Keeper Chat

(continued) on how to get a “foot in the door” with something full time. I am willing to take a pay cut (hopefully not too much of one??) but the whole idea of doing unpaid internships or part time work just doesn’t make sense to me.

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So, I am sorry to have to confirm this for you as you definitely seem to be looking for a very different answer, but your friend is correct. There are very few full-time permanent positions that are entry level as in no formal animal experience required. There are only a couple of contexts I can think of which would encompass this: 1. The job primarily deals with non-animal-care responsibilities, such as education or presentation, and has some animal care requirements along with it. In this case the experience needed would probably be educational and presentation-related but not animal care. 2. The job is at a very small zoo that is willing and able to train animal keepers with no experience. 3. The job is full time, but is a seasonal position (3-6 months).

I’ve been meaning to finish a full fleshed-out guide on zookeeping as a career change but I can take this opportunity to explore it a bit. Zookeeping is a young person’s game and it’s pretty hard to break in as someone over 25 with no zoo related experience. Part of the reason it’s so hard is that about 90% of the time, switching careers to zookeeping will involve a large pay cut and/or moving to another part of the country. 

Lots of people have asked me this question both on the internet and in real life asking for what seems to be the zookeeper’s version of a back door secret that will somehow lead them to getting a job they want without any of the work that other applicants had to do. Yes, we’re working within a system that can really suck. Yes, we’re often overqualified and underpaid. No, we don’t really have a solution to this. I promise you that those you’ve asked for advice aren’t frustrated with your questions because they are hiding a secret from you, it’s because they genuinely don’t have an answer. 

I wish I could tell you and so many others who have looked at caring for exotic animals with a gleam in their eye that it is as simple as having passion. It just isn’t. It’s an uphill battle to work as hard as we do for this little pay (yes, I’m throwing my pride to the wayside here.)

Honestly one option is the private sector, such as breeders, rescues, and other private facilities. But the problem is these places are often run on a small budget and you may face crazy hours, no benefits, and low pay. It’s an option if you’re willing to do that full time and for some people it can work, but even smaller private facilities can have similar requirements to larger zoos.

This is a really good question! It’s fairly common to move up at a zoo you’re already at, from intern to seasonal/part time, part time/seasonal to full time, or even from full time keeper to manager. Here’s a few tips for that:

1. Make sure to emphasize why you like this facility and why you want to stay there. This is especially important for zoos with high turnover rates - they want to know that candidates want to stay at the facility for the long term. Because you’ve been there for a while this is going to go beyond just the mission statement or any news-worthy moments - you’ll really need to go into detail about specifics like animal welfare philosophies and work environments. This is especially important in your case - to emphasize why you like this area and why you want to remain in the same area where you’re currently working. Basically… if you love them, let it show!

2. Have examples of both your reliability / consistency and times you have gone above and beyond in your current position. Humans are simple creatures and we often want to go with the path of least resistance. Reminding those you’re interviewing with of how reliable you’ve been and how they can count on you will probably make them feel pretty comfortable in keeping you around. Then remind them that you’re not just reliable, you’re going a step above that. Tell a story of something you’ve done that was top notch - did you handle a stressful situation, did you step in to help on a very busy day, did you walk two miles to work in the snow? Be ready with specific stories.

3. Remember that “moving up” in any way means more challenges, not just more opportunities. When applying for a full-time position or other forms of “moving up” it can be easy to focus on the cool things you’ll now be able to do. You can make your own training plan, do your own diets, shift dangerous animals… and while that’s super exciting, it’s also a huge responsibility. It’s important not to be over-confident or think that things will be just as “easy” if you get a full time position. Unfortunately, seasonal or part-time keepers can often be left out of more detailed processes on the job, like record-keeping or animal restraint. Don’t just touch on the “fun” things you want to be able to do, remind them that you’re ready for the responsibility of the things you haven’t been able to help with. Basically, emphasize that you want to be able to help out the team, not just that you want new opportunities for yourself (though those are okay too in the context of professional growth!)

I've seen many an overconfident intern absolutely drown when they were brought back as a seasonal keeper. And I've seen many a skilled seasonal keeper become a flustered shadow of their former self the minute they got that elusive full-time position.

If that sounds alarmist, consider this: the zoo world is already feeling a huge amount of pressure from animal rights groups who are campaigning to shut them down and is seriously struggling to overcome internal division and fight for its existence in any effective way. That’s while people from different organizations and practices can at least still agree on a common goal. Bringing Pacelle - someone most people in the zoo field utterly distrust - to speak officially at AZA will do such damage to AZA’s relationships with other parts of the zoo world that future collaboration on any topic may be entirely off the table.

