Tiger-attack zoo has a history of mismanagement

SAN FRANCISCO -- A koala is kidnapped. Sheep are molested by a human intruder. An elephant does a headstand on a technician, breaking her pelvis. A tiger ravages its keeper's arm. A year later, on Christmas Day, the same feline escapes, kills and gets killed.

This is what life can be like at the San Francisco Zoo, a 78-year-old institution saddled with a history of mismanagement and scores of injuries to animals, employees and visitors alike.

The Christmas Day attack by Tatiana, a Siberian tiger that broke out of her yard, fatally mauled a teenager and injured two of his friends before being shot to death by police, has captured international attention. ?

The very public tragedy overshadows decades of problems -- and the troubles of the current zoo administration, which began in February 2004 when Manuel Mollinedo became director of the 100-acre facility.

Almost four years later, attendance has increased, celebrations built around ethnic holidays have drawn crowds, new arrivals such as KuneKune pigs have proved popular, and two splashy exhibits -- Hearst Grizzly Gulch and the long-planned African Savanna -- have opened. However, problems have multiplied and employee morale has plummeted.

For this story, Mollinedo declined to talk. "Manuel is not doing interviews," Lora LaMarca, the zoo's director of marketing and public relations, said late last week.

The director's tenure has been highly eventful.

Three of the zoo's four elephants have died since March 2004 -- two at the zoo, a third at a Calaveras County sanctuary. The lone survivor still lives there. The fight over the pachyderms' fate, taken up by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and animal rights activists, enraged the national Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which tabled the zoo's accreditation for a year.

Some other misfortunes that have occurred include:

_ Puddles, a venerable 44-year-old hippopotamus, died in May, a day after a move that some employees say was bungled and others say should never have been made.

_ Two giant elands, valued at $30,000 apiece, were killed by a peer during a quarantine sources say was doomed.

_ Some parakeets tested positive for the potentially fatal psittacine beak-and-feather disease, but the zoo did not warn visitors until this was reported in the press

_ Two black swans introduced with fanfare in May 2006, did not last long.

_ In April 2005, a grizzly bear-naming contest was canceled after some zoo employees had invited the public to participate, but others preferred to auction the naming rights to the highest bidder.

_ Plans were quietly killed for the Great Ape Forest exhibit, highlighted in a $48 million city bond measure approved by voters in 1997 to upgrade the zoo, so four would-be inhabitants -- aging wild-born chimpanzees -- are still living in a concrete grotto.

The chimps' longtime zookeeper, Lisa Hamburger, has occasionally appeared at monthly meetings of the Joint Zoo Committee, a city panel that oversees the zoo, to plead her case. As she prepared to speak one afternoon, Mollinedo got up and walked out of the room.

That kind of behavior is no surprise to Mollinedo's current and former employees, as well as those who worked under him at the Los Angeles Zoo, where he was director from 1995 to 2002.

Since Mollinedo took over in San Francisco, there has been a steady exodus of employees, including the deputy director, education director, two successive public relations managers, development director, curator of birds, marketing manager, events director, human resources manager, general manager of concessions and a number of veteran keepers.

Michele Rudovsky, associate curator of hoofstock and pachyderms, started working at the zoo as a teenager but quit in August after more than a quarter-century. Head veterinarian Freeland Dunker also resigned and will depart in early January for the California Academy of Sciences.

Most of those who left, sources say, were fed up or pushed out.

"What walked out the door was 200-plus years of incredible animal experience -- and you can't afford that," said former penguin keeper Jane Tollini, who quit in 2005 after 24 years.

There's something about the zoo that is magical. It's why many employees who have left want to remain anonymous when they speak out. Some hope to return one day -- but under a different administration.

Employees characterize the current regime as arrogant, autocratic and dismissive of those with experience and institutional knowledge. Keepers, who know the animals and their habitats inside and out, say they have little input and are not listened to by Mollinedo and Bob Jenkins, the zoo's director of animal care and conservation. Workers of every variety fear they're being spied upon and will not speak publicly, afraid of reprisals. Even before the Christmas rampage, information was tightly controlled.

On Dec. 22 of last year, 300-pound Tatiana severely injured keeper Lori Komejan inside the Lion House, "degloving" her arm, as the state's workplace safety report put it. That agency, Cal/OSHA blamed the zoo, citing defects that the zoo knew about but hadn't fixed, and imposed an $18,000 penalty.

The zoo had reinforced Tatiana's indoor cage after Komejan was mauled -- but the fatal attack Christmas afternoon took place in her outdoor quarters.

(E-mail Patricia Yollin at pyollin(at)sfchronicle.com)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)