Editorial: Pittsburgh should OK zoo accreditation
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If Disney’s “The Lion King” has taught us anything, it’s that everything in the animal world is a vast circle of life.
It’s a cycle of prey and predator, birth and death, eat or be eaten. Apparently it’s also about laws and leases, alligators and elephants and accreditation.
It started last summer when alligators seemed to roam freely in Pittsburgh like some kind of urban Jurassic Park. Over a few months, at least four of the scaly beasts — measuring up to 5 feet long — were captured along the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers and in the Beechview and Carrick neighborhoods.
That prompted Pittsburgh in December to make an ordinance to regulate big reptiles and venomous snakes, and let’s be honest, people should know if there’s something living next door that could eat your schnauzer or toddler. The city council wasn’t out of line.
But last month, Councilman Bruce Kraus introduced a new bill that repeals the previous one and flatly bans owning or selling the potentially dangerous animals (plus red-eared slider turtles). He acted after Human Action Pittsburgh and Humane Animal Rescue found the existing ordinance inhumane because it demanded escape-proof containers. Well, OK.
Enter the zoo, which would be exempt, as long as it had accreditation through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
It doesn’t. It used to have it. Not anymore. That’s where the elephants come in.
According to zoo president and CEO Barbara Baker, the facility has been accredited for the last five years by three different organizations — the American Humane Association, the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks, and the Aquariums and the Zoological Association of America. The zoo, she said, broke with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 2015 because it disagrees with AZA’s policy on elephant and keeper contact.
The lack of AZA accreditation also puts the zoo out of compliance with its lease of city-owned property, which also requires that accreditation.
So the city could solve this problem by changing the lease to accept accreditation from other sources, and Kraus could amend his bill to accept the alternate stamp of approval too, right?
Yes — but he says he won’t. He should. They should.
The zoo isn’t selling cobras out of a sketchy van by an overpass. It’s a well-respected organization involved in serious conservation efforts, and it’s a great place to give Pennsylvania kids a chance to see things that aren’t in their own backyards — we hope.
This should be a “Hakuna Matata” situation. The solution is obvious. The zoo isn’t asking to be unaccredited, just differently accredited.