The Pertinent History:

To understand why I’m so genuinely worried about the potential fallout from this one dude’s speech at a conference, you’ll want to have some context for the political situation this is creating. I’ve talked about it in other posts on the blog before, but in case you’re new to this, here’s a quick synopsis of a couple decades of politics:

First, the Humane Society of the United States is not associated with your local humane society or animal shelter - it’s a huge animal rights organization that is basically PETA but with better PR and an affection for legislative action instead of shock-and-awe campaigns. During a panel I attended at the 2016 AZA conference, an HSUS surrogate stated openly in response to a question that HSUS and PETA advocate for the same issues and end goals and are mainly differentiated by the tactics they utilize to achieve them. 

Second, HSUS has never truly been supportive of the existence of the zoo industry, with organizational action running the gamut from the support of “humane zoos” run by the AZA in the 1970s to a frustrated declaration in the early 1990s that many zoos - even those that were committed to the conservation of endangered species - needed to close permanently. HSUS has long been involved in and supported attacks on zoos from other animal rights organizations: in the early 2000s HSUS activists took part in campaigns to remove elephants from AZA zoos all over the country, and in in 2013 they were overwhelmingly supportive of the contentious documentary Blackfish and wanted to use it to help end all marine mammal captivity (including in AZA zoos). The current position statement on the HSUS website regarding zoos make it clear that they do not support the current structure of zoos and their conservation programs - the organization wants to see zoos “act as sanctuaries for animals in need rather than breeding them.”

Third, HSUS has a history of shady behavior, including: having their lawsuit against Ringling thrown out of court after it was discovered the key witness in the case had been paid to testify and had lied under oath; making an agreement with the Ohio Farm Bureau in which HSUS promised not to push for tighter animal welfare regulations for farm animals if the state of Ohio helped crack down on exotic pets - including a clause that allowed HSUS to pursue the very ballot initiatives against agriculture groups if they felt recommendations they made regarding dangerous wild animals were not being implemented appropriately; and suing the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office for harassment after refusing to comply with multiple requests for the organization’s fundraising records for an audit.  

Fourth, a partnership between HSUS and AZA facilities has appeared to be developing during recent years, a trend on which AZA leadership has pretty much declined to comment, leaving many zoo staffers highly uneasy. Trade organizations are supposed to protect the interests of their members and some in the zoo field have expressed the sentiment that collusion with a group viewed as the enemy - especially without any explanation - is inappropriate and unwanted.

Lastly, HSUS has implemented even harsher attacks on non-AZA facilities during their burgeoning partnership - campaigning for government agencies to shut down all unaccredited zoos, writing legislation to protect exotic animals that proposes to regulate any non-AZA facility out of existence, and actively condemning alternate accrediting groups and any facilities they list on their membership rolls.

Needless to say, there’s not a lot of love for HSUS from people who work in the zoo field. Most people who work at zoos did not start out with jobs at AZA institutions, and remember well the treatment their previous employers received from HSUS and their cohort. Many have worked at zoos that HSUS has defamed or sued, or have friends and colleagues at such facilities.  

All this history sets us up for the really important point we’re at now: AZA leadership has made the decision to have Pacelle represent the zoo industry in the eyes of the public by having him give the keynote at the organization’s national conference… when the majority of their membership body does not support the actions or goals of HSUS.

I predict this leading to two irreversible major schisms that will redraw the entire political landscape of the zoo industry.

Conflict #1: AZA vs literally everyone else involved in the zoo industry.

The first big political schism has already been in motion for years and will simply be expedited and cemented by Pacelle’s keynote address: a divide between AZA and the rest of the zoo field.

In a sense, this divide has always existed, as AZA has been trying to get rid of non-AZA facilities since the organization incorporated in the 1970s. When they couldn’t convince congress to legislate other zoos out of existence, they created their accreditation standards to differentiate AZA’s standard of care from the rest of the industry and used that credibility to deflect animal protectionism criticisms of inhumane treatment onto “the other guys.” While these disagreements used to be cordial in nature, enmity between AZA and rest of the industry has grown in recent years, with AZA actively joining animal rights groups in lambasting the other main zoo accrediting group, the Zoological Association of America (ZAA), and unaccredited “roadside” zoos. During a panel at the 2016 AZA conference, the AZA moderator joined an HSUS surrogate in decrying the validity of ZAA’s existence to a room full of conference attendees, only to be unable to define the purpose of the ZAA or provide any real information about the organization when questioned. This rhetoric can be viewed as both overly-aggressive and short-sighted, as there are a number of stellar zoos that are accredited both by AZA and ZAA, and ZAA-accredited facilities contribute significantly to the success of some of AZA’s conservation breeding programs.

