Here is an article on the resigns without a paywall:
In Power Struggle at SF Zoo, Embattled CEO Appears to Come Out on Top | KQED
San Francisco Zoo San Francisco Zoo News 2025
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In Power Struggle at SF Zoo, Embattled CEO Appears to Come Out on Top | KQED
Yikes. All the staff remaining anonymous for fear of retaliation says plenty, not for nothing has there been a long standing petition to remove her. Also the fact the only good things the person at the end could say about the director is an award winning playground and the nowhere to be seen pandas? Get Peterson out of there already, her own staff say the place is falling apart... they already voted no confidence twice last year...
The Zoo has failed to provide that necessary documents for the city sponsored audit which started 6-months ago.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/zoo-city-criticism-20354057.php
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/zoo-city-criticism-20354057.php
Seems like they're a circus rather than a zoo...
They really need a good reality check at this point.
SF Zoo has had a fairly troubled history for at least the last 25-30 years or so. Everything is now blowing up in their face is all. They maintained the wrong director too long.
It may be pure coincidence, but I have noticed a number of SSP's moving genetically valuable animals or pairs they want to breed out of SF and sending them elsewhere the last couple years. Often the species isn't replaced or when they are, it's typically with an individual that isn't very valuable to the SSP. I have no proof whatsoever that it's deliberate, but I can't help wondering since SF doesn't seem to manage to breed much of anything these days.
This feels like, as the kids would say, "throwing some mad shade."
But fr, I think it's indicative of how the city of SF itself is managed given what I've read about the place aka. an absolute mess
Their problems go way back, at least to the 1980s. The director who built the primate center resigned in disgrace for mismanagement. The zoo had plans to build new elephant and ape exhibits as far back as the early 1990s that never happened, despite a massive funding influx. That mismanagement cost them their elephants. The ape exhibits are still a disgrace, compounded by deciding to bring orangutans back.
Manuel Moliendo was a great zoo director who saved the LA Zoo from its decaying state, and the San Francisco Zoo ate him and spit him out after the tiger disaster.
The place is cursed.
So, to my understanding, after these events, Peterson isn't leaving the San Francisco Zoo unless she chooses to leave?
Is there anywhere I could find more information on this? Sounds like some fascinating stuff.
Unclear, far as I'm aware. However, the ice underneath her is getting steadily thinner with how things are going. Whether the city itself can oust her due to the zoo being city owned I don't know but probably a possibility. The staff has been calling for her removal so I think it's only a matter of time now. With the continued falling afoul of the city something is going to be forced sooner or later.
The Board of Supervisors, who have been administering the audit, have sent Tanya Peterson a letter in response to zoos withholding of necessary documents. They have threatened to exercise subpoena power if the zoo continues to not comply. In the letter Dan Goncher, who is in charge of the audit, described a meeting with Peterson. The goal of the meeting was to go over the process and which documents were needed. However, Peterson “disregarded our meeting agenda” instead giving a lengthy history of the zoo, “After over 90 minutes, I interjected so that we could discuss our agenda items at which point you informed us that zoo management would not be cooperating with the audit until further notice”.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-auditors-blast-uncooperative-20359328.php
(I couldn’t find a free source for this yet)
Mollinedo could've handled the elephant drama better.
[URL="https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/S-F-Zoo-s-history-of-mismanagement-morale-down-3299116.php"]S.F. Zoo's history of mismanagement; morale down under new director[/URL]
Mollinedo did some good projects, like the Grizzly Gulch Exhibit during his tenure.
But he angered both the AZA and Animals rights activists by dragging his feet in figuring out what to do with the zoos remaining elephants.
That article doesn't make Mollinedo look very good, and maybe the criticism is valid. The article also notes that he was taking over a badly run zoo with decades of mismanagement. He mostly inherited the elephant disaster.
At any rate, the SF Zoo has a very long history of mismanagement, and it doesn't look like that will end any time soon. The chimp exhibit problems cited in this almost-20 year old article are still present, if not worse.
