6/4/2013
Karen Fifield is a storyteller, but not your typical storyteller. Instead of words, the chief executive of Wellington Zoo uses animals, vegetation and props to tell stories.
The stories she tells are about the zoo's 500 inhabitants and their counterparts in the wild, many threatened with extinction by human sprawl.
To Fifield, a newly hatched Kiwi with a hearty laugh and a pronounced Australian accent, a zoo visit is not just an opportunity to collect an entrance fee, and a hands-on encounter with a lion, meerkat, cheetah, giraffe or red panda is not just a commercial product. Both present an opportunity to advocate on behalf of the natural world.
Few zoo visitors will get to see Sumatran tigers or Malayan sun bears in the wild, but all can make a difference to their habitat. Hence the sign in front of the zoo's tiger enclosure. Listed under the heading ''tiger unfriendly wood'' are kwila, teak, mahogany; listed under the heading ''tiger friendly wood'' are douglas fir, redwood, New Zealand pine, ash, blackwood, macrocarpa. The message is simple, but effective. Buy furniture and decking timber made from tropical hardwoods and you are putting endangered species at further risk by contributing to the destruction of their natural habitat. Buy furniture made from other timbers and you are not.
''It's about joining the dots,'' says Fifield. She's standing in the zoo's bamboo-rimmed ''Asia Precinct'' gazing at the sun bear enclosure.
''These animals,'' she says, gesturing towards the den in which father and daughter Sean and Sasa are sheltering from the first cold wind of autumn, ''have great lives. They are well cared for and they have access to veterinary services, but it's tough out in the wild. If you are a sun bear your habitat is being destroyed, the pet trade is rampant, bear bile farming still exists.
''So, if we can make people aware of how important it is to do the right thing by animals, we can make a huge difference.''
Fifield, a former geography teacher, was appointed chief executive of the zoo 6 1/2 years ago. At the time it was in a ''dire'' state due to decades of underfunding.
Animals were getting sick because of their poor living conditions and staff safety was being compromised. In the enclosure that was being used to house the sun bears, staff could not gain a clear view of the dens before entering to clean them. The tree-climbing bears, meanwhile, were being kept in an enclosure built in the 1920s for polar bears.
''It's a bit like your house,'' says Fifield. ''If you build your house and never do any work on it it starts to fall apart, so that's what was happening.''
Today, the zoo is almost unrecognisable. Staff are welcoming and engaged, animals are better housed in more natural settings and displays are complemented by modern storytelling methods that include large screens on which visitors can watch video footage of keepers and vets talking about their charges.
Not surprisingly, visitor numbers are up. Last year a record 216,657 people walked through the zoo's turnstiles, almost 20 per cent more than when Fifield took over, and this year numbers are 10 per cent ahead of where they were at the same time last year.
Critical to the transformation has been the injection of an extra $15 million into the zoo by its owner, Wellington City Council. Together with sponsorship secured by the zoo's independent board, the extra funding has paid for the groundbreaking new animal hospital, The Nest; a bird-breeding facility; roomy new living quarters for the zoo's chimpanzees; a theatre; a new function centre; and the Asia Precinct to which Fifield is hoping, in the not too distant future, to add snow leopards.
Discussions over the extra funding were well-advanced before Fifield crossed the Tasman, but former Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast says there were no guarantees council would stump up the extra money. At the time of Fifield's appointment, some councillors were still questioning the wisdom of even having a zoo in the capital. It was, says the former mayor, Fifield's vision and strategy that convinced the council to write the cheques.
The strategy was to make Wellington an ''innovative and funky'' zoo, but Fifield also had to convince councillors the zoo could achieve its goals on what was, by international standards, an extremely modest sum of cash. The $15 million the council agreed to inject is less than a quarter of the $65m Sydney's Taronga Zoo spent on a single exhibit - its Great Southern Oceans display.
Fifield has exceeded expectations. She has not only breathed new life into the zoo, she has also operated within the strict financial parameters set by the council. (Council sources say it was her ability to run a successful operation on a tight budget that persuaded the current council to consider creating a new organisation to run the zoo, the financially troubled Zealandia, the Botanic Gardens and Otari-Wilton's Bush. The idea was only abandoned when the volunteers who do much of the work at Zealandia threatened to withdraw their labour.)
Fifield has turned what had previously been perceived as a weakness of the zoo - its relatively small size - into a strength. Wellington will never be able to match the range of attractions available at a Taronga or a San Diego zoo, but with just 62 staff it is able to be more innovative and more nimble than much bigger zoos.
