May 28, 2008
SF Zoo To Win America's Best Zoo Award of 2008?
The Intrepid Travel, some sort of online travel guide -- one that clearly has no access to the internets, TV, newspapers, phones, water coolers -- is bestowing the SF Zoo (along with 60 others) with the title of Best Zoo of 2008. Yes. Yes, they are. While the title of Most Interesting Zoo of 2008 seems appropriate, we still can't figure out if this is some sort of joke. Here's part of the remarkable press release:
(Branford, CT) The San Francisco Zoo is one of sixty to be honored as one of "America's Best Zoos 2008" by The Intrepid Traveler, a travel publisher located in Branford, CT.The zoo was cited for its diverse animal collection, special programs for visitors, knowledgeable and committed staff, and excellent exhibits. Among the must-sees: African Savanna, which lets visitors view animals from within the middle of the habitat after entering through a tunnel and emerging on a bridge inside a wraparound African panorama, and Primate Discovery Center, where animal lovers can view some of the rarest and most endangered monkeys in the world.
The San Francisco Zoo was selected for the award by Allen W. Nyhuis and Jon Wassner, co-authors of?America's Best Zoos: A Travel Guide for Fans and Families?(?2008, The Intrepid Traveler, $15.95). Nyhuis, a statistician and father of four who has visited over 200 zoos worldwide, and Wassner, a former zookeeper, note that the zoo's many attractions also include the attractive six-acre Children's Zoo. Looking ahead, the two encourage visitors to keep an eye out for a new state-of-the-art rhino and hippo exhibit, scheduled to open in the zoo later this year.
If you recall, last December Tatiana the Tiger sprang forth from her grotto and mauled to death Carlos Sousa Jr. and then injured the rapscallion Dhaliwal brothers.
Also: what?
| 
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
Best Zoo? Even after it killed someone? If you build a zoo with a deficient height wall to keep the tigers in, you should deserve the award for stupidity.
Must be the same jury who voted Brock best blogger. Ha, ha, ha, couldn't resist it, but don't mean it.
In other news:
Zeitgeist voted Best Bathrooms
Too harsh. Those injured in December were baiting the tiger and being idiots in general, remember? The SF Zoo is one of the only zoos to have as many excellent child and teenage education programs as it does. It's got an amazing animal collection and facility for being a public zoo (for example, the wonderful San Diego Zoo is privately owned), and puts a lot of effort into animal conservation. If you haven't been lately, next Wednesday is free day!
Cmon now SFist, recognize and show some pride!
The San Francisco Zoo is a slum filled with unhappy animals. The reason the tiger escaped was that an antiquated exhibit had an improperly low wall.
I like zoos, but not this one. Free day or not, I'd rather not go there.
Best Zoo? Even after it killed someone?
That's not a bug. That's a feature.
Someone should get them this T-Shirt...
http://www.prankplace.com/tshirts_sfzoo.htm
Consider the source: the INTREPID Traveler.
intrepid (adj.): fearless, unafraid, undaunted
Maybe their point was that all those other zoos suck because they are all "safe and peaceful."
Perhaps the other zoos in the top sixty (?!) also had maulings, making them also adventurous?
This zoo fails on weather alone!
Johanna, I was at the zoo many times when my kids were little in the 1980's, I always saw people taunting the animals. Some would say having them in a zoo is taunting on it's own. That doesn't address the fact that they had to admit the wall was too low.
And let's not forget the elephants that were videotaped being beaten. And that's just what they were caught doing.
I think zoos are a bad idea, sorry.
Besides, that was 2007.
Perhaps the fact that the SF Zoo is up for this award reflects more upon the state of zoos in general than upon the state of our little zoo in particular. Maybe the SF Zoo is among the top 60. Isn't that saying something?
How many Zoos can this country have, really? I'm guessing 60 on the nose.
OK, guess what? This is Allen, one of the authors of the above-mentioned book. Let me respond to some of this criticism.
Please understand that our selection of the San Francisco Zoo as one of the SIXTY best in America was actually made before the Christmas tiger tragedy. This choice was made based on the Zoo's large animal collection, its more than one million annual visitors, and, after a personal visit by me (Mr. Nyhuis) in 2007. The fact is, it does have some excellent exhibits -- African Savanna, Grizzly Gulch, Lemur Forest, and yes, one of the nation's finest Children's Zoos. Does the Zoo have some problems? Certainly! But on that same 2007 visit, I noted they were already addressing some of its worst problems, with the new Rhino/Hippo exhibit under construction.
When the tragedy happened, our book was already in the process of going to the printer. There was some brief talk among us of stopping the press and reevaluating the SF Zoo's place in our book. But after consulting with some members of the national zoo community (including one zoo director), we felt assured the leadership of the SF Zoo would thoroughly fix any flaws that had contributed to this tragedy. Apparently, that has already happened. Finally, it should be noted that this terrible event was the FIRST TIME in recorded history that a zoo visitor has been killed by a zoo animal. The rarity of this event should help assure that it is highly, highly unlikely to happen again.
If you already hate zoos, I can't help you. But then again, you were never going to buy our book anyways. Thanks for listening.
Not even counting the maulings (I last visited before then) I found the zoo to be pretty poor and rather on the small side.
The animal collection isn't particularly diverse with a vast amount of space being devoted to only a few animals. Yes, the lemur exhibit might be huge and doing something important, but let's face it... I only need to see so many lemurs. It's far too big and too much of a waste of space when I could be seeing other animals instead.
The complaints about unhappy animals are right. A large number of the enclosures were old, unpleasant looking concrete structures that were largely empty and pitiful.
It looked like the zoo has thrown a bunch of money and effort into putting in a few very narrow, but large new areas in while ignoring a crumbling older section. If you really love seeing giraffes or lemurs those sections are probably great, but there's not much else there (I visited while Grizzly Gulch was under construction).
Incidentally did nobody notice that the eagles were moved out of the way to make room for those godless killing machines: bears? Is this what should be expected from our America-hating liberal enclave? Was our rearing of Stephen Colbert Jr. all a calculated lie when we'd give away his habitat to bears? I fully expect an investigative report on the Report.
Let me explain a bit further. We chose the SF Zoo as one of the USA's "60 best". That does NOT mean it's in our Top 10 or even Top 20. Quite honestly, far from that. By the way, we also chose the Oakland Zoo, which hopefully many of you agree is very nice!
While it's easy to pick out the Zoo's deficiencies, there ARE some very strong points. In addition to the above-mentioned Grizzly Gulch, Lemur Forest, African Savanna, and highly-rated Children's Zoo, consider some of the rare animals on exhibit. Your zoo is one of only 9 in the nation to exhibit koalas, which are probably the second-most popular zoo animal (after pandas). Almost as popular, however, are gorillas. They are seen in a few more zoos, but not a lot -- and SF Zoo has a nice display of them. A major deal for me was your mountain tapirs, one of the rarest animals on earth (less than 200 left on the planet). Your zoo is one of only 3 where you can see these interesting, hairy tapirs from the Andes mountains. There also are interesting exhibits of rare monkeys and rarely-seen small cats.