I am VERY close to someone who worked zoo there. They were VERY dedicated. I think she told me they lost their AZA accreditation, in the zoo world that his huge. AZA is the governing body that sets rules about everything from habitat enclosure environments to who can mate with whom. WIth the exception of the Bald Eagle they control the breeding stock of all endangered animals in reputable zoos and aquarium's. There are other organizations but they do not have the reputation of AZA and tend to have more shady members.
If I am remembering correctly this would go a LONG way to explaining the loss of accredidation.
I would argue that what they were doing was terrible. But I also get angry when I see big cats being handled by humans (other than trained staff).It's not totally true that you have to do terrible things to lose accreditation. The Pittsburgh Zoo is famously no longer an AZA facility because they wouldn't follow a rules update forbidding free contact with elephants. Their elephants had always on a free contact program, and the zoo staff were worried that going no contact would distress them. You can also lose AZA accreditation for breeding certain color morphs that are overall poor for the genetic diversity of the species. I uh...strongly suspect that GAdv didn't lose their accreditation over differences in scientific opinion, though.
This. Honestly the only difference in Pittsburgh that I noticed is that members of the zoo no longer have reciprocity with other AZA facilities.
SO I checked with my friend again. When I asked her if they had lost AZA... She laughed at me... "Lost! Hell they never had it to begin with..." Apparently I was wrong about that part.
Apparently in my friends time at the zoo she was less than impressed with how they handled themselves. Apparently they had a bad tendency to kill their animals and also it seems that they had constant problems with folk coming in from the park and feeding crap to the animals.
I was about to say this. I was fairly certain any drive through safari was automatically out of AZA accreditation unless it was like DAK's where the animals are pretty much isolated from the vehicles.
Also unsure about the killing animals part, but one of the reasons why Great Adventure merged the Safari into the Amusement Park was due to guests feeding animals all sorts of stuff they should not have been consuming.
I would argue that what they were doing was terrible. But I also get angry when I see big cats being handled by humans (other than trained staff).
Nono, I do not mean to suggest that 6 Flags were permitting big cat interaction, just that there are places that do. I would say that cheetahs have no business in human contact either.WAIT, were they seriously doing free GUEST contact with big cats?? That's incredibly inappropriate, even if it were an ambassador animal. Cheetahs are really the only big cats who should EVER have human contact.
I think that might be taking it too far. Tampa does an excellent job as to the Sea World parks, heck they are AZA. Now I suppose you did not mean to include those parks since you did say "amusement parks," however I do not see why a well funded and operated amusement park could not operate a zoo.It's safe to say that zoos at amusement parks like this should not exist.