Take, for example, The Nest, built for a cost of $6m to replace the antiquated old animal hospital once described by Fifield's predecessor, Alison Lash, as a ''broom cupboard with an ironing-board operating table''.
The Nest is spacious, well-lit and equipped with equipment that would not look out of place in a human operating theatre but, more than that, it has big exterior windows that allow the public to watch vets perform complex operations as well as routine checkups and an intercom system that allows visitors to ask questions of zoo staff as they work. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.
The aim, says Fifield, is to show the public the inner workings of a zoo. ''We don't hide anything. We are not ashamed of how we look after our animals. We are actually proud of what we do. We want everything on display. ''We want to give people access to the magical world that is zoos - all the stuff that has caused people to work in zoos for years and years.''
Fifield is a country girl at heart. She grew up in Muswellbrook in New South Wales, where her father ran the local post office.
Her origins help explain why she uses the first person person plural ''we'' when she talks of Wellington (''I don't think we should ever apologise for Wellington's weather. I think it's just wonderful'') and why last year she took New Zealand citizenship.
''When I landed here I never ever thought that I would fall in love with this city and I actually have fallen in love with it. I love it. I miss it when I'm not here. I think it's the fact that everyone knows everyone, everyone is so welcoming, it's a real community feeling in this town.''
As a child, Fifield wanted to be a vet because she loved animals, but she ended up becoming a teacher because she liked people.
Twenty-two years ago, her love and her like came together when she took a teaching job at Sydney's Taronga Zoo. She spent 10 years there, finishing as the education manager for both the Taronga and Western Plains zoos, before departing for Melbourne to become director of discovery and learning for Zoos Victoria. There she oversaw building projects, school programmes, website development and community programmes at the Melbourne Zoo, the Healesville Sanctuary and Werribee Open Range Zoo.
Coming to Wellington happened by accident. She had actually moved back to Sydney to work first for an insurance company and then a charity after the death of her husband, Garry Crossley, from cancer, when her predecessor at Wellington Zoo, also a friend, told her she was resigning and suggested she apply for the job.
Fifield, who has one son, an actor, was unsure what to do, but took the plunge.
''It's the best decision I ever made,'' says the 58-year-old who shares her Wellington home with three pet dogs that ''she loves to bits'' and, when she's not evangelising on behalf of the zoo, enjoys dining out with friends, going to the movies and travelling.''If I can jump on a plane and go somewhere, I will.''
At some point in the future she can see herself working for one of the overseas-based animal welfare organisations with which the zoo has forged links, but for the next few years, she says she's got her hands full completing the zoo's capital upgrade.
Construction on the next stage of the zoo's development, ''Meet the locals'', is due to begin in October. Fifield describes it as a ''love story for New Zealand''. It will feature a penguin display, a forested area, a kea walk-through and a sustainable farm.''I want kids getting dirty,'' Fifield says. ''Kids don't get dirty enough. I want them to plant vegetables and harvest vegetables and get their gummies on and go and muck out the pigs.''
After that she has set her sights on bringing snow leopards and Tasmanian devils to the capital, the latter to help Australian zoos cope with the effects of a virally transmitted facial cancer that is moving across Tasmania.
As always, money is a constant check on the zoo's ambitions. However, Fifield has grown accustomed to the Kiwi way of making do with little. ''We don't mind budget constraints because they make you decide what you really want. We don't waste money. We are very frugal and we are very decisive about how we spend money.
''With all of our projects we look at our three customers - visitors, staff and animals - and we try to make sure that all of those customers are in a better place than they were before the project.''
However, if anyone wants to donate several million dollars to the zoo, she knows how she would spend it. Once the snow leopards' and Tasmanian devils' enclosures have been built, she would redo the zoo entrance to cope with the growing visitor numbers.
''We don't have enough toilets, the retail shop is in the wrong place, there is too much happening at the front counter. It breaks all the rules in terms of bringing people into a visitor facility. What happens is we funnel them through and then they hit a wall and they have got to go up a hill. It's really awful. It needs to be nice and open.''
Fifield laughs. It's late and the interview has run over time. She adjusts her red-framed glasses, dons an overcoat shot through with pink and shows her visitor out.
In the dusk she looks a little like one of the brightly coloured Australian parrots now housed in the enclosure into which the zoo's chimpanzees were once squeezed. Things are looking up for the chimps and the zoo.
