DALLAS — From the moment a clouded leopard escaped its enclosure at the Dallas Zoo on Jan. 13, fleeing through a fence that zoo officials said was intentionally cut, the city’s 135-year-old sanctuary for wild and endangered animals has fallen prey to intense scrutiny.
On the same day, police said the enclosure housing langur monkeys had also been tampered with, though none escaped. On Jan. 21, an endangered vulture was found dead, the severity of the crime leaving in its wake a horrifying wound. On Jan. 30, the crimes intensified with two emperor tamarin monkeys reported missing from yet another habitat that police said had been tampered with.
A single suspect has since been arrested, but the serial thefts and brazen vandalism have flooded the zoo with far more questions than answers. The crime wave has spurred national attention and on occasion hurled the institution into the zany milieu of 24-hour news, social media and pop culture.
In his song, “2 Monkeys,” which he performed on a national podcast on Feb. 8, satirical songwriter Dan Bern compared the crimes against the Dallas Zoo to security at the zoo in Washington, D.C.
“Anyone who has been to the National Zoo,” Bern wrote, “knows security there is like at Buckingham Palace. Things are much looser at the zoo in Dallas.”
In looking at the seriousness of the crime and the zoo as a whole, The Dallas Morning News examined 10 years of financial data, interviewed more than a dozen people, including top zoo leaders and members of the city department that oversees it, as well as members of the Dallas Zoological Society, the fundraising arm that each year is charged with the task of ensuring the zoo’s survival.
The newspaper learned that the zoo — owned by the city but run by a nonprofit corporation — now faces a perception problem, triggered by a rare breach in security. The zoo will likely have to spend more money than it has and win support from the city to make the changes that help restore public confidence.
In extensive interviews with The Dallas Morning News over the past few weeks, zoo officials have responded to the torrent of scrutiny, comical and serious, by promising to spend heavily on what president and CEO Gregg Hudson vows will become a “state-of-the-art” security system that he contends other zoos will emulate.
Hudson, who in 2006 became zoo president and CEO, says he hopes for a system so advanced and innovative that people from around the country will visit to “see what our program is. I have no doubt that we will be able to do that. We have to do everything we can do to make sure this never happens again.”
Zoo officials recently told a concerned City Council that the zoo has brought in a team of security experts to conduct a 30-to-45-day assessment of safety, security, and risk. The experts began their work a week ago, with no immediate estimates on when they will finish or what the cost will be.
In Dallas, the zoo is not alone in wrestling with security and the millions it costs to ensure it.
Two of the city’s oldest institutions are the zoo, which was founded in 1888, and the Dallas Museum of Art, which opened in 1903. Both are enduring parallel traumas, with security — or the lack thereof — being the thorny, expensive issue they have in common.
The zoo and the DMA share another bond: Both are owned by the City of Dallas but operated by private nonprofit corporations, which are undergoing scrutiny never before seen in dual histories that go back more than a century.
Citizens want to know that the animals in the zoo are safe. And that the priceless works of art in the city art museum are also immune from danger. As for the latter, the aftereffects of its own criminal earthquake continue to reverberate.
An intruder, whose entry went undetected for almost 15 minutes, broke into the Dallas Museum of Art on June 1 before picking up a phone and calling 911 on himself. Even so, he managed to inflict serious damage on multiple works of art. The DMA has since announced its own security overhaul, promising to increase the 12% of its $29 million annual budget it previously spent to better protect the museum’s perimeter and its more than 24,000 artworks inside.
Until his retirement in 2016, John Barelli served as security chief at the renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He worked there for 38 years. He is also the author of "Stealing the Show: A History of Art and Crime in Six Thefts." His past also includes a stint in handling security for New York Botanical Garden.
In a recent interview with The Morning News, Barelli cited a parallel between The Met and the pair of Dallas institutions. Like the zoo and the DMA, The Met is owned by the City of New York but run by a private nonprofit. The biggest problem he sees in Dallas is one of perception. And at the moment, perception isn’t good. It leaves the public and the city uneasy.
“People have to be reassured, and how you reassure them is, you use the press to let them know that you’re going to beef it up with the latest, state-of-the-art security found in any museum — or zoo — in the world,” Barelli said. “But the zoo is tougher because it involves a deeper reliance on live manpower.”
As Barelli noted, we live in a scary time, full of high-profile thefts and mass shootings in public schools. So, in most cases, perception, he said, carries the day. “Once people feel that you are truly doing your due diligence in terms of the security system and the money needed to fix it, perception will improve.”
As with potential changes at the DMA, it won’t be easy or cheap to improve perception or guarantee safety at the zoo, as its officials concede. Beefing up security, as experts told The Morning News, might well involve millions of dollars in targeted spending on 21st century equipment that relies on artificial intelligence, upgraded computer systems and more and better surveillance. Improvements could extend to new barriers, upgraded enclosures and fortified walls.
