PORTLAND — For Bob Lee, the goal is pretty simple: keep the animals in a state of blissful ignorance.
The Oregon Zoo, where Lee works as a general curator, has been shut down for more than two months. The paths leading to Elephant Lands are empty. The sea otters in the Pacific Shores exhibit swim in relative silence. The windows and fences, usually lined with eager zoo goers, are vacant.
But the feedings and care the animals need hasn’t changed, Lee said, even as the coronavirus has forced the closure of thousands of businesses across the state and around the world.
“We didn’t want them to be impacted by what’s going on in the world around them,” Lee said. “We didn’t want them to feel the stress that the rest of us are feeling.”
The story is different for the people who keep the zoo running: the keepers and curators and cooks and cleaning staff. The zoo usually makes the majority of its revenue from ticket sales and events. It’s been more than 70 days since the last guests walked through the gates in Portland’s wooded west hills and Sheri Horizsny, deputy director at the zoo, has had to make some painful decisions.
“We thought about which parts are critical and which parts are only important,” she said. A quarter of the zoo’s full-time staff has been laid off, as well as about 200 part-time workers.
“At the end of the day, it’s still people that you know and care about. For a while it felt like a crisis that would end quickly, then it goes on and on and it starts to feel surreal.”
Zoos struggling worldwide
Like every other business that relies on large gatherings of people, zoos across the globe have been hit hard by the pandemic. In March, more than 90 percent of zoos around the world were closed to visitors as stay-home measures were put in place.
But just because the gates were closed and ticket windows shuttered, the appetites and care needs of the animals remained. With supply chains under increasing strain, some zoos have had to take drastic measures.
Giant pandas Er Shun and Da Mao arrived at the Calgary Zoo in Canada’s Alberta province in 2014 as part of a 10-year agreement with China. Their diet consists almost entirely of bamboo, and each bear consumes almost 90 pounds of the fibrous trees per day, delivered fresh from China. As flights from Asia were cancelled, administrators at the zoo grew concerned that, without much notice, they could be cut off from the only food source for the bears. It was decided the pandas needed to return home to China, where bamboo was plentiful and easy to come by.
A zookeeper in Germany told a local newspaper that, in a worst-case scenario, they would have to consider putting down some animals if they were unable to feed them. “If it comes to it, I’ll have to euthanize animals, rather than let them starve,” she said, according to the BBC. “At the worst, we would have to feed some of the animals to others.”
The Oregon Zoo hasn’t faced anything as dire as Calgary and hasn’t considered anything as dramatic as euthanization, Horizsny said.
“That is very extreme,” she said. “In all our planning, we haven’t gotten to that place. None of us are having those conversations.”
But feeding the 2,500 animals that live at the zoo has still proved challenging. Horizsny likens the situation to a dinner party with thousands of guests, each with their own unique dietary restrictions. It’s a complex operation under ideal conditions. The bats need fresh fruit, and the marine mammals need expensive fish, regardless of whether paying customers are there to watch them eat.
Roughly 60%of the zoo’s revenue comes from ticket sales and events and the facility takes in 38% of that in just three high-traffic months: July, August and December. Under normal circumstances, it costs more $120,000 a day to run the zoo, and if it remains closed and is unable to find any other sources of cash, Horizsny said they will run out of money by September.
The Oregon Zoo is funded by Metro, a regional planning agency that also oversees the Oregon Convention Center, Keller Auditorium and other venues. Nick Christensen, a spokesman for the agency, said officials are “continuing to work on ways to make sure the Oregon Zoo is offering the highest level of care to its animals while ensuring the health of staff.”
“This is perhaps the most challenging period in the Oregon Zoo’s history,” Christensen said.x
As most counties in Oregon begin to allow some businesses to reopen, Horizsny hopes it won’t come to that. Committees have been formed and plans are being drawn up for when guests are allowed back at the zoo. But Horzsny said that even when guests are allowed back, it’s unclear what restrictions they’ll face and what impact that will have on the zoo’s bottom line.
“Just being open isn’t going to cover it,” she said.
A zoo reimagined
For Lee, the curator, his focus has been on the animals. After a Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo tested positive for the virus in April, worries spread that captive animals could be at risk for the disease. Fortunately though, no animals at the Oregon Zoo have shown any symptoms of the virus. Still, animal care teams have been split in half to reduce contact between keepers and the animals themselves.
Some animals have been led on “field trips” around the zoo, with armadillos and flamingos enjoying the sun on the lawn near the zoo’s amphitheater. Nacho and Goat, a pair of Humboldt penguins, went for a “hike” in the woods and paid visits to the harbor seals. Many of the animals don’t seem to have noticed much of a difference from the times before the zoo was shuttered.
But even with the zoo posting almost-daily updates on the animals to YouTube and Facebook, Lee said the lack of guests has the zoo’s mission unfulfilled.
“So much of what we do is about making connections,” he said. “Between us and the guests, but also between guests and the animals.”
Lee is part of the group that is planning for the return of zoo visitors. Much of what they have in mind will sound familiar to anyone who has visited a grocery store or park since restrictions have started easing. They will likely put in place a one-way route through the zoo. Personal protective equipment will be encouraged and hand-sanitizing stations will be put in. Keeper talks and scheduled feeding times, where folks tend to congregate, will be cancelled.
The shutdown happened in stages, and Lee thinks it’s likely the reopening will happen in a similar fashion, with plans adjusted as it becomes clear what works and what doesn’t, taking into account guidance from public health officials.
It’s unclear when Multnomah County, where the zoo is located, will apply for permission to ease distancing restrictions, but it can’t come soon enough for Lee.
“We want people to feel safe,” he said. “The fact that we’re in this together, but that we have to stay distant at the same time, it’s antithetical to everything we want to do, to reach out and give a hug or a handshake. That first step, opening those doors to guests, will be a huge deal.”
