The debate over moving BREC’s Baton Rouge Zoo was one of the more curious controversies in the city’s recent history, Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel says.
“Residents in the north Baton Rouge community that is home to the zoo fervently opposed the relocation from Greenwood Park on the grounds it would hurt the area’s economy,” Riegel writes in her latest column. “Residents of the neighborhoods near the Fairgrounds on Airline Highway in southeast Baton Rouge, BREC’s choice for a new zoo site, also largely opposed the plan. They didn’t want it for fear it would bring more traffic to their perennially congested area and could cause flooding.”
Yet, BREC’s administration plowed ahead with the proposal anyway, arguing a three-year planning process determined Greenwood Park was not the best location to ensure the long-term sustainability of the zoo.
And though it wasn’t at all clear how the matter would play out when it came up for a vote in late March, the BREC Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to side with public opinion and keep the zoo at its current location, Riegel says.
But then just four days later, BREC announced that the Baton Rouge zoo had lost its accreditation through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
The timing of BREC’s announcement about the AZA decision was more than a little curious, Riegel says, noting that the association’s accrediting commission had visited the zoo in late 2017.
BREC knew then that AZA examiners would be following up on several key problems that had been identified during the previous year’s visit such as cramped, inadequate exhibit spaces and rusted cages, she writes. Yet, BREC commissioners had no idea the zoo’s accreditation was on the line.
“Commissioners say they were not informed at their January or February meetings by the BREC administration or zoo staff that a fateful decision from the AZA hung in the balance,” Riegel says. “Why was it kept so quiet? Would it have made a difference when it came time for the commission to debate the zoo move? Maybe, maybe not. But it certainly should have been something about which the commission—and the public—was aware.”
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