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Seems like just yesterday that the Central Park Zoo polar bears were opening Christmas gifts (video), but 2009 is proving to be a monetarily tough one for not just humans, but animals too. Last week Gov. Paterson's budget proposal was unveiled and included major cutbacks for zoos, aquariums, and even the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. So it shouldn't have come as too much of a shock to the Bronx Zoo porcupine when he was let go:
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Does anyone at Gothamist actually cover New York? Seriously, the New York Public Library has made a
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He was a f*ckin' prick!
The Wildlife Conservation Society is an independent non-profit, much like the three library systems in the city. They spend around $60 million a year outside of New York in their $170 million budget with the zoos taking in about $40 million a year. Around fifteen years ago they were spending about $5 million outside of New York.
If they cut spending outside of New York instead of crying poormouth, maybe they can weather the storm by sticking to what they were founded to do.
The Wildlife Conservation Society is just that: a conservation society. They are NOT the NEW YORK CITY ZOO society. Many of their best known projects involve breeding and reproduction projects for extinct-in-the-wild or near-extinct-in-the-wild animals. This is why they spent so much money outside of NY. I'm sorry that cheetah don't live wild in NY state--maybe then we'd be able to keep the money in the city. The NY zoos are only part of what they do--not whole--and most of the zoos money comes from the state. They also do not support or are even affiliated with the 68 other zoos and gardens in NY state that will be affected by these cuts.
And such a nice guy too.
I was fully expecting this to turn into "GIRAFFES!!!" midway through.
That video is awesome.
What they should do is institute a "fierce creatures" policy.