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This director may not be what you feel a director ought to be, but she appears to be the director this zoo needs and is able to have today. The "new" director had to be able to pull the existing staff together, make the zoo attractive to new staff, keep the Board and potential doners feeling that the zoo had a future, all the while trying to raise funds to improve the zoo and keep visitors coming in. Not an enviable agenda! Has she failed???
The previous director came to the SFZoo at a time when they were looking for a star to turn things around. Sadly, that did not work out. Perhaps a different, more low key approach will have better results.
I think that zoo directors can come from many places. There are fantastic zoo directors that were exhibit designers, park commissioners, etc.
My criticism of the San Francisco Zoo is that they have had DECADES of mismanagement and neglect that has now resulted in the worst zoo accident in modern memory. There were plans to build new ape and elephants in the early 1990s that never got funded. When the zoo DID get massive funding they used it to build a large African savanna exhibit, that while very nice looking, did NOTHING to address the critical needs that they really should have invested in (i.e., replacing their truly primitive and s****y elephant, rhino, hippo, big cat, bear, primate, great ape exhibits, aviary, etc, etc, etc.) Their giraffe exhibit wasn't great, but it certainly wasn't in the desperate shape that much of the rest of the zoo is. I don't know whose fault this was, ultimately I guess the city of San Francisco, because they weren't demanding the high quality zoo that they were spending lots of money supposedly rebuilding.
I wish the new director luck and I truly hope that she is able to turn the place around. Manuel Molliendo was a great zoo director, at least down here in LA. He did not have a zoo background, but did great work in fixing a broken zoo. Unfortunately it seems that SF Zoo was so fundamentally broken that his best efforts couldn't fix it. There were others before him who no doubt tried to fix it too.
Maybe San Francisco doesn't truly want or need a zoo. They certainly haven't treated it with the same respect or care that has been given to their other cultural institutions like the art museums, California Academy of Sciences, etc. There is another progressive, much better zoo down the freeway in Oakland.
Part of the reason that the new director does not leave me feeling hopeful about the zoo is that the priorities listed for the zoo in the article seem to still avoid any meaningful changes in the zoo. The top listed priority is a PLAYGROUND, of which the zoo already has several.
At a minimum the zoo IMHO (my opinion and $37.00 will buy you a decent cup of coffee) needs to:
1. Tear down the cat house and build a modern cat facility.
2. Tear down the bear grottoes and build a modern polar bear exhibit.
3. Send the chimps to a chimp sanctuary or another zoo and bulldoze the old ape exhibits out of existence.
4. Fix the miserable mess that the "new" (from 1985) primate complex has become with its shamefully neglected and destroyed education gallery, nocturnal hall, etc.
5. Bulldoze the miserably outdated elephant(less) house.
6. Build some decent aviaries.
Once all those things are done then MAYBE San Francisco would be a zoo worth visiting and getting excited about. Until then all of the remodels of the zoo's tropical exhibit (the WPA era walk-through bird aviary) and playgrounds in the world, the apparent plans for the zoo's current fundraising campaign, won't fix this zoo.
