Dallas Zoo Reviews

Management makes decisions without consulting staff, vs making decisions based on staff feedback. Leadership sit on campus but nearly completely disconnected from those that actual do the work of running the zoo and yet often make operational changes to daily operations with no idea of if it will work in piratical approach. Be prepared to take a pay cut if you are a skilled professional. The zoo will not pay staff what they are worth. If you cost too much they will outsource to a vendor, monorail, IT, graphics, marketing etc. Hostile environment, they have fired people after dissolving their department, or while on medical leave (non fmla) without the courtesy of discussing it with them Staff turnover is 60% a year for most area's of the park. Expect to work with entry level people at every management level of the org, there are a few amazing directors, but they are few and far between. Expect countless meetings where one person dominates the meeting, no one else can say anything, and to have your ideas and creativity shot down. Don't expect to be recognized when a change you implement saves millions of dollars for the org, instead expect more work, no bonus, and if you're lucky a 3% raise. Management is discouraged from providing 5 star ratings on mid and yearly reviews, even if you're the top performer in your department.

The Zoo is under a consent decree from the Environmental Protection Agency but they only pretended to comply with it. I was asked to falsify EPA reports, ROUND UP herbicide is used next to the flamingo pond instead of hand weeding, the drains and filters for stormwater runoff into the watershed were deplorable. Contamination occurred on a daily basis. You are coached on what to tell the City of Dallas auditors. Not trained on required procedures, just coached on how to answer the auditors' questions. The auditors also always schedule their visits shortly after the birth of cute animals. They are given private visits with the latest baby giraffe or whatever and kept distracted by it for as long as possible. This is a well known "thing" at the Zoo. It is my opinion there has not been a thorough audit at the Zoo in many years, or they would have seen the same violations I noticed. As a city taxpayer I do not appreciate this. A work order system is used which is very easy to game. Many, many times I would ask a crew leader as long as we were in a location completing a task on a work order and had all the tools with us if we should do something else in that area or an adjacent area that also CLEARLY needed doing. The answer would always, always, always be -- no only do what is on the work order. Eventually I realized the crew leaders get their brownie points not by making the Zoo look better but by making work order reports look better. Which explains why the "gardens" at the Zoo look as bad as they do. I am a resident of Dallas and consider the poor state of the display gardens at the Zoo to be an embarrassment to the entire Dallas Park system.