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Anne Baker, who takes over as director full time on April 1, says meeting with zoo staff members convinced her that the Toledo Zoo was where she wanted to be.
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Zoo director passionate about care of animals

Zoo director passionate about care of animals

The surgery table in the veterinary hospital makes a nice bed when you can t get home from the zoo, says Anne Baker, the Toledo Zoo s new executive director.

She s an expert at sleeping in zoos. Another time Ms. Baker who is completing 13 years as executive director of the Syracuse, N.Y., Rosamond Gifford Zoo slept in the front seat of a golf cart, waiting for the birth of an Indian elephant. She didn t have to be there. So why bother? Why not just go home?

Do you think I would miss it? Ms. Baker shot back, looking honestly puzzled.

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Ms. Baker is an animal person. She would never use that horrible slur mutt to refer to her 12-year-old dog. Instead, she declares the old girl is the world s only Orkney shepherd. She and her partner, Bob Lacy, share their home with their dog, a 21-year-old cat, an African gray parrot, and four chickens, the girls, she calls them. And she has shared a good bit of her career with gorillas, monkeys, chimps, and orangutans when she was primate curator at the Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago.

Animals are her passion, and her mystery to solve.

We don t know nearly enough about the animals in our care. So I think a better understanding of the biology of animals is essential. We have so many different species here, hundreds of species, and not much is known. Consider, she said, the unsolved mysteries in human health and multiply that by the number of species in zoos, to get a picture of the challenges zoos face.

Learning the secrets of animals is the only way to provide the best care, she said.

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If I had all the money in the world, I would figure out how to truly assess animal welfare, she said. We have metrics we can use, things like reproduction and general physical appearance, but we still don t have all the tools we need.

One mistake is to project our own emotions onto animals. For instance, one can jump to the wrong conclusion by trying to read an animal s face.

Colobus [monkeys] have always looked sad to me. But it doesn t matter where I see them, there s just something about that colobus face that has a sad little look to it. But if they are sad, they are sad in the wild too, she said.

It s really important to understand how an animal sees its environment, what senses it uses to perceive the world around it. If we start doing things like assuming every [animal] is visually oriented because we re visually oriented, we re going to miss what s important to a vast number of animals, she said.

For instance, snakes and other reptiles might be most concerned about temperature gradients. If a reptile has a selection of temperatures to move into, it may be a very enriching environment for it.

Choice is very important, she said, providing the opportunity for the animals to chose.

Ms. Baker met with the zoo staff yesterday morning, but it wasn t her first introduction to many of them. In fact, it was in meetings with staff, who also interviewed director candidates, where she was convinced that the Toledo Zoo was a good place to land. Those meetings also suggested that the internal strife revealed last February with the firing of the zoo s popular chief veterinarian was no longer a major issue today.

Zoo employees were very focused on what was good for the zoo, what was good for the animals. This was a zoo, this was a staff, poised to move into the next era of their evolution. I think that s exciting to be a part of, she said.

But problems are not over at the zoo. Some employees, speaking anonymously for fear of losing their jobs, say strife continues in some areas. They hope the new director will be able to bring some sort of resolution.

Some members of the County Task Force that reviewed zoo operations amid the zoo crisis last year are watching developments at the zoo with some wariness as well.

I m sure they ve hired the right person as zoo director, said Marty Skeldon, a task force member. I m not dissatisfied at all. I hope she can really help the zoo out because they still have issues. She s got to straighten out employee relations issues. There s still a problem between curators and the keepers.

Mr. Skeldon said he was concerned that the zoo failed to act on two of the task force s recommendations having the new director select a new chief veterinarian from outside the Toledo Zoo, and bringing in a general animal curator from outside the zoo. The zoo has no general curator, and the zoo board hired Dr. Wynona Shellabarger, who has worked at the zoo for years, as its chief veterinarian.

Steve Serchuk, chairman of the task force animal welfare committee, was an outspoken supporter of hiring an outside veterinarian. He says he is now watching to see who the zoo hires as director of operations. It should not be a current Toledo Zoo employee, he says.

I m going to be really disappointed if that happens, he said.

But Ms. Baker said it is too early to say whether a general curator will be hired, or what the zoo management scheme will be. She won t know until she spends some time on the job.

The zoo s new director, who will be in Toledo again Feb. 13, will begin here full time April 1.

Contact Jenni Laidman at: jenni@theblade.com or 419-724-6507.

First Published January 21, 2006, 2:28 p.m.

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Anne Baker, who takes over as director full time on April 1, says meeting with zoo staff members convinced her that the Toledo Zoo was where she wanted to be.
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