Our animals were missing people': Ronda Schwetz on sustaining the zoo amid COVID-19

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3 years ago

The Cap Times spoke with Schwetz, who formerly worked at Disney's Animal Kingdom and is also an orangutan expert, about how things have been going since the zoo reopened in June.What did it look like for the zoo to shut down for the first time in its history earlier this year?Shutting down the zoo was a really difficult decision, but it was clear that it was the safest and the right thing to do for everyone — from the visitors, to our staff, and for our animals.From the day we shut down in mid-March, we were working with the county and other AZA facilities in the same situation on what reopening would look like. We were excited to open on June 18 knowing we had a safe plan in place. Our animal keepers are basically the only ones who can take care of the animals, it is a highly specialized job. Whoever could stay home, stayed home. We still needed to bring in our animal care staff. They came in the entire time. We put measures in place, making sure everybody worked in a separate area. Everyone wore masks and PPE from the beginning and we had staggered start times so they didn’t all come to work at the same time. We were able to manage that for three months and it went really well.How has reopening gone and do the animals seem affected by the closure?We did a one-way path for reopening and it went

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