As discussed recently on this blog, there are a number of reasons a good zoo might choose not to pursue AZA accreditation - and the behavior of AZA towards facilities external to their accreditation is absolutely one of them. As the apparent partnership between HSUS and AZA has evolved in recent years, AZA rhetoric about ZAA and unaccredited facilities has begun to mirror the messaging of the animal rights movement. This is really upsetting to a lot of people in the zoo field, as most zookeepers and other zoo staff don’t start their careers at prestigious AZA institutions - they started wherever they can get a volunteer gig or an internship and worked their way up to whatever job they have now. So, in calling for all unaccredited zoos to be shut down or decrying ZAA’s animal care standards, AZA leadership has been lambasting the friends, coworkers, and mentors of their own zoo employees. Slowly but surely the larger zoo community has started to be alienated by this exclusionary behavior by AZA’s management, and non-AZA facilities and staff have become increasingly reluctant to partner with an organization that will simultaneously accept their labor and publicly trash their facilities.

Bringing Pacelle in for the keynote at the 2017 conference - a position offered as an honor to the selected presenter, and whose presentation sets the tone for entire meeting - will cement the impression that AZA is aligning with the animal rights movement against the rest of the industry. This move makes it seem pretty likely that AZA will now be partnering with HSUS in exactly the way Pacelle described months ago in a blog post: “[working] to expose these bad actors, to pass meaningful legislation to help all animals, to educate the public about the wide set of animal welfare issues, and to blow the lid off phony accreditation programs that have little meaning or value.” (AZA management did not respond to an email looking to ascertain if Pacelle’s statement was an accurate characterization of their partnership, and has made no public statement regarding any collaboration with HSUS that I’m aware of as of the writing of this post.) This allegiance starts, apparently, by giving HSUS the top billing at their national conference in order to gain AZA credibility in the eyes of the animal rights movement. It’ll be to the detriment of the other sectors of the zoo world, but AZA’s previous behavior has indicated that their management is willing to throw other organizations under the bus in order to survive the onslaught of animal rights attacks. Anyone not part of an AZA institution - or even those working for an AZA facility who owe their careers to a non-AZA job or mentor - are going to have a really hard time justifying their support of that move.

Conflict #2: Actual zookeepers vs AZA’s chosen representatives

The second schism I’m expecting isn’t written on the wall as clearly as the first, but has the potential to be a lot more messy.

It sounds like Pacelle’s keynote will be on the topic of animal welfare - which makes sense, given his decade-long reciprocal relationship with the Detroit Zoo’s Center for Zoo Animal Welfare and the fact that the Detroit Zoo has an unusually large presence on the conference schedule this year. At first blush, you’d think that’s a good thing, because the need for high-quality animal welfare is something that both animal activists and animal caretakers should be able to agree on.

The problem is that HSUS has a really spotty history when it comes to both assessing and providing appropriate welfare for the animals under their purview. HSUS was a prominent engineer in the orca Keiko’s release in 2002, and Pacelle’s latest book represents the transfer as a success because “[he] had been given a fuller, richer, and more natural taste of life as a free orca” - however, reports indicate that once freed, Keiko was unable to integrate into pods he encountered, solicited attention from boats and humans, and died from pneumonia after less than a year and half in the wild. In the mid 1990s, an HSUS-backed attempt to rehabilitate navy dolphins - one that eschewed the input from the only zoo scientists known to have facilitated successful dolphin releases - resulted in two injured, underweight dolphins and the leads of the project being tried for seven violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In both of these examples, the noticeable pattern is that HSUS chose to work with activists who had no scientific background or animal management training instead of the appropriate experts - to the detriment of the animals involved.

