City Council Approves Dallas Zoo Safety Measures

DALLAS. On Tuesday, Dallas City Council members praised Dallas Zoo officials for their response to the recent wave of vandalism and theft. However, Dallas Zoo officials say there may be more safety improvements to come.

“I have to tell you that we were all shocked and angered by the recent series of events,” said former Dallas Zoo chairman Lois Finkelman. Her comments were forwarded to the Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee as they requested an update on the zoo’s latest safety measures.

“Today you gave me confidence that everything will be fine,” Dallas City Council member Chad West said after the presentation by Dallas Zoo CEO Sean Green.

The praise came after the Dallas Zoo had been doing very poorly for a month.

On January 13, after acts of vandalism in the enclosure, a clouded leopard named Nova escaped. The nearby langur monkey habitat has also been subjected to similar acts of vandalism. These monkeys did not escape, and on the same day a clouded leopard was found outside, but not far from its habitat.

On January 21, a vulture named Pin was found dead in his habitat in the Wild Africa section of the zoo. Looks like he had a fatal stab wound. Dallas Police and the US Fish and Wildlife Service were involved in the investigation.

And on January 30, two emperor tamarins, Bella and Finn, were found missing from their habitat in the zoo’s children’s section. Open and closed storage areas were found to have been vandalized. Widespread photographs of the potential suspect led to the monkeys being discovered the very next day in a vacant building in Lancaster.

The suspect, Davion Irwin, was taken into custody Feb. 2 at the Dallas World Aquarium, where he was reportedly asking suspicious questions about animal care and access to enclosures. He is still in the Dallas County Jail with a total bail of $130,000.

Irwin reportedly confessed to his involvement in monkey theft and other vandalism at the Dallas Zoo that allowed the clouded leopard to escape.

But after each incident, zoo officials say their security apparatus has grown.

On Tuesday, Green told city council members that there is now a new perimeter fence, an expanded CCTV camera system, enhanced security lighting, and an outside consultant is looking into whether the zoo needs more security measures.

“We have to be careful,” Sean Green told council members, “because we are a public zoo. It’s fun. It is suitable for family holidays. We don’t want it to look like a maximum security facility.”

“It has to be pleasing and aesthetically appealing,” Greene said Tuesday afternoon at the Dallas Zoo. “And at the same time, he has to do his job with safety and security. Because if we don’t have safety and security, nobody wants to come.”

Although police believe that Irvine is the only suspect in some of the zoo’s vandalism, including the theft of tamarin monkeys, the vulture’s death from a stab wound is still a mystery and under investigation. The DPD Animal Cruelty Unit is involved. US Fish and Wildlife agents are involved because the vulture-faced vulture is considered an endangered species.

“But this kind of thing undermines your confidence in humanity, I mean what is right and what is wrong. And for me, we have to make sure we’re ready for all the different scenarios,” Greene said.

The scenario after a month of very unusual events is to await additional security measures added in the future to ensure the safety of the zoo’s annual millions of visitors and its wildlife inhabitants.

Meanwhile, after a brief quarantine, the tamarin monkeys have returned to their enclosure and are on public display. Clouded leopards sleep blissfully on a 85-degree February day and are unaware that security measures are being tightened around them.