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Readers of this blog may remember that earlier this summer I mentioned we were going to be talking about zoo politics more because I was genuinely concerned for the future of the industry I adore – that specifically, I was worried about the increasing dialogue between AZA and the animal rights organization the Humane Society of the United States. I’m heartbroken to report that my unease proved entirely valid, and that the keynote speech given on Monday, September 11th, by HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle at AZA’s national conference encapsulated the paradigm shift within the industry that I’ve been dreading. I waited to write this post until I could be straight-forward and matter-of-fact, but this is no longer a topic from which I report on dispassionately. 

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Over the past summer, I wrote the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ media contact multiple times about a concerning statement about AZA that I had noticed in a blog post written by HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle. I never got a straight answer about if his characterization of the relationship between the two organizations was correct – the one response I did get completely avoided actually answering my question. I searched every AZA statement and publication put out since then for any information that could help me contextualize Pacelle’s words –  and found nothing to allay my concerns. AZA, to this day, has made no public statements about the degree of association between the two organizations. So, Monday morning, I walked into his speech at the opening of the national conference with these words echoing in my head: 

“[We at HSUS] look forward to working with AZA 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.”

And then Pacelle spoke, and I understood why I’d never gotten an answer from AZA’s corporate office. Wayne Pacelle came to AZA speaking ostensibly because he had an “important perspective [on animal welfare] to share with conference attendees.” Instead, as I was dreading, his speech framed aggressive condemnation of the rest of the zoo industry as the only way for AZA to prove it’s the animal management organization that cares the most about animal welfare. He attacked both alternate zoo accreditation groups and alternate humane associations, stating that they would “drag the field down” if they were allowed to gain purchase in the public consciousness; he then charged conference attendees with the mission he mentioned all the way back May – of joining HSUS in a campaign against all non-AZA entities. 

In another world – the one outside the walls of the conference center, the one flattened by natural disasters of an unforeseen scale – people and facilities from those same “bad actors,” “substandard facilities” and “knock-off accreditation groups” have overcome their differences and mobilized to come to the aid of their peers. In that world, ZAA-accredited facilities sent helicopters full of supplies to the drowning AZA-ZAA dually-accredited Downtown Aquarium; in that world, AZA-accredited facilities are temporarily holding animals for the unaccredited Texas Zoo so they can focus on disaster recovery; in that world, an unaccredited zoo offered to house animals for a flooding Florida sanctuary, despite the long-standing enmity between the two organizations. But in this world, the world of the AZA conference, corporate somehow thought it was appropriate for a man they invited – whose presence they repeatedly defended – to get up and preach that conflict and isolationism should reflect the best practices of the zoological industry from here on out. 

In addition to being appallingly tone-deaf in regards to real-world events, Pacelle’s address to the AZA community highlighted just how external his viewpoint is to the realities of the zoo world. Zoos rarely spring into existence a fully-formed and accredited AZA facility, just as few keepers are lucky enough to spend their entire career working solely at AZA zoos. Everyone has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is often the small zoos, the rural zoos, the unaccredited zoos, the ZAA zoos: the “unethical businesses” Pacelle believes “provide deficient care [for their] animals.” Pacelle used his platform at the AZA conference to call for us to turn against colleagues, mentors, previous employers – the people and businesses who made those people now involved with AZA facilities who they are today. What’s more, those “others” Pacelle wants us to condemn have not only raised animals that are now in AZA institutions and taken in animals that AZA institutions could no longer house, but they have played a vital role in highly successful conservation projects that have done nothing but enhance AZA’s reputation. There would not be a sustainable clouded leopard population in human care nor a population of scimitar-horned oryx in the deserts of Chad if not for the foresight and dedication of facilities external to AZA accreditation. The zoo field continues to grow and improve specifically because diversity encourages innovation and collaboration. 

Pacelle’s speech was utterly disconnected from the priorities of the room he spoke to on Monday, and his call to action was divorced from topic he purported to be addressing. The professionals brought together in that audience – many AZA members, but some not – have dedicated their lives to providing the best possible well-being for animals in their care. They came to that session looking for a meeting of minds over how to best fulfill that goal and after sitting through a litany of HSUS campaigns, they were instead met with out-of-touch oration and a veiled threat: if AZA isn’t willing to help exterminate the “bad actors” HSUS has claimed to have identified within the zoo industry, then maybe the AZA isn’t truly the expert on animal welfare topics they purport to be. 

Pacelle’s obvious agenda belied the few

intermittent positive affirmations he gave to AZA quality and revealed what I believe was his true agenda: sowing division and undermining the credibility of the zoological community by encouraging enmity that would stymie actual collaborative efforts regarding animal welfare and conservation. 

As I write this, I am disappointed to report that four days after Pacelle’s keynote, AZA corporate has neither made it possible for non-attendees to watch the speech nor said anything publicly about the highly inflammatory content of it. In contrast, Pacelle had both a video of it and a blog post about the success of the speech up in less than six hours. As with earlier this summer, AZA is choosing inaction – and to yet again allow Pacelle to entirely control the narrative regarding the relationship between the two organizations.  And that’s truly a shame, because it means the people at the core of the narrative – the keepers who care for zoo animals every day, whose careers are focused on actual animal welfare instead of political games – don’t have a voice. 

The zoological field is full of truly passionate, dedicated people who understand that providing the best welfare for all zoo animals requires long-term collaboration among professionals of all stripes, not allowing an external entity’s agenda to turn them against each other. They are the people who truly have “an important perspective on animal welfare” – but they are not the people who have been given a platform from which to speak. The voice right now about animal welfare in zoos is Pacelle’s, not that of seasoned animal professionals, and his rhetoric is advocating for infighting that does nothing to promote actual animal welfare.