Tijuana’s Accidental Zoo

Parrots sold on street corners. Pythons stuffed in a smuggler’s backpack. A tiger that outgrew his owner’s backyard.

Confiscated and cast aside, animals such as these have found a home in an accidental zoo that has sprung up in Tijuana’s largest park, where a unique collection of creatures rescued from the border’s black market has been quietly growing.

The two-acre facility got its start in Parque Morelos back in 1995, when Mexican environmental inspectors dropped off several cages full of parrots taken from vendors who lacked permits for the birds. The next year, authorities brought in Nala, a lion cub found in the back of a car in Mexicali. Then the local police handed over an albino Burmese python named Yuri that had been used in an act by a table dancer.

Before long, Tijuana had its first public zoo. The city hired a biologist and a veterinarian to handle the growing menagerie.

Bit by bit, the city erected large green cages for the animals alongside a small pond in this 148-acre swath of open land that serves as the city’s Central Park.

The thousands of visitors who flock there every weekend now get an up-close view of exotic animals for their 50-cent park entry fee.

“The zoo really came about in an accidental manner,” said Raul Hinostroza, a spokesman for the city park system. “The city wasn’t planning on starting one, but they needed a place to put all these animals.”

In some ways, the unintended zoo is the natural byproduct of a border culture where contraband is rampant. The majority of the 246 creatures housed at Parque Morelos were taken from smugglers and street vendors.

Other animals have been donated by people who could no longer care for them, such as the family who tried unsuccessfully to adopt a raccoon named Charlie that they found in the mountains.

The Tijuana zoo lacks the lush landscaping and elaborate exhibits of the highly regarded San Diego Zoo north of the border. The animals are kept in simple cages just a few steps from the walkways used by visitors. A few rudimentary signs explain what the creatures are.

But city and federal officials say the facility is safe and clean, a refuge for animals that have been abused and abandoned.

And the assortment of creatures does not fail to impress local visitors.

On a recent afternoon, a gaggle of young boys gaped at a 3-year-old Siberian tiger named Billy playfully batting his declawed paw at a zoo employee.

As the tiger turned and loped to the front of his cage, the children scattered, squealing in delight. The large cat was donated to the zoo by a wealthy Tijuana man who had rescued it from a circus, then realized the animal needed more space.

“He’s beautiful,” said first-time visitor Olivia Lopez, 19. “I never knew this place was here before. It’s so pretty.”

Nearby, a dozen parrots in rainbow sherbet hues dipped and danced through trees in a large enclosure. Four pygmy foxes curled up in a sunny patch on the cement floor of their cage.

“A lot of the animals were suffering and/or badly treated before they got there,” said Guillermo Lopez Reyes, assistant regional director of the federal environmental protection agency, whose inspectors confiscated many of the animals now housed at the zoo.

Several falcons were brought in with damaged wings after being pelted and shot. The Burmese python was sickly from its tenure in a smoky strip club.

Other animals arrived malnourished and dehydrated, neglected by owners who didn’t know the appropriate diet for wildlife.

Veterinarian Carla Coss y Leon fusses over all of them, nursing the animals back to health in hopes that they can be returned to their original habitats. Those that can’t remain at the zoo on exhibit.

“I feel like I have an obligation to help them, because many of them are disappearing,” Coss y Leon said on a recent afternoon, as she scratched the back of Nala, a friendly lioness who rubbed up against the bars of the cage for a pat.

The zoo has become a way station of sorts for endangered animals, especially birds that have been captured in the jungles of Central and South America.

Mexican officials discover many being sold illegally on street corners or in pet stores. At least once a month, U.S. officials find sedated parrots hidden inside clothes or vehicles of people trying to cross the border in San Ysidro.

Animals confiscated in the U.S. are quarantined and put up for auction. Because the Mexican environmental agency doesn’t have its own facility for animals, the creatures found south of the border are sent to places like the Tijuana zoo, where Coss y Leon takes over their care.

In her small office, the veterinarian keeps an eye on a few of the animals too sick or nervous to be on public display. A shy owl monkey with luminous yellow eyes peeks out at visitors from under a green blanket. Above him, a sickly parrot with scruffy gray feathers clings to the top of the cage.

“We don’t care what they bring,” Coss y Leon said. “We’re just happy to take them, and do what we can.”

The zoo can’t take every homeless creature. Last year, Mexican officials confiscated seven sick lions from a traveling circus, but Coss y Leon didn’t have the space to house them. The cats were distributed to other zoos in Baja California, including a private one in Tijuana run by wealthy racetrack owner Jorge Hank Rhon.

Coss y Leon hopes to expand the Parque Morelos zoo, starting with a larger cage for Billy the tiger. Eventually, she wants to build a full-scale animal hospital at the park so she won’t have to rely on help from outside animal specialists.

Workers are already digging the foundation of what will be a petting zoo for children, a place she envisions will help the young people of Tijuana learn to appreciate the animal kingdom.

“We want to teach children to learn how to care for an animal, both the pets in their home and wildlife, so when they see one they won’t want to hurt it,” she said. “And who knows? Maybe their parents will learn something, as well.”