Pacelle has been involved with the Center for Zoo Animal Welfare (CZAW) at the Detroit Zoo since 2011, but some of actions of CZAW also raise serious questions about the extent of their credibility as a pro-zoo organization. For instance, advisory committee members include representatives from multiple animal rights organizations known to be anti-zoo (including the Performing Animal Welfare Society, known for petitioning for zoo elephants to be sent to their sanctuary); a director who made waves for attending an animal law symposium composed almost entirely of animal rights advocates; and a history of hosting very exclusive invite-only symposiums to which both HSUS and PETA representatives have been in regular attendance. Most concerning, though, is that an attendee at CZAW’s 2017 symposium reported that the first day was spent putting zoos on the defensive, forcing them to justify their right to exist to the animal rights organization representatives in their midst. That was a meeting held at a zoo with a facility specifically dedicated to animal welfare research, by a pro-welfare organization that has existed for almost a decade, with the purpose of creating “processes to safeguard the well-being of animals and fundamental animal welfare policy for zoos and aquariums developed to ensure all animals are able to thrive” … and they’re still having to debate that zoos should even exist with the leaders in the field who were hand-picked to attend? Something about that dynamic just doesn’t feel right. Detroit Zoo is participating in number of sessions related to animal welfare at AZA 2017, however, so no matter how weird their operations appear externally they’ve got the support of AZA management.

AZA is struggling under the onslaught of animal rights attacks right now - the pressure on them can be assessed by simply counting the number of accredited zoos fighting against AR campaigns that want to confiscate their elephants - and is likely aligning with HSUS in an attempt to regain some public confidence in the quality of their animal care. It’s likely that, given the heavy presence of the Detroit Zoo on the 2017 conference schedule, Pacelle will be speaking about animal welfare - specifically about his desire for HSUS and AZA to collaborate to ensure that “good zoos” become part of the “humane economy” Pacelle promotes. However, when HSUS has previously decided to compromise with an organization it has been publicly attacking, that offer has always come with strings attached. In order for Seaworld to get the public support of HSUS, CEO Joel Manby had to agree to retire the orca breeding program. The Ohio Farm Bureau had to agree to support legislation restricting exotic animal ownership in order for HSUS to stop pushing bills forcing more welfare regulations for farm animals. What will AZA have to give HSUS to gain their public stamp of approval? It’s probable that, like Seaworld, AZA will have to capitulate on some topic important to the animal rights movement. Pacelle’s most recent book hints at what those priority topics might be - mainly, the cessation of all elephant and marine mammal captivity. It would not be surprising if Pacelle eventually pushes publicly for AZA to, on the basis of improved animal welfare, either send all their elephants to sanctuaries run by animal rights organizations or cease marine mammal exhibition entirely. 

This creates a situation with a lot of potential for conflict between the opinions of the zoo staff who actually work with animals and the authorities on welfare their trade organization has decided to publicly support. When Seaworld decided to partner with HSUS, staffers were livid - and that was just the choice to stop a breeding program. If Pacelle and HSUS - distrusted outsiders without actual exotic animal experience - attempt to force major changes to the ways zoos manage their animals without actual evidence that it improves animal welfare, there would be a massive amount of resistance from the animal care staff at AZA accredited institutions. Any suggestion of ending conservation breeding programs and transferring zoo residents to sanctuaries would cause internal turmoil. AZA management has previously attempted to punish zoos that disagreed with new regulations handed down by threatening to withdraw their accreditation - and the grants and federal exemptions for a facility that accreditation ensures - and might continue to utilize that tactic in such an instance. There’s already a precedent for zoos purposefully splitting from AZA over just such a disagreement (the Pittsburgh Zoo forfeited AZA accreditation in 2015 over new protected-contact elephant management requirements) and if AZA allows Pacelle to influence new welfare-based animal care regulations it is likely to cause such a divide that staff - and potentially even entire zoos - will choose to terminate their relationship with the trade group.

Tl;dr: How things evolve around Pacelle’s keynote at AZA is incredibly important, because it has the potential to be so divisive as to permanently alter AZA’s relationship with rest of the zoo industry. The choice to feature him is already alienating a lot of people just by the fact that it aligns the trade organization - and therefore the facilities they accredit - with an animal rights organization that has historically opposed the many of the basic objectives of zoos in such a public and positive manner. If the HSUS presence causes the maximum amount of potential fallout I’m expecting, it could very leave the animal management field so scattered and at-odds with each other that animal rights organizations will easily make zoological institutions and their conversations programs as we know them today extinct.  

Congratulations, you have pinpointed one of the largest cans of worms in the animal care industry! The response I’m about to give you is absolutely, definitely controversial - because honestly, there’s no one answer that everyone will agree with. 