IMO Mollinedo was exactly what the SF Zoo needed at the time, however he inherited the elephant drama and got all the flak for it while the mismanagement pre-existed his tenure. Both Zoo Board and City Council should have had the guts, time, leeway and investment to have him sort out all the old mismanagement issues and re-build the SF Zoo there and then.
As it turned out, he got fired when they lost their elephants and City Council pretended to have found a non-zoo staffer as their new Director with no experience whatsoever of managing a zoo. Peterson is a lawyer and not a zoo director... by all accounts and should never have been a candidate for this position in the first place.
At the end of the day, the City Council is most to blame for letting the SF Zoo slip from the 1980's onwards and in all this present-day in-fighting over the zoo and pretenting a Panda Deal is the Be and End All of Fortuna and SF Zoo Salvation Near, they should have done the decent thing long ago.
Now ad finitam having an incompetent director and trying to remove her from office ... Why the darn hell is it so difficult to get her removed ..., she is not fit for purpose, is antagonistic and dictatorial towards her own staff, cannot handle major animal husbandry, cannot manage any new projects, has little or no understanding of the animal collection being managed and what it takes to be a good curator... and frankly she sits on the plush without doing ****-*** and gets paid an unsavoury high employment benefit!
Conclusion: City Council and Zoo Board do the decent thing and remove this Shrew from her zoo office now.
Pretty sure Mollinedo wasn't fired from sf zoo but whatever. I'm not gonna agree with everything you've said, but the last thing I agree with. 100%. The current director has got to go.... She's been incredibly destructive.
An article on the zoo board - almost a quarter (7 of 30 members) have stepped down in recent weeks. Reports of nda's appear to account for relative silence and it appears questionable whether Peterson is actually giving the board necessary information. It is also unclear whether public statements from the board are actually coming from the board - not too long ago it was reported the board unanimously supported Peterson, now proven false by members stepping down and citing over indecision on removing the director.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/what-to-know-sf-zoo-board-embattled-ceo-20365181.php
There seems to be a lot more going wrong under the surface that's now coming to light, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens at this point...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/what-to-know-sf-zoo-board-embattled-ceo-20365181.php
There seems to be a lot more going wrong under the surface that's now coming to light, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens at this point...
It should also be mentioned on the San Francisco Recreation & Park's website in the Joint Zoo Committee page, that the June meeting was canceled on May 28th due to Juneteenth (usually if a meeting gets canceled it happens during the same month as when the meeting happens) which is weird because they never cancelled due to the holiday in previous years.
What I would say is more interesting, is that even though it says the May meeting was cancelled, earlier in May, the document was publicly accessible (I never copied the exact details, but I do remember they transferred an animal to Kansas City Zoo & Aquarium in April). It came as quite a shock when I checked the website on May 13th, and a notice saying the meeting was cancelled.
What I would say is more interesting, is that even though it says the May meeting was cancelled, earlier in May, the document was publicly accessible (I never copied the exact details, but I do remember they transferred an animal to Kansas City Zoo & Aquarium in April). It came as quite a shock when I checked the website on May 13th, and a notice saying the meeting was cancelled.
Incredible that people that advocate for Peterson's removal step down. It shows the Board don't have backbone and guts... to do the right thing.
Things are heating up - the city board of supervisors is threatening to withhold the city's contributions to the zoo's funding over non-compliance with the ongoing audit. This could be voted into action early as next week.
More SF Zoo chaos as supervisors move to withhold $4M in funding
More SF Zoo chaos as supervisors move to withhold $4M in funding
I find it preposterous and mindboggling that "Zoo Management" is fairly robustly at odds with its own Zoo Board, the Municipality and Council as well as former large Donors. Surely, by now a few people should have woken up from their most wicked of dreams would you not think so. But hey, we have a very rare nuthead for director...
