Some years back, one of the curators at Oregon Zoo planned to start walking elephants around the grounds - in public space - prior to the gates opening. This was an extremely bad idea, because while additional exercise is good, exposing them to human illnesses isn't. And elephants are susceptible to a fairly wide range of human diseases. The warning was ignored, and for a couple of years some of the animals were proudly walked around in public spaces, then returned to the barn housing the rest of the animals. Abruptly, the practice was halted.
As it turned out, several of the elephants contracted tuberculosis. As a result, all staff working around the elephant facility now must don hazmat suits with full protective gear. The affected animals are being treated with standard drugs, although it's like treating an entire football team each day.
For latent tuberculosis, the standard treatment is six to nine months of isoniazid alone.
The zoo's headliner, Packy, refuses to eat the stuff, so he gets enemas. Rama, a younger bull, apparently will eat it but is not responding to treatment. It is unclear at the moment how the other animals are doing, but it seems likely that Rama is now on a short-list for euthanasia.
All of this could have been avoided by simply not exposing the animals in the first place, but Oregon Zoo management has become so warped in recent years that it may safely be said that they really don't know what they're doing. The directorship job has been available for a year, but nobody wants it, and so a Metro governmental bureaucrat has been serving in an "interim" capacity during that time.
They have, during the past seven or so years, systematically purged animal care staff with decades of knowledge; hiring in their place kids who prefer doing social media to actually working with and understanding captive wild animals. As a result, the once-stellar reputation of the organization has gone straight into the toilet. Where once they had the option of selecting from some of the best and most knowledgeable animal care professionals from around the world, they're now relegated to third- or fourth-string candidates.
The organization has become a largely empty shell, to the detriment of the animals still housed there. At this point, the best thing for the animals would involve relocating them, and shutting the place down. The site used to be a golf course, and that may be its best use.
