Sally Mackler, a spokeswoman for the animal rights group San Diego Animal Advocates, echoed those sentiments.

“It’s a poor excuse and an easy out to blame a ‘disgruntled employee,’ ” Mackler said in a statement. “We should take a closer look at why Lisa Landres was dissatisfied with zoo policies and methods regarding the elephants’ care.”

Wills also contested Jouett’s claim that the elephants may take shelter in their barn during inclement daytime weather.

“The elephant barn has not been made available to the elephants as a shelter from the rain, except in rare, isolated instances when past keeper staff let the elephants indoors due to extreme cold or wind,” Wills wrote. “With this documentation in hand, you may join with us in realizing that it’s difficult to know what to believe when the San Diego Zoo responds to criticism.”

Jouett responded: “In a hard, cold rain, the doors are opened. If it’s a warm day or a light shower, and they’re showing no ill effects, the doors probably won’t be open. For an elephant, that’s not inclement weather.”

He added, “What happens if it rains in Africa or Asia? Do the elephants run in the barn then? The elephants like the rain.”