Atlanta Zoo: Director Terry Maple is wildly enthusiastic

Once just a poor kid from Southern California, Maple long since had proved his ability, earning national respect as an expert on the behavior of gorillas and orangutans.

The Atlanta Zoo, on the other hand, had been called a disgrace - one of the 10 worst zoos in America. It had begun with a bankrupt circus menagerie late in the 19th century and seemed hellbent on never entering the 20th.

Terry Maple was crazy, a colleague warned. He was about to ruin his brilliant career.

But the 38-year-old scholar, a burly Gentle Ben of a man who fell in love with the wildlife at the San Diego Zoo as a child, has never lacked for self-confidence.

An optimist - to the point of sometimes appearing unrealistic - he said, upon accepting the post in June 1984, that the Atlanta Zoo would become the world’s next great one. He says that now, some 13 months later.

His optimism seems to be rubbing off.

“People genuinely are enjoying the zoo today,” says Maple. Meanwhile, the staff has been strengthened by hiring “winning and talented” professionals - including a full-time veterinarian, the first in the zoo’s history; an assistant director for operations; a curator of mammals and birds; assistant curators for each; and a records keeper. New and old employees are working as a team. Even some animals, such as the long-neglected Coca the elephant, which now works with trainers at two daily shows, seem happier.

At the same time, plans for a complete revamping of the facility during the next decade are on target. And prospects are bright for a $25 million, eight-year funding package that could ensure the zoo’s future.

Morale at the zoo was especially high last week after the City Council OK’d the funding plan. Under its terms, the city will back two- thirds of a maximum of $16 million in Stadium Authority revenue bonds and an operating subsidy of about $4.2 million. The city will lease the zoo to the Authority, which has established a non-profit corporation to operate it.

The proposal still must be endorsed by the Fulton County Commission - which would back the other third - later this month. But Maple, as usual, is optimistic that the commission will approve the plan. The remaining funds would come from private and state sources.

“A lot of people thought the community didn’t care,” the director says strolling the rolling grounds of the resurgent - if still far from perfect - zoo. “I knew better, because I’ve been in this community for 10 years. I knew what was wrong with the zoo. You just had to start over. Everything in the zoo’s management was wrong. It had never really got professional - ever.”

In the view of Wayne Esarove, director of the members guild of the Atlanta Zoological Society, Maple’s leadership has made a difference.

“He’s the director we’ve been waiting for,” said Esarove, who traveled with Maple last year on one of the zoo director’s eight private trips to observe wild animals in Africa.

Maple himself says teamwork - on the part of the zoo’s staff, political leaders and the community at large - has been responsible for every step forward at the zoo in the past year.

But the director’s leadership skills have certainly been an important part of the equation.

Maple admits almost reluctantly that he was student-body president at Hilltop High School in Chula Vista, Calif., and served on the student council at the University of the Pacific. “For some reason, leadership opportunities just keep popping up to me. I’m beginning to face the fact that this seems to be a skill.”

One of “those kids of the ‘60s who was anxious to do something,” Maple dreamed of a career as a diplomat when he entered college. But, like many in his generation, he became disenchanted with man’s inhumanity to man. He decided he could make a contribution by learning more about behavior, first studying human psychology as an undergraduate, then shifting as a graduate student at the University of California at Davis to psychobiology and the study of animal behavior.

Animals had always fascinated him. The second of three sons of a hired hand on a California dairy farm near the Mexican border, he had grown up surrounded by cows, chickens, pigs and goats.

After earning his Ph.D. in 1975, Maple taught for three years at Emory University before joining the faculty at Georgia Tech.

He has taught courses on human aggression, interpersonal relations and the psychology of prejudice. As his reputation grew, based on numerous academic publications, his expertise on captivity’s effects on behavior made him increasingly sought after as a consultant by zoos across the United States.

To better understand zoo managers’ problems, Maple spent nine months in 1980 serving as deputy director of the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. That experience - at a zoo that also went through a rebuilding program to become a respected institution - made him an especially attractive candidate for the Atlanta job.

An all-around athlete in high school and a baseball player in college, Maple often compares his current role to that of Bobby Cremins, the Georgia Tech basketball coach.

“It’s a lot like turning around an athletic program,” he says. Unlike Tech’s cage squad, the zoo - which has been suspended from the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums - hasn’t yet won an Atlantic Coast Conference championship, but at least it has scored a few points and seems headed for respectability.

