Looking Up

Just three years ago the Los Angeles Zoo was wallowing like a hippo in the mud. Its exhibits were cramped and filthy, its veterinary hospital archaic. Attendance sagged and the staff squabbled. The then-29-year-old zoo looked like it might lose its accreditation.

Now, the zoo is lumbering out of the muck.

With millions of dollars from city and county bond measures, zoo officials are moving on an ambitious master plan that could bring the once-derided facility to the forefront of the nation’s zoos.

“It’s almost a 180-degree turnaround,” said David Towne, director of Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo and former president of the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. Towne was one of three directors to issue a blistering report on the L.A. Zoo in 1995, which prompted the zoo director to resign and city officials to move toward rectifying the situation.

The master plan “is very, very exciting,” he said. “If it can be carried out, it will put the L.A. Zoo on the map.”

The first new exhibit under the long-term, $300-million plan, Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains, opened in August with much fanfare. Its one-acre parcel and natural setting exemplifies what cutting-edge zoos have been aiming to achieve for years: an environment in which the animals flourish and visitors get a deeper sense of how they live in the wild.

Though animal rights activists continue to condemn many of the traditional concrete enclosures that still dominate the landscape, many applaud the direction the zoo is taking. Renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall, a bitter L.A. Zoo critic in the past, is now working with director Manuel Mollinedo to create conservation and educational programs at the facility. She loves the chimp exhibit, she said, and sees it as a hopeful sign for the future.

“There were one or two good chimpanzee exhibits [in the country],” she said. “This is up there with them.”

She said the chimpanzees suffered mental distress in the old faux rock exhibit. Bored and agitated, they stared downward, fought and pulled out their hair.

Now, the chimps relax under a shady outcropping next to a waterfall on a grassy hill. They have plenty of space to move and no longer appear nervous.

“It’s the type of thing we always wanted,” said Michael Dee, now the zoo’s general curator, who has been at the park since the beginning. “But there was never any money.”

Dee said that although changes are in the works, most of the exhibits date to the zoo’s founding in 1966.

Changing Standards

The nature of zoos has changed dramatically since then, when the L.A. Zoo was built on 120 acres of eucalyptus-shaded hills in Griffith Park. Even today, with its close proximity to three freeways, the quiet swaying of trees is broken only by children’s chatter and the occasional shrill of exotic birds in the afternoon shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Although it was lauded as a trend-setting zoological park when it opened and has attracted millions of visitors, the L.A. Zoo was poorly built, according to current zoo officials.

The drainage system often backs up because of design flaws. Exhibits followed the old menagerie style: a concrete island generally surrounded by a moat. Chest-high railings were all that kept visitors and their young children from falling into sometimes 30-foot-deep troughs. Animal waste often overwhelmed the zoo’s substandard sewage treatment facility and flowed into the Los Angeles River. And the animal hospital was just a tiny portable building with no sterile room to conduct surgery.

As the zoo aged into the 1980s, officials did not keep up with trends toward bigger and more natural exhibits. The zoo’s nonprofit fund-raising arm, the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn., was neither trusted by city officials nor bringing in sufficient donations, Towne said. And aside from a much-hailed condor breeding program, the zoo fell short in conservation education and promotion, a growing factor in maintaining accreditation.

“You can no longer be just a recreational facility and get away with it,” said Terry Maple, director of Zoo Atlanta and president of the American Zoo Assn. “Zoos have begun to discover new opportunities to be bigger players in the conservation movement.”

During the 1980s, federal agriculture investigators found the L.A. exhibits dirty and rodent-ridden. In the early 1990s, the zoo suffered an onslaught of bad publicity. In one incident, coyotes from the wild chaparral outside the perimeter broke through the fence and ate some pink flamingos. In another, an African bull elephant died after being sedated and placed in a crate for shipment. These and other events prompted several wealthy zoo association board members to leave, Mollinedo said.

“Visitors would ask, ‘What did you kill today?’ ” Dee said.

In 1992, veterinarian Mark Goldstein of Boston was hired to revitalize the zoo. But he often clashed with his staff on how to spend money for the park. For example, he wanted to spend bond money on a new penguin exhibit, while animal keepers wanted to use funds to improve conditions for other animals. Conditions, in general, did not improve for the zoo’s animals.

City Council President John Ferraro began hearing complaints from the zoo staff. In 1995, he and Mayor Richard Riordan invited Towne and Maple to Los Angeles, along with the director of the Cincinnati Zoo. The three were asked to assess the zoo’s problems and make recommendations for improvement. They issued a critical report, which was followed seven months later by another from the American Zoo Assn.

“It was a real dysfunctional family,” Towne said. “It was disturbing to us because L.A. was a very progressive city and the zoo wasn’t that old. But to see the condition it had sunk to . . .”

Ferraro, whose district includes the zoo, put together an ad hoc committee to address the problems. The panel recommended that the zoo split from the city Department of Recreation and Parks, and it later did so. Mollinedo, a department official with no direct experience with zoos, was hired as interim director. He came up with a list of emergency repairs, which were quickly approved by the City Council. Exhibits were revamped, trees were trimmed and pipes were replaced. The master plan was revised, and Ferraro threw his influence into the passage of both city and county bonds to fund it.

“The zoo was neglected because we didn’t put any money into it for years,” Ferraro said.

Towne called the relationship between Mollinedo and Ferraro a “political honeymoon.” Moreover, the leadership at the zoo association has changed, he said, and is working more efficiently with the zoo and city.

