SAN FRANCISCO – Since the coronavirus pandemic began keeping visitors at home, jaguars and chimpanzees at the Oakland Zoo have taken credit for calm and ventured into avoidable exhibition spaces.
However, young people lack bears and pigs that caress them and are more interested in zookeepers.
Some things, however, have not changed. The $55,000 charge of animal feed has put the nearly 100-year-old zoo in an extreme economic situation.
“We’ve already lost the most of our summer revenue stream and live on the reserves we have left, yet they’ll sell out at some point,” said Joel Parrott, president of the Oakland Zoo, which houses 750 giant animals.
The zoo and many more across the country were ordered to close in March, the beginning of the busiest season for maximum animal parks, forcing directors to deal with the money and affect the pandemic through layoffs and pay cuts. Even when reopened, zoos and aquariums from Alaska to Florida get few visitors, leading directors to seek help from their communities to avoid permanent closure.
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The Oakland Zoo has fired more than a hundred employees, most commonly those who paint with guests. Two hundred other people who care for animals and supply veterinary and protect the public and animals are still functioning and represent a component of the $1.2 million a month of the zoo, Parrott said.
The California government allowed the zoo to reopen its spaces last week, but the wildlife park still faces a major challenge. Customers supply more than 90% of revenue through tickets, concessions, travel, gifts and parties. But attendance and source of income in Oakland, and across the country, are not enough.
“Members achieve between 20% and 50% of their overall earnings goals,” said Dan Ashe, president of the National Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
About 75% of the 220 U.S. zoos and aquariums represented through the agreement have reopened, but without further assistance, they face “very difficult decisions related to new licenses or layoffs and eventually their survival,” Ashe said. Six out of 10 members have requested assistance from the federal government’s coronavirus relief program, however, this money is running out this month.
Dino Ferri, president of the Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Garden, said he would get up at night to see how he would make up for the $1.5 million he lost his park when it closed two months in May. Normally, those are the busiest months for the zoo, which for visitors accounts for 80% of its income.
The Sanford Zoo in Florida is home to 350 animals and is visited for 40,000 school-age children. With schools closed, major occasions canceled and few tourists, the zoo is suffering from bringing even part of the $450,000 a month that you want to manage the park, Ferri said.
The park can now open up to 1,000 more people at a time and Ferri expects a busy summer, but only about 350 visitors are shown per day.
“People are afraid, ” said Ferri. “We expected a rise from other people who don’t and stay, yet the increase in the number of cases in the state of Florida and everything that makes the news keep them at home.”
As a result, he fired 40% of the staff, reduced the control team’s salaries, adding his own, and introduced a crusade to $1.5 million through December to repair the zoo’s operating budget to pre-virus levels.
“We need to reduce our branch of schooling and more pay cuts at all levels, plus layoffs,” Ferri said. “We just have to keep hunting to avoid bleeding.”
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In Seward, Alaska, three-quarters of visitors beyond the Alaska SeaLife Center, an aquarium and study center that manages Alaska’s only marine mammal rescue program, are tourists arriving via airplanes or cruise ships. Most cruises are cancelled, so there are few people to see the site’s octopus and the few Steller sea lions.
SeaLife Center President and CEO Tara Riemer said the aquarium, integrated into the component with the budget of the agreement after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, sees about 25% of its typical number of guests before the pandemic. A budget deficit of $3 million is expected this year.
“If we don’t have enough money to make it through the winter, we have no option but to send these animals away and close the facility,” Riemer said.
Closing zoos and aquariums is a chore. Finding new animal houses is now even more confusing with so few flights and so many animal parks and aquariums in monetary difficulties.
SeaLife has laid off any staff, but has particularly reduced its expenses by freezing the hiring of seasonal and other staff and reducing wages by 10%.
Riemer said he was still optimistic. She and she are focusing on raising at least $2 million through the end of September by contacting foundations, seeking government grants, and turning to Alaska and others for support.
The city of Seward has pledged $500,000 if the average raises $1.3 million. In an encouraging signal, the center sold 500 new subscriptions, costing $60 to $155 each, on an unmarried day, more than a quarter of the number purchased in a year.
“I’m sure we can increase that budget because there are so many other people in Alaska who are trying to figure out how to do it,” Riemer said.
Contributed through Terry Chea, The Associated Press