BREC Superintendent Carolyn McKnight is fighting back against allegations of mismanagement at the Baton Rouge Zoo.
At the April 25 Metro Council meeting, Metro Councilwoman Chauna Banks and activists from the Keep the Zoo at Greenwood group distributed a report from someone they identified as a whistleblower that listed several problems at the zoo, specifically with respect to the handling and care of its animals.
In response, McKnight sent a letter Tuesday to Metro Council members defending zoo staff and discounting allegations in the report. The letter points out that information in the report is more than a year old and has already been addressed by BREC and zoo staff. She also says the source of information is a former employee who worked at the zoo for less than a year.
“First and foremost, these claims are more than a year old, were immediately investigated by the USDA in August 2016, and ‘no non-compliant items were found,’” McKnight says in her letter.
McKnight’s letter and the report that prompted it indicate the bad blood that still exists between the BREC administration and its critics more than one month after the administration’s unsuccessful efforts to pursue relocating the zoo from Greenwood Park in north Baton Rouge to another site in the southeast part of the parish.
Though McKnight and Zoo Director Phil Frost—who had pushed for the zoo relocation—were diplomatic in their defeat and have vowed to work with the BREC board of commissioners to find a way to rebuild a better zoo at its existing site, their critics are determined to continue the fight.
Banks, for one, has called for McKnight and Frost to be fired and for the entire BREC board to be replaced.
BREC Commissioner Davis Rhorer says it’s time to get beyond the zoo dispute.
“I think it is unfortunate that this continues,” he says. “It is time for us to move forward and start to work on a plan of vision for the 600 acres in Greenwood Park.”
In early April, the BREC board and administration held a joint press briefing at which they laid out their timetable for moving forward. They hope to have a final plan by mid- to late 2019.
