You never know what you'll learn from TV. While flipping through the channels recently, I became engrossed in a show about zoo risk management—leave it to me to find a risk management program on Animal Planet.
As you might recall, in 2007 on Christmas Day at closing time in a San Francisco zoo, a teenage boy was killed by a tiger—named Tatiana—who escaped from her enclosure. Another boy and his injured brother tried to get help and were also nearly mauled. This was the first deadly animal escape in American zoo history. The tiger enclosure, a grotto with bushes and a high fence, was considered escape-proof.
Tigers are considered to be one of the most dangerous animals in a zoo. They are endangered, with only 4,000 or so left in the wild, disappearing at a rate of one per day, according to the show. In fact, more Siberian tigers live in zoos than in the wild—only about 250 are left in the wild. These are sad facts, but they show the importance of these animals and their lure to zoo visitors.
Zoos, I learned, as part of their accreditation with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, are required to perform annual drills—with the goal of always recapturing an animal unless a human life is at stake. The association has a 67-page manual which covers every aspect of zoo keeping and risk management.
As is the case with risk managers in any industry, risk managers of zoos must think of anything that could conceivably go wrong and develop a plan, just in case. They must look not only at the animal enclosures, but at the nature of each type of animal and what it is capable of.
Contingency planning for zoos involves creating a scenario, such as an escaped cheetah, and then responding to that scenario. The response team is equipped with a medical team and anything else that could be needed, such as tranquilization darts, although I learned that these darts are not always as responsive as believed. The darts can take five to 10 minutes to be effective, and sometimes they don't work at all. The real danger is the unforeseen event and there is always something to be learned from a drill.
In this case the inconceivable did happen. This large, dangerous tiger, perhaps egged-on by the three teens that late afternoon (a partial shoe-print was found on top of the iron fence), jumped the high fence of her enclosure to get at them. She killed one teen and then stalked the other two, who were trying to get help. They called 9-1-1, which responded within minutes. Once on the scene, authorities found that the tiger had the two teens cornered.
Studies of the incident after the fact revealed that the first-rate care tigers receive may have contributed to the situation—again something that would be extremely difficult to recognize and plan for in advance. These large cats eat excellent diets and get a lot of physical exercise, which in effect turns them into athletes.
A large, athletic cat housed in an older zoo exhibit could have been the unforeseen element leading to the tiger's escape. After the tragedy, according to the program, the tiger exhibit was closed and the outside area completely rebuilt. Among the renovations, foliage along the perimeter was removed, a higher fence was installed and an electrified hot-wire added to the fence.
This situation illustrates, to me, one of the biggest dangers of risk management–looking around the corner for potential risks, rather than going back and examining the situation with fresh eyes.
Risk managers, does this story sound any alarms?
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