Roger C. Birkel, executive director of the Baltimore Zoo, spoke recently at the zoo with Richard C. Gross, editor of the Opinion Commentary page. The discussion focused largely on the decline of the zoo and how a $60 million fund-raising campaign can help attract more visitors.
You say the zoo is at a crossroads now that it's 125 years old this year. What kind of a crossroads? Is it dying?
If we are dying, in a sense it's been a slow death, in its early stages. But now we are reaching a critical moment.
After 125 years, much of this campus is simply worn out. ... We have a failing infrastructure - the sewer systems, the pipes, the power lines - all of those things have had it. We also have some compromised guest service facilities, no indoor dinning, summer or winter. Not enough rest rooms. Then many of our animals are housed in antiquated facilities that need to be improved to improve their quality of life.
You're on a campaign to raise $60 million. What do you want the money for?
We need to look at the campus as a whole and improve the guest experience so that people will embrace us and continue coming to the zoo and allow us to help them participate in conservation and education programs.
Everything we're doing is an improvement to the existing zoo. We are not adding on. When we say a new dinning area, when we say a new tiger exhibit, when we say a new polar bear area and underwater viewing, these are all improvements to existing facilities.
You say the zoo has lost its presence in Baltimore. What do you mean?
The zoo kind of became quiet as we went into deferred maintenance, as we turned inward, as the campus began failing and with the lovely attention that went to the harbor, [which] was absolutely essential to bringing the city forward. The zoo became such a quiet institution and, with the challenged neighborhoods that surround us, we in a sense lost our way - lost the importance that a zoo can have within a community.
What happens if you don't raise the money that you need? No more zoo?
In a sense, what we are talking about today is a "save-our-zoo campaign." We've reached that critical stage. We've reached that crossroads. If we can't make these improvements that we are talking about today, we continue in that downward spiral of deferred maintenance, of high maintenance costs, of lagging attendants, of poor animal facilities. And one day the doors close.
