Missing the zoo already

Dec. 7, 2005

I, for one, will miss the zoo.  And it‘s a sure bet that a lot of parents and kids are going to miss it too when the Clinch Park Zoo closes forever in Traverse City next year.
Each fall, I visit the zoo just to see the bears.  They‘re always as fat as Volkswagens, getting ready for their long winter doze.  Fall is a good time to go because most every critter in the place is out and looking frisky.
The other thing you see at the zoo is kids -- lots of kids running excitedly between the otters, beaver and coyote exhibits with their young parents in tow.  Having the time of their lives.
It‘s easy to understand why the city commission voted 7-5 to close the zoo.  According to an independent study, our zoo isn‘t up to snuff.  It‘s too close to the traffic along the Parkway and the animal‘s living quarters aren‘t as spacious as could be desired.  And it costs $400,000 per year to operate.
But did anyone consider the kids? I‘ve seldom heard them mentioned in this debate.
And is Traverse City‘s zoo really that bad?  It‘s certainly better than the Central Park Zoo in Manhattan, the Beijing Zoo, and a lot of other zoos out there.  And its exhibits seem on par with the nearest zoo in Michigan, being John Ball Park in Grand Rapids.   I‘ve visited big-name zoos in San Diego, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis and have found them lacking in some ways compared to the little operation we have on West Bay.  They lack the homey quality that‘s at the heart of our zoo,  and the vast hordes of people they draw must certainly be stressful on their animals.
Visit the zoo and you may find the wolf looking rather worried, and the cougar a bit stressed.  But one suspects it‘s because these animals lack companionship rather than because they‘re irritated by local traffic.  The eagles, admittedly, look like they need a better aerie, buried in a box of branches as they are; but the rest of the animals have always looked fairly content to me.
And when you see a zookeeper feeding a playful coyote by hand, you realize that our zoo does have one important quality going for it -- love -- a love which is evident in the care of the animals-- all of which are rehab cases unable to live in the wild.  
Of course, many of us wish that the zoo could be relocated to a bigger, better site and that some private concern would pick up the bill.  But, as noted by Richard Griffin, past president and a current board member of the Grand Traverse Zoological Society, it seems unlikely that a private company is going to swoop in to set up what is essentially a money-losing business.  Then there‘s the whole NIMBY thing, and the inevitable battle of where a new zoo would be located.
Griffin notes that generally, only municipalities have the wherewithal to establish and maintain zoos.  Zoos benefit a community in immeasurable, soul-nourishing ways -- bringing in tourists or enriching the lives of local residents, especially children.  
But who has the $10 million or whatever it will take to create a new zoo?  A private animal park established outside Vanderbilt in the late ‘80s couldn‘t overcome its expenses and soon failed. 
Animal rights activists opposed to the Clinch Park Zoo really shot themselves in the foot on this one by missing the importance of zoos in shaping the minds of chldren. For years, people who claimed a concern for the animals have badmouthed the zoo, planting the seed that it‘s just no good.  That seed took root in the minds of many residents and now it has bourne fruit: no more zoo.
But a zoo is the only place where kids can have a face-to-face encounter with a wild animal. Otherwise, their only experience with wildlife is via TV or the movies.  And in the mass media, the message tends to be relentless and predictable: that wild animals are violent, unpredictable, dangerous and need to be exterminated.  That‘s the unfortunate lesson a misguided concern for animal rights is going to produce with the closing of our zoo: generations of local kids who‘ll be informed by films such as “Anaconda II“ or cartoons such as “Shark Tale,“ rather than by their own eyes.  
When you watch those excited kids running around the zoo, high on life from seeing the animals, you wonder, what if the kids had been voting, instead of the city commission?  What if their young parents had voted on the fate of the zoo?
When the zoo closes and turns into yet another dreary parking lot or a building to serve rich boaters, it‘s true that we‘ll have put the animals out of the misery we imagine them to be in.  But we‘ll also end the laughter of little voices at the zoo by the bay.  And we‘ll shave a large chunk off the soul of Traverse City.  
Wouldn‘t it be wiser to keep the zoo open until we build a new one?