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Buffalo Transfer Raises More Safari Wild Issues

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By BAIRD HELGESON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 1, 2008

TAMPA - More than a year ago, an African forest buffalo on loan from the San Diego Zoo gave birth at Lowry Park Zoo.

Tampa's zoo was concerned about the calf's father eventually breeding with the newborn female, so the San Diego Zoo asked them to care for the calf until they could find it a new home.

After scouting around, San Diego Zoo found a willing home for the young forest buffalo at Safari Wild, a private, exotic-animal park owned by Lex Salisbury, president and CEO of Lowry Park Zoo.

Salisbury has said repeatedly neither he nor Safari Wild have profited from his connection to the taxpayer-funded zoo, but the transfer of the buffalo raises new questions about whether the zoo's director has used the attraction for personal gain.

Larry Killmar, Lowry Park's director of collections, who came to Tampa from the San Diego Zoo, said he recommended that the animal be donated to Safari Wild.

Many zoos have cut back forest buffalo collections, leaving Safari Wild as the only facility in the nation with breeding stock, Killmar said Tuesday. "It's better it be there than sitting by itself or bred back by its father."

He values the animal at about $1,000.

Transfer Happened Amid Criticism

Christina Simmons, spokeswoman for the San Diego Zoo, said its staff visited Safari Wild previously, but that they asked someone from the Montgomery Zoo in Alabama to inspect the facility before they agreed to donate the animal.

San Diego Zoo CEO Douglas Myers signed off on the transfer Sept. 9, about the same time Salisbury faced growing public criticism for a possible conflict of interest regarding his role as zoo president and owner of Safari Wild, a nascent for-profit venture.

Salisbury and St. Petersburg veterinarian Stephen Wehrmann bought 258 acres of land north of Lakeland in 2007 to build Safari Wild. Visitors will pay about $50 each for African-style safari tours in which they will see exotic and endangered species. The attraction is not open, halted by state and county permitting issues.

A little more than a week ago, the city launched an audit of the zoo's management and transactions, including those with Safari Wild.

The city began the audit after The Tampa Tribune reported that Salisbury had used zoo administrative staffers to help start Safari Wild and that the zoo built two barns at the exotic-animal park.

The barns were built as part of a now-voided memorandum of understanding between the zoo's six-member executive committee and Safari Wild, which was signed Nov. 21, 2007. As part of the partnership, the zoo got a free, 10-acre lease of land on Safari Wild property. The zoo wanted to give exhibit animals open land to graze.

The zoo's executive committee severed the relationship in June after concerns arose about the appearance of a conflict of interest in having a business relationship with the zoo president's private animal park. The zoo still has five bison on the property, displaced by the new Gator Falls water ride, and pays Safari Wild $600 a month to board the animals.

The zoo spent at least $158,859 building barns, fencing and for other costs at its Safari Wild land, according to documents obtained by the Tribune.

The zoo said it will move the barns and fencing when it finds new land for the animals.

A team of five city auditors are reviewing zoo documents and are expected to issue their findings in about a month, said Santiago Corrada, the city's representative on the zoo board.

The audit came after a meeting between city and zoo officials.

Mayor Pam Iorio sent a letter to the zoo in early September concerned about its connection to Safari Wild and that Corrada and other board members knew little or nothing about the dealings between the zoo and Salisbury's animal park.

After resisting in an earlier meeting, the zoo agreed to the mayor's demands that Corrada be added to the zoo's powerful executive committee, which makes many decisions about zoo operations without consulting the full board. He expects to be appointed to the executive committee at the board's Oct. 17 meeting.

The zoo also ceded to the mayor's contention that a 1988 lease agreement stipulates that the city owns the zoo animals and their offspring, not the nonprofit organization that runs the zoo, the Lowry Park Zoological Society. The zoo agreed to provide a regular accounting of its animals.

Salisbury Says It's Aboveboard

Lowry Park Zoo has sold Salisbury 21 animals in recent years. Salisbury has a personal exotic-animal ranch in Dade City.

The three people who approved the most recent transfers to Safari Wild and Salisbury's personal ranch were Killmar, zoo curator Lee Ann Rottman and Fassil Gabremariam, the chairman of the zoo's board.

Two of them work for Salisbury; the other has business ties to Safari Wild.

Rottman and Killmar report to Salisbury. Gabremariam is listed as one of the founders of the Safari Wild Conservation Foundation, a nonprofit, educational offshoot of Safari Wild.

Salisbury said he was not involved in deciding which animals were sent to Safari Wild, and insisted that nothing improper has occurred.

On Friday, he invited the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to Lowry Park to review any animal transactions to or from the zoo.

"All of us at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo put the highest priority on the care and well-being of our animals," Salisbury said in a statement. "We track where each of our animals is at all times, which is required by our own zoo policies and our accrediting agencies."

The accrediting organization expects to have assembled a team to review Lowry Park's records by the end of the week, said Jackie Marks, a spokeswoman for the AZA.

Reporter Baird Helgeson can be reached at (813) 259-7668 or bhelgeson@tampatrib.com.

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