THUNDER BAY -- The Friends of Chippewa Park is advising city council that not funding a zoo is different from closing one down.
The park's advocacy group made an impassioned plea to save the Chippewa Park Wildlife Exhibit at a pre-budget consultation meeting on Tuesday, suggesting the city could be on the hook for a much higher cost than the operating costs its draft 2017 budget prescribes cutting. The $86,000 funding reduction constitutes the exhibit's entire operating budget and would close it down.
"It (dismantling the exhibit) will cost a lot more than it would to maintain it," said Friends of Chippewa Park president Lorraine Lortie-Krawczuk.
"We're not seeing the cost of decommissioning and what would happen to the animals and what that would cost the city... it's not a real savings of $83,000."
Board member Aranka Golphy pointed out the recent $6.4 million investment in the park, approximately $5 million of which came from the provincial and federal governments. She attributed declining attendance to the park's roller coaster closure in 2012 and the nearby James Street Swing Bridge fire in 2013.
Golphy was among deputants who called for the zoo to be converted to a full-scale wildlife rescue and conservation centre animal sanctuary, complete with larger enclosures, video cameras to see the animals with minimal intrusion, and incorporating Indigenous language and culture the the exhibits.
In the meantime, she said, the move would cost the city.
"You can't sell animals in Canada, even to another zoo," said friends board member Aranka Golphy, expressing worry over the fate of black bear Fluffy, who is over 20 years old.
"The city would have to foot the cost for getting rid of those animals and a lot of zoos or wildlife exhibits don't want to take old animals. The bear in the wildlife exhibit is quite elderly. It might not even survive a transportation. They might have to euthanize the bear. We do not want to see that happen at all."
City engineering and operations director Kayla Dixon said some decommissioning costs will arise in future budgets but administration has already found new homes for "the majority" of the exhibit's animals.
"I believe we've identified new homes for the majority of the animals but certainly we'd keep the animals until we either found homes for them or until they passed," Dixon said.
"The people that want them would pay to have them moved."
The closure would also interrupt a visioning exercise for the park consultants have been leading since February 2016.
Coun. Iain Angus is also the secretary of Friends of Chippewa. He applauded administration understanding the city will incur some cost from the exhibit's closure but suggested some of answers it seeks will come from that visioning exercise.
"They may come back and say it doesn't work at all. We could put all our eggs in a water park or something else," Angus said.
"What are the costs and how much time do we need to transition? There are some things you can do very easily in terms of any future intakes would have to meet a certain criteria and have an advisory committee to begin planning for the full conversion."
Northwood Coun. Shelby Ch'ng challenged each of the zoo advocates who spoke, arguing the city should ethically divest itself of the exhibit as a moral liability.
"I think there's a moral issue with zoos and keeping animals in captivity under the guise of an educational issue when it's not how society is transitioning, Zoos are a thing of the past," Ch'ng said.
"At what point is this going to go? It has been limping along for how many years? We can wait until we get an official group of 100 people to come out and participate in a visioning exercise and I hope more people come out and express concern or support for it -- but the people I speak to support me on this."
