The orangutans have their blankets, the skunks have their personal space. The manatees have pools filled with days’ worth of lettuce, and the rhinos have stalls of bamboo.
On Wednesday, staff members said ZooTampa at Lowry Park was as prepared as it could be for Hurricane Milton. And the animals won’t be alone: 12 workers have volunteered to stay behind at the zoo, which lies in an evacuation zone.
“We have the staff there that know them and can watch and monitor their behavior and give them what they need to ensure that they’re comfortable,” ZooTampa’s senior director of animal programs, Tiffany Burns, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
More than 1,000 animals live at the 65-acre zoo, including elephants, giraffes, primates, flamingos, alligators, extinct-in-the-wild Panamanian golden frogs and rare red wolves.
For now, ZooTampa is well within Milton’s projected path. It lies less than 10 miles from Tampa’s waterfront, where storm surge was expected to exceed 10 feet.
Ms. Burns said that zoo workers had spent the last few days moving large animals into the nighttime shelters adjoining their outdoor habitats, which she said were “hurricane proof.” Smaller mammals and birds had been taken indoors, too. (The alligators will stay in their usual habitats, submerging themselves for safety like their peers in the wild.)
Inside buildings, behind boarded-up windows, zoo workers have chopped vegetables and filled stalls with hay and stalks of bamboo. There is enough food for the animals — and the zoo workers — to last weeks, Ms. Burns said. “We want to make sure that we are prepared not only for the storm but for the time after the storm,” she said, when roads might close.
Nearby in Tampa, at the Florida Aquarium, officials made the decision Wednesday afternoon to send all staff home, based on Milton’s strength on the ground and its expected track, according to Roger Germann, the aquarium’s president and chief executive.
“Everyone is standing down,” Mr. Germann said around 4 p.m., noting the aquarium lies right on the water. “We will not have an overnight Rideout team,” he said. “We boarded the place up and secured it and they are headed home before things get crazy.”
The staff has left all animals well fed, he said, and plans to monitor the premises for flooding using the camera system — as long as power holds up. Earlier in the week, sensitive corals were evacuated to safer locations in Florida and Georgia, and some animals, like penguins, were taken to upper floors.
“It is hard, don’t get me wrong,” Mr. Germann said.
The post At Tampa’s Zoo, Some Workers Will Stay Behind During Milton appeared first on New York Times.