“I give a lot of credit to city government,” said Maple, of Zoo Atlanta. “They really faced up to the responsibility and got things going.”

Looking Ahead

Curator Dee said he has not seen so much construction during 27 years at the zoo. A new cutting-edge hospital is in the works, and the zoo now treats its waste water with a new “clarifier.” Meanwhile, Mollinedo wants to make the zoo more independent from the city, saying that political winds are fickle and that city funds could dwindle. Because the zoo is a city department, it relies on city subsidies, unlike the San Diego Zoo, which is a private nonprofit organization.

“As long as John Ferraro is our council member, we’ll have support,” Mollinedo said. “If he leaves, I don’t know what the next person will be like.”

The zoo’s master plan calls for other expansive and natural exhibits, including ones for orangutans, gorillas, sea lions and elephants. Some are already funded by bonds and money from the zoo association.

This Nov. 3 the zoo hopes to pass a $47.6-million city bond measure. Proposition CC would fund a new reptile house, a South American Rainforest exhibit, and a multilevel sea lion exhibit at a redesigned front entrance. According to the city administrative officer, Proposition CC would be repaid through a property tax, which would cost $1.89 per year for the average homeowner.

Friends of the Los Angeles River criticized the zoo for not including a better storm-runoff collection system in Proposition CC. Zoo officials said such a system was in the city budget, but was scrapped because there had been no recent spills.

On Tuesday, Riordan put on rubber boots and joined Ferraro and zoo officials to feed the sea lions in a show of support for Proposition CC.

The measure also has been endorsed by a variety of other politicians and community figures. No argument against the measure was filed for the city’s voter information pamphlet.

The sea lion project would remove the marine mammals from a much-criticized, freshwater environment and place them in a saltwater exhibit patterned after the old California coast. The sail of a wrecked clipper ship would provide shade.

The reptile house, which currently feels like a dark backyard shed, would be larger and have several levels, each one opening to a different part of the South American Rainforest exhibit.

Mollinedo, who is widely credited with the zoo’s revitalization, said that to bring attendance to its glory days of 2 million people a year, the zoo needs a steady flow of new attractions. He hopes for one a year.

“I think we can be a zoo building cutting edge exhibitry,” he said. “We hope to be able to compete with the San Diego Zoo” in four or five years.

Other coming attractions include an orangutan exhibit, funded by 1992 county Proposition A1, which is tentatively scheduled to open in 2000.

The next project, which is only partially funded, is the gorilla exhibit with a projected opening date in 2002. The chimp, orangutan and gorilla exhibits will comprise the Great Ape Forest.

Other projects in the master plan include the Pachyderm Forest, funded by 1996 county Proposition A2, and various conservation-themed projects with animals indigenous to California, such as grizzly bears, California condors, coyotes and sea otters.

Lack of Visibility

So far, the renovations and the new chimpanzee hill have not translated into increased attendance. Visitors during the 1997/1998 fiscal year numbered 1.25 million, down 90,000 from the year before. Zoo officials blame it on El Nino.

Mollinedo and other zoo officials believe that part of the zoo attendance problem is a lack of visibility. He says the 86-year-old San Diego Zoo, which has large private endowments, spends more than eight times what Los Angeles does promoting and advertising in Los Angeles County alone. His similar-sized southern rival also has more tourists, he said, and its animal keepers routinely bring exotic species on “The Tonight Show.” The L.A. Zoo never appears on the show, though it is taped just over the hill.

The L.A. Zoo’s annual budget, not including capital improvements, is $10 million, compared to $55 million for San Diego, according to the American Zoo Assn.

Experts agree that Los Angeles, as a major media center, can play a crucial role in promoting conservation.

“The city of Los Angeles should have one of the best zoos in the world,” Towne said.

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Los Angeles Zoo: A Timeline

1912: Griffith Park Zoo (collection of former circus animals) opens.

1956: $6.6 million bond measure passes to help build a new zoo.

1966: Present Los Angeles Zoo opens.

1972: Zoo accredited by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.

1984: Two giant pandas on loan from China draw large crowds at zoo.

1992: Los Angeles County voters pass Proposition A1, which includes $25 million for Chimpanzees of Mahale Mountains and Red Ape Rainforest exhibits and other projects.

February 1992: Mark Goldstein from the Boston zoo hired as zoo director.

February 1995: Consultants caution that exhibits are substandard, jeopardizing animal health. Director Goldstein resigns. Penguin exhibit closes after several deaths from disease.

March 1995: Manuel A. Mollinedo appointed new zoo director.

September 1995: The American Zoo Association warns that improvements must be made to gain reaccreditation.

November 1995: City Council decides to remove the zoo from the Department of Parks and Recreation and create independent Zoo Department.

September 1996: American Zoo Assn. gives the zoo its five-year accreditation.

November 1996: Passage of Proposition A2 by county voters gives the zoo $12 million for phase one of Pachyderm Forest. City voters also approve Proposition K, generating $11 million for zoo’s educational Discovery Center.

September 1996: The American Zoo Association gives the zoo its five-year reaccreditation.

July 1997: Zoo becomes its own city department.

Aug. 1998: Chimpanzees of Mahale Mountains exhibit opens.

2000: Projected completion of Orangutan Exhibit and Health Center, both funded by Proposition A1.

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Sources: Los Angeles Zoo; Times files and Times photos