The late Tatiana. Photo by Charles Russo
Okay, so we all know now what a mess this has been: The wall in the tiger grotto was too low. The reponse plan wasn’t followed. I understand that there was, and is, a lot of confusion ….
But why is everything at the zoo now such a damn national-security secret?
Zoo employees are banned from speaking to the press. The zoo won’t answer questions except in carefully staged events. You’d think there was a nuclear bomb hidden in the tager grotto.
The zoo used to be a public agency; now it’s run by the private Zoological Society. That’s created problems. And while I can’t say that the escape was directly related to the management issues, I can say:
This secrecy is ridiculous, and needs to end. It seems like the private zoo wants to cover its own ass more than it wants to figure out what went wrong and let the public know what’s being done about it.