This not the kind of zoo you want to support. Your...

This not the kind of zoo you want to support. Your money is not going to animal conservation or education, it is going to the pocket of one person. I ll try to briefly state some points:

1. This is a privately owned zoo. That means the owner has control. Which is fine if you have a caring owner. This one is not though. He is in it for the profit. Which is obvious by the constant upkeep and construction of rides that you have to pay for. Also, ask the staff how much they get paid. He offers them the minimum amount he has to. Any benefits full-time workers usually get are pretty much non-existent. Long time staff make less than what other zoos pay entry level workers. With this type of model, either the staff work extra jobs perpetually or they go somewhere else (so what s left is overworked/exhausted staff or staff that aren t high quality). The owner relies on the fact that people enter this field for their passion, and he takes full advantage of that. There are so many examples of him cutting corners to pocket a profit for himself. Which leads to the next point:

2. Animal care is not a priority. This zoo meets the minimum qualifications at best for a lower tier certification than other zoos. Look at the exhibits, they aren t that great. That s because the owner puts little thought into their construction based on the perspective of the animals. You can even ask the staff, he continuously ignores their opinions with every new exhibit. And the next time they are building one, go watch who is building them. His maintenance staff are an interesting crew to say the least. These exhibits are designed to meet the very minimum qualifications in order to maximize how many they can squish into the property, and they are built by people who do not care and who you seriously wonder if are even sober. This approach by the owner continues to other areas such as poor diets, poor cleaning standards, few enrichment options, etc. This list could be very long. And yes it always comes from the top. When the staff bring up certain issues, they are almost always denied or ignored.

Everything I say can be verified by simply signing up to volunteer. Since the owner set it up so staff have to rely on people who are willing to work for free, there is rarely a shortage of need for people to volunteer. You can easily observe any of this for yourself from just volunteering once a week. Then you can also see what happens when government agencies such as the USDA get called for inspections (which happens more than it should). The owner has a plan to sneakily evade the inspectors on certain points he know he d get cited for. For example, slapping uniforms on volunteers to pretend they were stationed somewhere, or quickly cleaning certain exhibits to make it look they are cleaned every day. Your money is better spent elsewhere