From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

LITTLE ROCK––David Westbrook,
49, director of the Little Rock Zoo since
1984, and a staff member since 1977,
resigned on May 15 after a week on paid
leave, “possibly avoiding a suspension or dismissal,”
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter
Jake Sandlin speculated.
Westbrook was to remain on the
payroll through June 30. Westbrook was previously
suspended at least twice for failing to
promptly remedy problems at the zoo.
Westbrook’s wife Kelli, a zoo nursery keeper,
reportedly also missed some work time during
Westbrook’s week on leave, but was retained.
Interim zoo director Carroll Hargrove confirmed
almost a month later that the zoo was
being investigated by the USDA for operating
without a federal exhibitor’s license. The zoo
was eventually given until July 20 to pass
USDA inspection.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

A unique aspect of Walt Disney’s Animal
Kingdom, opened on April 22 in Lake Buena Vista,
Florida, is that it has taken high-risk geriatric animals
from older facilities, enabling some animals who have
long endured bare steel and cement to end their lives in
more congenial habitat. This hasn’t pleased the Animal
Rights Foundation of Florida, however, which fought
construction of the Animal Kingdom, and has repeatedly
demanded USDA probes of animal deaths there.
Among the 31 deaths between September 1997 and the
official opening, two Asian clawed otters––rarely
attracted to vegetable matter––ate the poisonous seeds
of ornamental loquats; four cheetah cubs ingested
antifreeze, apparently at a previous facility; two West
African crowned cranes were hit by vehicles; nine
gazelles, kudu, and antelopes died from various causes,
including injuries inflicted on each other in contesting
territory; a dik-dik died in surgery; a rhino died from
having ingested an 18-inch stick before arrival; a rhino
died under anesthesia for a veterinary exam; an elderly
hippo died in transit; another hippo died of infections
10 days after arrival from Europe; and some normally
short-lived naked mole rats, chinchilla rabbits, and
guinea pigs died. The death rate, about 4% of the
1,000-animal collection per year, is well below both
wild and zoo norms.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

St. Louis Zoo director Charlie
Hoessle on January 1 told Tom Uhlenbrock
of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that in 1997 visits
to the Galapagos, Alaska, New Guinea,
and Australia, he saw more ecological change,
including coral dying near the equator, the
Arctic ice fields shrinking, and rainforests
drying into tinder, than he’d previously seen
in 20 years of study. “I’m not alarmed,”
Hoessle said, “but I am concerned. This is an
international conservation issue of enormous
magnitude, that can affect all of us.”

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