Review Officials Reaccredit L.A. Zoo

Strong measures taken to correct a laundry list of shortcomings dating back a decade won the troubled Los Angeles Zoo reaccreditation Tuesday night at a meeting of the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. in Honolulu.

“I think it’s a great new beginning,” said zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo. “For me personally it’s like having a 500-pound gorilla lifted from my shoulders.”

Mollinedo acknowledged the problems at the zoo that had prompted the association to delay for a year its decision whether to renew the five-year accreditation.

“They were very, very concerned about the condition of the zoo,” he said. “It was very deteriorated. Morale was probably at an all-time low. We were being battered quite a bit by the media. . . . Projects that we had money for were falling seriously behind schedule.”

Stephen J. McCusker, president of the association and a member of the accreditation team that sharply criticized the zoo during an initial visit, said that when the team returned for a second look, “We saw lots of progress. . . .

“It was a different place,” McCusker said. “It was a happy place. . . . We were impressed.”

Councilman John Ferraro, chairman of the council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Zoo Improvements, hailed the reaccreditation decision.

“We owe a debt of gratitude to our exceptional zoo director, Manuel Mollinedo, for his dedication, enthusiasm and ability to get things done, and to the employees who worked so hard under his leadership,” Ferraro said.

The zoo’s problems began in the 1980s, when federal inspectors announced that they had found inadequate food storage, poor sanitation, drainage problems, vermin infestations and substandard housing for animals at the facility in Griffith Park. These problems were exacerbated by declining attendance.

But the zoo’s shortcomings did not attract the concern of local officials until February 1995, when a panel of zoo experts from other cities concluded that conditions at the facility were so bad that animals’ health was in jeopardy and that the facility could lose its accreditation.

Loss of accreditation would have jeopardized the zoo’s ability to acquire and trade animals and prevented it from getting some grants.

The problems identified by the panel were much the same as those found by the federal experts a decade earlier and called to mind the public outrage voiced in 1992 when an elephant named Hannibal died in a shipping cage.

The zoo was exonerated in the elephant’s death, and that matter was largely forgotten. But the review panel’s scathing report in 1995 led to an immediate call by the mayor and City Council for dramatic action to spruce up the zoo.

Although the panel’s report did not criticize Los Angeles Zoo Director Mark Goldstein, it repudiated much of his ambitious spending plan. The panel recommended that most of the zoo’s resources be directed toward animal exhibits instead of the new front gate and classrooms that Goldstein had endorsed.

A day after the report was released, Goldstein announced that he was stepping down. Veteran parks administrator Mollinedo replaced Goldstein, who was awarded a three-year contract to remain at the zoo as a consultant.

Concern over the zoo intensified last September when experts from the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. found myriad problems with safety, the physical plant, employee relations and finances at the facility and gave it a year to make improvements or lose its accreditation.

“There is no reason to expect that the zoo will not be allowed to slide downward unless its governance structure is significantly altered,” the association said.

The zoo was subsequently removed from the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation and an independent Zoo Department was created. Major fixes--financed by $23 million approved by voters--won praise this year from a team of zoo officials from other cities.

“We believe the Los Angeles Zoo has begun its long march toward . . . excellence and leadership,” Terry Maple, director of the zoo in Atlanta, said in April. “But it will take a few years, a long-term effort and the sustained application of resources, both financial and human.”