A Step Toward Rejuvenating L.A. Zoo : City Council approves administrative reforms for the ailing facility

The City Council has given officials at the Los Angeles Zoo the administrative leeway to make the major changes that this facility so obviously needs.

Last week, the council adopted the recommendations of its ad hoc committee on zoo improvement, convened after a team of zoo directors from other cities issued a blistering report about the deteriorating physical conditions and poor fiscal management at the Griffith Park facility. The team’s findings, made public last February, were underscored by the American Zoo & Aquarium Assn., which last September threatened to lift the zoo’s accreditation unless the city fixes dozens of problems by next summer. Accreditation is crucial because it enables a zoo to trade animals with other institutions and to qualify for grant money.

Broad-based improvement in the 30-year-old facility is imperative. Evaluators have identified problems involving safety, the physical plant and finances and has cited confusion and inefficiencies in zoo management. Animal care and the conditions of their habitats have come under particularly harsh criticism since the accidental death of an African bull elephant, widespread disease among the penguins and the killing of flamingos and a condor by coyotes that got into their cages.

When other animals succumbed to diseases carried in skunk droppings, officials admitted they had trapped and killed more than 100 wild skunks on the grounds.

Not surprisingly, as reports of these problems grew, zoo attendance and concession revenues dwindled, in turn exacerbating the facility’s physical decay. The City Council’s actions permit the city-owned zoo to break this cycle by giving administrators more flexibility and autonomy and more control over fund-raising and revenues.

The zoo will be removed from under the city’s Department of Recreation and placed administratively in a separate zoo department. The Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn. will remain the zoo’s chief fund-raising arm, but it will report to the city and the money it raises will go into a new Zoo Enterprise Fund. Further, the new zoo department is expected to take over some of the concessions formerly run by GLAZA or renegotiate separate, presumably more profitable subcontracts for their operation.

The Los Angeles Zoo should be an asset to the city and a major attraction instead of the mediocrity it has been for too long. Now comes the hard part: making change happen.