Early Care Tells Tale Of Two Zoos Methodical Approach In Billings A Contrast To Walk In The Wild

The ribbon hasn’t been cut yet at ZooMontana.

There are no lions, no tigers, no bears at the non-profit zoo on the outskirts of Billings.

But in six years, Yellowstone County residents and businesses have put far more time and money into their zoo than Spokane invested at Walk in the Wild in nearly a quarter-century.

Walk in the Wild is financially crippled and facing eviction. It will close at the end of summer unless its supporters can find a new home and the money to move.

ZooMontana, which opened on a limited basis in 1993, is starting strong in a community one quarter the size of Spokane.

It’s no mystery to officials at either zoo why one thrives and the other is dying: ZooMontana had better prenatal care.

The Inland Northwest Zoological Society borrowed a few animals in 1972 and asked for donations for a zoo featuring mud trails, inadequate fences and outhouses.

Walk in the Wild quickly gained a reputation as an unattractive menagerie where people and animals sometimes hurt each other. The reputation stuck even as the zoo improved.

The Montana Zoological Society announced in 1989 it would only start a zoo if donors first put up the money for first-rate exhibits.

“We had a very strong message from our chairman: ‘We will not put a shovel into the ground until we have $3 million,”’ said Administrator Jim Duncan.

The community caught the vision, and the money was pledged in three years.

“When I first went out there in ‘89, ‘90, I was doubtful they could pull it off. Now I have no doubt,” said Dwight Holland, retired director of the North Carolina Zoological Park, who has been a ZooMontana consultant, volunteer and donor.

“I’ve never seen the volunteer spirit working like it is in Billings,” said Holland, who lives in Asheboro, N.C.

Donations of $1,000 are rare at Walk in the Wild, and five-digit gifts rate a press conference. Its biggest donation was $100,000 from the estate of an animal lover.

In Billings, 70 individuals and organizations gave $10,000 or more. Four gifts were at least $250,000 and another nine were in the $100,000 range.

Donations for Billings zoo construction and wildlife education total about $5 million, including nearly $400,000 this year alone.

“Just this week we’ve gotten another $50,000 donation,” said Duncan.

Exxon, with a Billings refinery, is building a $500,000 Siberian tiger exhibit that is scheduled to open in September, when the zoo plans a grand opening. Holland estimates the exhibit would have cost twice that amount without volunteer labor.

The owner of Wendy’s restaurants in Montana donated $400,000 for an education program. It is run by a biologist whose last job was helping reintroduce black-footed ferrets to Montana.

The Humane Society pays the salary of another ZooMontana employee, who is a nationally recognized expert in the field of immunocontraception - the science of controlling wildlife populations through chemical contraceptives.

The zoo already has a botanical garden, aviary, petting zoo and an exhibit where visitors can watch through glass as river otters swim and play. The 70-acre zoo is booked all but two Saturdays this summer for weddings and corporate picnics.

ZooMontana regularly turns down offers of exotic animals from other zoos. Its plan is to add one exhibit a year.

“Getting animals isn’t the problem. The problem is having the right staff and holding facilities” to care for them, said Duncan. “We don’t want to build pens, we want to build habitats.”

The exhibits are built to standards set by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums. Montana zoo builders hope to be certified by the AAZPA a step that opens new doors for donations and research opportunities - shortly after the grand opening.

There’s a striking contrast between the methodical growth of ZooMontana and the haphazard path taken by zoo builders in Spokane.

“We had the land and a few animals and a couple rolls of wire,” Walk in the Wild board member Bob Burke recalled in a 1992 interview. “Then we’d get more wire and add more animals.”

In fact, the animals sometimes came before the wire. From 1989 until 1991, the zoo accepted bears, moose, tigers and lions - animals that would have been euthanized otherwise - before it had exhibits to house them.

The newcomers typically waited in small holding pens while volunteers hastily built pens that don’t meet AAZPA standards.

Frances Drake, director of Spokane’s zoo since January, said there’s little doubt Walk in the Wild would be in better shape today if its leaders had raised money, then built attractive exhibits, then accepted animals.

“Unfortunately we’ve been here for 23 years and whatever’s happened in the past is done,” she said.