Management of L.A. Zoo

As a supporter of the Los Angeles Zoo for more than 20 years, I write in reference to your editorial, “The Horror of Hannibal’s Death” (March 24), which questions the way L.A. Zoo Director Mark Goldstein tried to move the elephant, and mentions that Goldstein was brought here from Boston “in the hopes he could clean up the mess left by a predecessor, Warren Thomas, whose tenure was marked by allegations of mismanagement, financial irregularities and mistreatment of animals.”

The fact is that Dr. Thomas was a superb zoo director whose reputation was world-class. He had managed other zoos before coming to Los Angeles in 1974, and was an international leader in the movement to preserve endangered species. Under his outstanding leadership the L.A. Zoo was significantly elevated from its previous condition.

Thomas instituted many excellent training programs in animal care and management, upgraded the zoo’s public educational functions, added many rare animals such as the woolly monkey and the giant eland, promoted a number of programs to save vanishing species such as the California condor and the Sumatran rhinoceros, and he also delivered by Cesarean section two baby gorillas, so rarely bred in a zoo.

The allegations about Dr. Thomas were not truly related to any inadequacy on his part, but rather to the crazy way our zoo is governed. It operates under controls exercised both by the voluntary Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn. (GLAZA) and by city employees responsible to the mayor and the commission. Caught between those two frequently conflicted entities (further complicated by power struggles within each of them) even a distinguished leader like Dr. Thomas was eventually immobilized and tragically scapegoated.

If we are to prevent this two-headed dragon from devouring our excellent new director, and also to avoid superficial judgments (such as were expressed in The Times) about highly technical problems in animal management, we might do better to look at the world’s other great zoos, especially those with exceptional records of good management, and then consider how better to administer ours. We might start by ensuring that the zoo director’s authority is made commensurate with his responsibility, and that his hands are not tied or slapped by amateurs.

LOUIS JOLYON WEST, Los Angeles