Zoos Try To Tame Bad PR

The nation’s zoos have been working to improve their reputations, after at least 10 high-profile animal escapes in 2007 – including the most recent case of an escaped tiger killing a San Francisco zoo visitor on Christmas. But when animals are involved, are crisis management efforts just futile?

In a new article in the Wall Street Journal, Justin Scheck and Ben Worthen say that most animal escapes “don’t result in injuries to people, and the critters are usually captured and returned home. But zoo officials say recent breakouts have forced them to talk about safety at a time when they would rather discuss topics like improved facilities and efforts to save endangered species.”

The pair says the nation’s largest zoos are in the midst of a public-relations campaign led by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to counter recent accusations by animal-rights groups that captive creatures are mistreated.

The association has also beefed up its crisis-management system, Scheck and Worthen report. In 2006, it hired Steve Feldman from Powell Tate, a Washington PR firm, where he handled responses to plane crashes and helped environmental groups beset by scandal. Crisis-management courses are now taught at the AZA’s training program in Wheeling, W. Va.

Feldman told the pair he was leaving his inlaws’ house in Alexandria, Virginia, after Christmas dinner when San Francisco Zoo spokesman Paul Garcia called him at about 9:15 EST, an hour after the fatal tiger attack. Feldman immediately began planning a response, deciding that San Francisco Zoo officials would speak about the mauling.

The escape is still being investigated, though the zoo has acknowledged that the tiger’s enclosure was too low. Feldman told Scheck and Worthen the incident is the first time an escape resulted in fatal consequences for a visitor since the group’s accreditation program began in 1974.

To read the full article, click here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119950257310069637.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_mostpop