Book Review: Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives

 "Zoos argue that they are fighting for the conservation of the Earth, that they educate the public and provide refuge and support for vanishing species. And they are right. Animal-rights groups argue that zoos traffic in living creatures, exploiting them for financial gain and amusement. And they are right."

One of my favorite non-fiction, non-animal books of all time is John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  In this book, the author moves to Savannah, Georgia and becomes caught up in the real-life (you couldn’t make this stuff up) drama and escapades of the city’s… colorful residents.  The author finds himself with a front row seat to scandal after scandal, culminating in murder.

What Berendt did for Savannah, journalist Thomas French does for Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo in his Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives.  French takes us inside of the rapidly growing, constantly changing zoo, introducing us to its keepers, vets, and animals, while exploring the role that they play in saving endangered species.  He also takes us through a number of scandals, some of which some of the interested parties wouldn’t hesitate to call murder.

French opens up his book with one of the most controversial episodes in recent zoo history: the decision to transfer a herd of elephants, slated for culling in their native Swaziland due to overpopulation, to zoos in the United States.  Some of those elephants wound up (after considerable strife, which French documents faithfully) in Lowry Park, which built a new compound to receive them.  Part of the writer’s skill is how he uses stories like these to teach lessons to the general reader.  Prior to the elephants' arrival, he explores the controversy of zoos keeping elephants at all.  As they settle in, he explains the free-contact/protected contact divide among elephant keepers.  The later point is not an academic one, as French explains while recounting the past death the zoo’s former elephant keeper.

The zoo that the author takes us through is a magical kingdom, full of wonderful experiences.  Injured manatees are nursed back to health and prepared for release and return.  Zoo staff travel the world to help study endangered species in the wild (the book describes one of the last expeditions to see the Panamanian golden frog in the wild).  The bond between keeper and kept (including a chimp with a thing for his female keepers) is explored in great detail.  It is also a place of danger.  One of the most haunting chapters of the book describes the deaths – very different, but both violent – of the zoo’s two most famous residents.

A backdrop to the book’s animal protagonists is the rise and fall of Lex Salisbury, the zoo’s director, who was accused of using the zoo’s resources (and animals) for personal gain as he planned to open his own private zoo.  The Salisbury saga is more than about personalities (though there are some over-sized ones dominating it).  It is about the conflicted nature of a zoo and its mission.  What does a zoo stand for?  What are its priorities?  Is it for people first, or for animals?

Zoo and aquarium keepers will enjoy French’s book – it will doubtlessly remind many of them of the dramas and internal struggles at their own zoos (hopefully on an exaggerated scale).  Who this book is really meant for, however, is for the folks on the outside looking in – the general public.  Easily readable and highly enjoyable, it offers a very intimate peak into the life and inner-workings of a zoo.  It doesn’t whitewash the faults or gloss over controversies, nor should it.  It does, however, portray the Lowry Park Zoo – as with most zoos – as what it really is: a group of very devoted, very passionate people, committed to the well-being of their animals and determined to make a difference, both in the zoo and around the world.

Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives at Amazon.com