I do not believe that lack of AZA accreditation should automatically condemn a zoo. (They will probably be very unhappy with me for stating this, since they’ve been advocating since at least the 1970′s for the government to recognize them as the only accrediting authority and shut down every facility they don’t accredit). As far as animal care, education, and conservation work goes AZA accreditation is the best reliable indicator of quality for public - but there’s a lot of reasons a zoo might choose not to be accredited in the first place, or might lose accreditation, or might choose not to be re-accredited. So no, not all “good zoos” must be AZA - but the public needs to be much more critical consumers in order to determine which non-AZA facilities are good zoos. 

One of the biggest reasons a zoo may not be AZA accredited is functional. AZA accreditation is designed to support and accredit primarily large urban zoos with a lot of funding. It really isn’t a good fit for smaller suburban or rural zoos: those that do decide to go for AZA accreditation spend years and a huge amount of money trying to meet AZA’s standards, and even after all that work not every non-urban zoo decides to stay accredited because the priorities of AZA doesn’t necessarily line up with what the organization needs to do to survive or what the community that supports it wants to see at their local zoo. This could be, for instance, that the type of education and conservation messaging AZA wants to see from its facilities isn’t appropriate for a rural setting or that the internal structure of the organization that AZA requires just isn’t functional at a smaller zoo. Mill Mountain Zoo, in Roanoke, Virginia, recently mutually split from AZA because it just wasn’t a good fit - but their animal care programs are still the same, and AZA thinks highly enough of them that they’re still allowed to participate in highly prestigious SSPs such as snow leopards, pallas cats, and red wolves. 

Another reason a zoo may not be accredited is because of differences in agreements over animal care requirements. Lack of accreditation due to these types of issues can’t really be qualified as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ reasons because each case is so individual. Sometimes facilities choose not apply for AZA accreditation in the first place because of a known conflict with their requirements. To pick a controversial example - and this is only a hypothetical - a facility like Myrtle Beach Safari would probably choose not to apply for AZA accreditation because their facility breeds color morph tigers, which AZA standards prohibit. The facility’s entire philosophy around tiger breeding and exhibition would have to shift drastically in order for them to make the changes AZA would require. Other times, facilities choose to leave AZA and/or purposefully lose their accreditation because of a disagreement over new rules. That’s what happened with Pittsburgh. Management at Pittsburgh didn’t agree with the requirement that all AZA zoos transfer over to working their elephants in protected contact, and eventually chose to lose the zoo’s AZA accreditation - and all the grants and federal exemptions that go along with it - in order to continue working with their elephants in the manner they believed was best for their specific animals. 

It’s also worth noting that some facilities may choose not to be part of AZA because of political reasons. AZA is notoriously condemnatory to any facility they don’t accredit. I’ve heard a lot of AZA staffers and surrogates, including directors or upper management at AZA facilities, say really nasty things about rural or smaller zoos with incredible frequency. They call them and “roadside zoos” and though there’s no actual definition of the term, the official AZA usage appears to denote “anyone AZA doesn’t accredit.” (I wrote more about that here, if you’re interested in that specific political rabbit hole.) AZA as an organization organization itself appears to have partnered with HSUS in the fight to shut down all “roadside zoos” - including an officially sanctioned panel addressing it at the 2016 national conference - and the CEO of HSUS has been indicating in his messaging that AZA is now helping them police the rest of the zoo industry. Especially because it doesn’t get better when they start working towards accreditation - I know someone whose facility was referred to as a “roadside zoo” literally as they were being congratulated for having been accredited. The official AZA messaging is that it has a cordial and professional relationship with other accrediting bodies like the ZAA - but they consistently publish documents that denigrate ZAA’s credibility as a professional organization and urge lawyers and lawmakers to not only ignore their input but even help regulate them out of existence. With that sort of blatant political enmity, it’s understandable that zoos external to AZA might be utterly uninterested in working to join the group that consistently publicly attacks their existence and professionalism and instead go it alone or join a different accrediting group. 

I would also hazard a guess that more organizations may choose not to associate with AZA given their apparent inclination to partner closely with animal rights organizations like HSUS. Smaller zoos get harassed endlessly by the animal rights organizations, regardless of their actual quality, and would absolutely have no interest in working to gain membership in a trade group that appears to be in bed with their long-time antagonists. 

This is my favorite piece of signage from Point Defiance - an interactive board that lets guests experience the planning that goes into elephant management.