UNACCREDITED ZOOS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Brian Rutledge, 44, who raised
Baltimore Zoo attendance from 180,000 to
500,000 a year in a decade by making $50 million
worth of improvements, on August 12
assumed administration of the Franklin Park
and Stone Zoos in Boston, long considered
two of the worst in the U.S. The Franklin
Park Zoo is already getting a $2.5 million new
lion exhibit, and that, Rutledge promises, is
just the beginning; much renovation may be
done “with a bulldozer.”

The city zoos at Chippewa Falls
and Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, have
standing deals with canned hunt supplier Mark
Schoebel, of Neshkoro, Janean Marti of the
Chippewa Falls Leader-Telegram recently
revealed. As Wisconsin Rapids Parks and
Recreation Department official Dave Hoks
explained it, “We pay Mark a flat fee for the
use of the animals for the summer. He brings
us the animals in the first part of May, and
right after Labor Day, they are gone.” Said
Chippewa Falls Parks and Recreation director
William Faherty, “If I sat and worried about
where every deer and bear cub went, I would
go nuts.” Schoebel was convicted in 1986 of
participating in a scheme to illegally export
bear gall bladders to Korea, and made headlines
in 1994 for shooting a runaway hippo.
The Crossland Zoo, of Crossett,
Arkansas, has agreed to accept a license suspension
and civil penalty of $15,000 for multiple
Animal Welfare Act violations, the USDA
announced on August 12.
The USDA on August 5 closed
Land O’Lorin Exotics in Batavia, Illinois,
through September 5, for failing to correct 28
Animal Welfare Act violations involving conditions
first drawn to his attention between
February and July of 1992. USDA attorney
James Booth told Ed DeMask of the Kane
County Chronicle that owner Lorin Womack
could permanently lose his exhibitor’s license
if all of the violations aren’t corrected within
two more years.
The USDA on August 2 charged
Richard Lawson, Stanley Curtis, and John
M. Curtis of Murphy, North Carolina, with
illegally operating the Noah’s Park Zoo.
Lawson’s permit for the zoo expired on
January 31.
The USDA on June 17 announced
charges against Craig A. Perry of Center
Point, Iowa, doing business as Perry’s
Wilderness Ranch and Zoo, with operating
without a license while failing to meet animal
care standards from April 1994 through
December 1995.
Burglars reportedly snatched a
whole family of bushbaby lemurs from the
Jungleland Zoo in Kissimmee, Florida, on
August 13.
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania,
plans to spend $2 million over the
next 20 years to improve the Upper Schuykill
Valley Park wildlife center. Non-native
species will be phased out. Built in 1972, the
min-zoo attracts 80,000 visitors a year.