Lions, tigers and an unbearable calendar year at Jack Hanna’s zoo

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium experienced a bear of a calendar year.

It started Jan. 1, the to start with working day of famous zookeeper Jack Hanna’s retirement just after 42 a long time as the beloved superstar director-turned-ambassador of the nation’s second-greatest zoo.

As if the khaki-sporting “Jungle Jack” ended up the life’s breath of the institution that his upbeat animal-loving persona and masses of Tv appearances built famed, the zoo appeared to deflate from there.

In March, information of a financial scandal broke. Top executives resigned. Investigations were launched. Mea culpas had been issued.

The next 7 days, the zoo’s beloved 29-yr-aged bonobo Unga died, and a 4-yr-previous cheetah hurt a zookeeper.

Then in April, just as a streaming international Television set channel named for him was launching, a damning animal legal rights documentary alleging Hanna had ties to the massive cat trade premiered in California. A day afterwards, in timing they mentioned was unrelated, Hanna’s spouse and children introduced he had dementia and would retire from general public lifetime.

In October, citing the money and animal legal rights revelations, a fee of the respected Affiliation of Zoos and Aquariums stripped the Columbus Zoo of its key accreditation. Zoo officials filed an intent to charm last 7 days.

“It’s been a tricky calendar year for the Columbus Zoo, indeed,” explained association president Dan Ashe, while including that the zoo’s about 2 million guests a year can nevertheless be confident the facility’s 10,000 animals are well cared for.

Ashe stated bringing in Tom Schmid, who at this time heads the Texas Condition Aquarium, as the zoo’s new chief bodes nicely: “He’s heading to convey the Columbus Zoo roaring again.”

Schmid, 56, commences his new task Dec. 6 as president and CEO of the zoo and its associated businesses, including The Wilds safari park and conservation heart and Zoombezi Bay water park.

Keith Shumate, chair of the zoo’s board, called Schmid “extremely smart, moral and passionate about zoos and wildlife conservation.”

“We just cannot adjust what occurred in the earlier, but we’ve completed a good deal to confess all those wrongs, to apologize and to address our shortcomings,” mentioned zoo spokesperson Nicolle Gomez Racey. “The men and women who took liberties in their electrical power are absent, and the people today who are cleansing up the mess in the room, underneath new management, we are moving ahead. Which is the only detail you can do.”

Interim CEO Jerry Borin has overseen zoo enterprise considering the fact that then-CEO Tom Stalf and his main fiscal officer, Greg Bell, resigned in March immediately after a Columbus Dispatch investigation located they permitted family to dwell in houses owned or managed by the zoo and sought tickets for spouse and children users to show up at enjoyment occasions.

The findings have been verified in subsequent critiques, which include a forensic investigation that discovered fiscal abuses by Stalf, Bell and two other former executives charge the zoo a lot more than $630,000. Investigations by Ohio’s point out auditor and lawyer normal are still underway, their spokespeople said.

The paying abuse was a especially distressing blow just after the pandemic-linked financial hardship of 2020.

Commonly, Columbus Zoo is open up 363 days a 12 months. Additional than fifty percent its gained profits will come from admissions and other sales, these types of as food items and present products. Still, that calendar year, it was shut for weeks, in the end sustaining $20 million in operational losses. Twenty-9 entire- and aspect-time workers have been furloughed, and 33 non-animal treatment positions throughout the zoo and The Wilds have been eradicated.

Yet even more wrenching ended up the accusations leveled in the documentary “The Conservation Activity,” which premiered at the Santa Barbara Global Movie Festival on April 6.

The movie tied the zoo and Hanna to the large cat trade, demonstrating that some tiger, lion and snow leopard cubs that had been Hanna’s fuzzy and lovely companions on Tv neither arrived from nor returned to the zoo. In a lot of situations, they were furnished by backyard breeders and unaccredited roadside zoos and disappeared into personal palms after individuals appearances.

As publicity all-around the movie grew, Hanna’s kin claimed they hadn’t noticed it and could not comment on the promises. “What we can say emphatically is that he labored his full occupation to superior the animal entire world,” the family mentioned in a statement.

Ashe reported the film’s revelations, coupled with his association’s individual growing file on the zoo’s Animal Plans division, weighed closely in the decision to pull Columbus’ accreditation.

“They were, and have been for some time, working with non-AZA customers, and really clearly not disclosing individuals transfers,” Ashe claimed. “Those are pretty severe difficulties inside our accreditation process.”

Filmmaker Michael Webber explained the zoo and its accreditors took his documentary’s allegations seriously.

Over the summer months, the zoo acknowledged the bulk of the film’s revelations and apologized. It revised procedures and reporting constructions for acquisition and disposition of ambassador animals in the Animal Systems office. A longtime vice president of animal programs retired.

“We created some faults. There is no doubt about it,” Shumate advised the Dispatch.

Borin also reversed the zoo’s prior opposition — which the film alleged had been spearheaded by Hanna — to The Massive Cat Public Protection Act. He declared zoo guidance in April for the federal laws prohibiting non-public possession of massive cats as pets and banning cub-petting venues. Racey stated the reversal followed crucial revisions to the invoice, which remains pending in Washington.

Webber reported he’s giving the zoo a 2nd prospect due to the fact of its robust reaction to the movie, and he hopes the public will, also.

“I experience quite great about the outlook both of those for the Columbus Zoo and for the animals that we have viewed exploited for a long time,” he said. “Albeit after a incredibly unpleasant 12 months, points are going to be superior.”

Ashe said the year’s disclosures also have brought about soul-looking inside the Affiliation of Zoos and Aquariums, in which the Columbus Zoo has extensive been a flagship establishment and Hanna a superstar.

“Our users stay on their status for outstanding care of animals, so each time we see a little something like Columbus, which, fairly frankly, we must have caught that before, it can be an prospect for reflection and improvement,” he said. “That’s the silver lining in all of this. I believe Columbus will be far better as a zoological facility, and we are going to be superior as an accrediting physique, as effectively.”