In This Issue

I SPEND A lot of time at our spanking new privatized zoo. (I know, I know, I think they should shut it down and let all of the poor beasts go too, but I have a three-year-old, and when you have a three-year-old who loves animals, you go to the zoo. Besides, the bug house is very cool, and the spiderweb playground outside it is a little-boy paradise).

So I was a little startled when Savannah Blackwell told me that the zoo was laying off staff and that animal care was being cut back even further.

The last time I was there, a couple of weeks ago, the place was packed. By 10:30 a.m., just half an hour after the place opened, there were long lines at the admission window. The fancy, new souvenir store is generally packed with people buying overpriced trinkets. The new Leaping Lemur Café, with its expensive glass and wood and soaring ceiling and food that costs way too much for a zoo (where the visitors who you worry about feeding are generally under 10 years old and just want a hot dog anyway) is always so full it's hard to find a place to sit down. They've started charging $4 for parking. And didn't the city pass a $48 million bond act for the zoo – a huge sum of public money?

What are they doing with all of the loot?

Well, they aren't spending it on the animals. As Blackwell reports on page 16, the lone surviving orangutan still lives in a nasty concrete pen (my son and I usually walk by that area quickly; it's not a pleasant sight). The poor polar bear still lives in what looks like a depression-era bunker. Instead of building a quarantine area for sick animals, they built a storage facility to hold extra T-shirts and gear for the souvenir store.

In other words, all of the stuff they promised to do with the bond money – changes that would have helped the animals – have been delayed to build glitzy new structures that nobody really needs.

This is exactly what happens when you turn over a public facility to a private outfit. The priorities get all screwed up. At the zoo these days, it's all about marketing. And if you happen to be one of the creatures unfortunate enough to live there, it isn't helping you at all.