The most spectacular play so far was the negotiation of a contract last July with Atlanta’s Yerkes Primate Center - where Maple previously served as an affiliate scientist - providing for the zoo to open a great- apes center in 1987.

The ape center - to be built at a cost of $5 million to $8 million - will include three habitat areas for 17 gorillas, the largest number to be housed in any zoo in the world, and about a dozen orangutans. Joe Erwin, associate editor of National Geographic Research magazine, says the center will be especially important because gorillas, which are much sought after by zoos, can be bred there.

The zoo already houses an outstanding reptile collection. And future plans call for development of an Okefenokee Swamp habitat - Maple hopes to persuade the state government to help fund it - and a series of other natural habitats ranging from an East African savanna to a petting zoo for children.

But even the normally cheerful Maple admits there have been some low points, too.

The lowest - “without question,” he says - came a year ago July 23 when Daisy the giraffe died of complications from pregnancy. She was the ninth Atlanta Zoo animal to die that year. “That was a real test of my resolve,” he says, recalling that he and 10 to 12 other staff members put in a full weekend trying to save the animal. “We did the best we could under the circumstances.”

When their best failed, Maple took full responsibility and met individually with every news reporter who swarmed to the zoo. “I wanted to make sure we were as open as we could possibly be with the media,” he says. His his candor paid off. “The way it was covered was that it was a tragedy. Sometimes that happens in zoo medicine just like it happens in people medicine.”

Ironically, the cloud over the zoo when the giraffe died also had a silver lining. “It had a funny effect,” says Maple. “It was the first thing that happened at the zoo where people actually pulled together.” The director had begun his job feeling the need to be firm and keep his distance from the staff. After experiencing the unity at the time of the tragedy, he recalls, he loosened up.

Maple’s workload, however, remains tremendous. “It’s not that easy to manage a large collection of animals,” says the zoo director, who earns $42,000 a year for his troubles. “There are times when it’s drudgery. There’re a million things to do. We never get it all done.”

The zoo’s “coach” turns cheerleader many evenings, drumming up enthusiasm for the facility before any group that asks him to speak. A resident of Stone Mountain, he and Addie, his wife of 13 years, take their daughters (Molly, 5, and Emily, 3) to look at the animals most weekends and, in Maple’s case, to observe the zoo from a patron’s perspective.

Though he still teaches a class and advises graduate students at Georgia Tech - which has given him a leave of absence - and continues to edit the international journal, Zoo Biology, Maple laments the stifling of his creative life.

“My research has died a rapid death. I have not been able to write much,” he says. Two book projects have been placed on the back burner: One on his theories of “natural parenting,” applying his observations on primate behavior to child rearing; the other on chimpanzee behavior, a continuation of a series that began with earlier books on gorillas and orangutans.

But Maple has no regrets about taking the job. The zoo is an important institution, after all - one that can educate the public about wildlife conservation as well as provide enjoyment. He loves being surrounded by exotic animals at work each day. He relishes the challenge of the zoo’s underdog situation and he believes progress is being made.

Sometimes, he says with a laugh, he has nightmares of himself with a gray beard still directing the zoo. But he does not really expect his stint as zoo director - a job he initially accepted for only a year but is being urged to keep until the great-apes exhibit opens - to last forever. Someday, Maple says, he’ll be a scientist and teacher again.

“But I want people to know one thing,” he adds. “I am a Californian, but I love Georgia. I love Atlanta. And when I cease being zoo director, I will be one of the great zoo lovers. I know what a zoo can do for a community.”

Maple is getting the zoo back in shape

Troubadours Simon and Garfunkel aren’t the only ones who believe, “It’s all happening at the zoo.”

So does Terry Maple. Among the developments since he became the zoo’s director in June 1984:

Records, once in disarray, have been computerized.

The budget has been increased from $800,000 to $1.2 million.

Attendance, which sank to 220,000 in 1984, has begun to swing up again. Though it’s not likely to equal the 450,000 of 1983, it will probably hit 350,000 this year, Maple says.

Total space has been expanded from 28 acres to 37.5 and will ultimately reach 50.

Drainage and sanitation have been improved.

Some animals have been moved to better facilities, while others that can be more appropriately housed at the local zoo have been brought in.

Many cosmetic improvements, such as fresh paint and flowers, have been added.

Staff has grown from 34 to 45, and plans call for adding a public relations director - the first in the zoo’s history - and an education curator in September.