A Point of Reference

Years ago, in my earliest experiences in hiring new keepers, I came across an application that, to my surprise, listed an old colleague from another facility as a reference.  I hadn't been that interested in the applicant overall, to be honest, but I decided to call the reference - in part, I guess, just to show my old zoo that I'd made it after all.  There had certainly been some doubt among them in those days.  To my surprise, my former co-worker was not happy about the call.  Not because it was me.  Because it was about a reference.

"I never said that he could use me," he said, and I could almost visualize him shaking on the other end of the phone with indignation.  "I never agree to be a reference for anyone.  I'd never put my reputation on the line like that."  That gave me a little pause.  I'd never honestly thought of this guy as having a particularly good reputation to begin with...  Anyway, the applicant didn't get the job.

I'd thought about that experience a lot in recent years, but for different reasons.  A new requirement through AZA requires a vetting process for when we send animals to non-AZA facilities.  There's an application we ask those facilities to fill out, of course, and ask for documentation, such as USDA inspection reports.  Still, there's no substitute for onsite inspections and firsthand accounts.  Ideally, we'd go ourselves to check out a facility, and sometimes that's what we do.  But sometimes it's too far for us to easily get to, in which case we rely upon other folks who have been to or interacted with that facility to provide a reference.

The headache is that, sometimes, like my old colleague, other facilities won't help out.  They're afraid.  They're afraid that if they provide a reference and it's a bad one, the facility in question will hear about it, get angry, and cause trouble.  Or, they're worried that if they provide a positive reference, we move ahead with a transaction, and something bad happens, it'll reflect poorly on them and their judgement.  So they say nothing.

This can be a bit frustrating, because really, there are a lot of great non-AZA facilities out there that it would be good to work with.  Besides some facilities which have, for one reason or another, opted not to join, there's also a lot of facilities (about 4 a year the past few years) which have lost accreditation, though they still may be fine zoos.  Columbus Zoo lost accreditation for one year before being readmitted - it's not like standards of care changed dramatically in that one year that they were out of the organization, but for that year, our zoo would have had to treat them like any other non-AZA zoo.  In that case, at least, references were easy to come by.

Many zoo-managed breeding programs find themselves limited by space and participating members.  Working with additional zoos can be a tremendous boon to the sustainability and viability of a population.  We shouldn't compromise by partnering with facilities with suboptimal animal welfare - but at the same time, it's frustrating to miss out on working with zoos that could be great partners, just because folks don't feel comfortable answering some questions about a place.