The zoo has yet to disclose estimated costs for upgrades, but any plan may in the end intensify pressure on a venue with a history of net losses and an over-reliance on funding sources from the past, based on a review of its finances by The Morning News.
Tax filings show that the zoo spent more money than it had in two of the five years preceding the 2020 lockdown triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. Without financial support from the Dallas Zoological Society, the zoo’s fund-raising arm, expenses exceeded revenue from 2014 to 2019.
The zoo reported net deficits of $4.75 million in 2015 and $5.1 million in 2016, according to IRS tax filings. Net deficits of up to $1 million were reported in 2010 and 2011 — after a nonprofit management company took over zoo operations from the city in 2009. In years when the zoo posted large deficits, Hudson said, the red ink reflected the lag between fundraising and the reporting of a large investment for a signature feature.
Since 2009, Dallas Zoo Management Inc. has doubled the zoo’s revenue stream to more than $40 million by increasing exhibits and drawing a record number of visitors.
For years, however, the zoological society fought for adequate funding from the city and says it was forced to raise millions for signature exhibits, such as Simmons Hippo Outpost and Giants of the Savanna, featuring elephants, zebras, and giraffes from Africa, according to Dallas Morning News clips.
Finance experts who reviewed the zoo’s tax filings for The Morning News warned the zoo could not count on private donations that in years past plugged gaps and bankrolled new attractions. And while ticket sales have bolstered the operation, the experts said, they are by no means assured, as evidenced by the pandemic, which forced extended closures during peak months of attendance, beginning in March and ending in the summer. Last year, attendance hit 964,915, almost back to pre-pandemic levels, zoo spokeswoman Kari Streiber told The Morning News.
Zoo officials say $10.6 million in pandemic-induced federal relief money helped avoid layoffs in 2020, which was needed, with the city no longer being the guaranteed funding source it once was. From 2012 to 2019, the city provided annual increases, from an estimated $306,000 to $1.3 million, to cover rising costs, tax records show. Last year, the city ended the practice, capping its contribution at $15 million.
Meanwhile, the zoo is waiting on recommendations from a consultant to thoroughly assess its existing security profile. But experts interviewed for this article say the zoo should tread carefully before allocating millions to security.
“When you talk about a state-of-the-art security system, you’re talking about multiple layers of safety and security,” said Gary Sigrist, an Ohio-based security expert and former law enforcement officer.
“Just having a camera system is not a state-of-the-art system. Just having a security team is not a system. You have to have plans, and you have to have people reviewing all your plans.”
Officials at the park and recreation department, which oversees the zoo for the city, say they are not concerned about what the zoo can afford for a sweeping menu of upgrades.
Ryan O’Connor, assistant director at Dallas Park and Recreation, noted at a recent City Council meeting that the city might be able to subsidize, at least in part, the recommended upgrades. And yet, the city also figures to be tapped, perhaps heavily, for security upgrades at the DMA.
Arun Agarwal, chairman of Dallas Park and Recreation — appointed by Mayor Eric Johnson to oversee the zoo — expressed confidence that the economic development targeted for the venue will eventually lead to larger crowds and added revenues.
Lois Finkelman, immediate past president of the Dallas Zoological Society, contends that the zoo is well placed to weather its current turbulence.
The Dallas Zoo faced a financial crisis in 2009 when Finkelman said the society had to fight for adequate funding to bankroll a new elephant exhibit. At the time, the city was facing a $109 million budget deficit and wanted to cut the zoo’s staff.
Now, Finkelman said, the nonprofit has doubled revenues, enabling greater funding for hiring, conservation and educational programming.
As for security alone, Hudson sounded bullish on the zoo being able to underwrite upgrades, while hoping that some of that money comes from the city. Next year, city officials plan to unveil a $1 billion bond package. If passed, a portion of that money might filter down to the zoo.
Hudson says the nonprofit running the zoo has, at the moment, a $7 million operating reserve that could be tapped, if needed.
The Dallas Zoo is smaller in land dimensions and revenue than other zoos in the state’s biggest cities. While the size of the Dallas Zoo surpasses that of others, the Fort Worth Zoo houses 7,000 animals compared to 2,000 in Dallas. The Houston Zoo reports annual average revenue of more than $75 million over the last four years, according to IRS tax filings. By comparison, the Dallas Zoo reports an annual average revenue of $35.8 million.
And yet, Eric Chan, assistant professor of accounting at the University of Texas, Austin, says the Dallas Zoo needs to exhaust ways of ensuring that spending never exceeds revenue.
To enhance the bottom line, Chan recommends adding crowd-pleasing exhibits and animal populations that make earned income a less-scary proposition than it is at the moment.
Regardless of how it all unfolds, president and CEO Hudson said he wishes to assure even the most critical that the Dallas Zoo will emerge from its latest grim chapters to write a story that everyone can be proud of.
And to let them know that, despite what has happened in its recent past, he contends the zoo truly is in the best of hands.
“We have,” he said, “been good stewards of the overall operation.”
(Staff writer Zaeem Shaikh contributed to this report.)
