EXCLUSIVE: Panda Deal Dead, Fiscal Emergency Declared, Staff Out the Door
SF Zoo Declares Fiscal Emergency to Staff. Animal Care Staff Fired and Escorted Off Premises. Layoffs coming.
The giant panda plan is dead. SF Zoo Watch has confirmed through sources with direct knowledge of the situation that the San Francisco Zoo’s long-pursued agreement to bring giant pandas to the city has collapsed. The deal is off.
What the zoo is left with is the bill. And it is passing that bill to its workforce.
Zoo management has declared a fiscal emergency — citing tariffs, rising oil prices, and the costs of the panda program as the primary drivers of the crisis. Senior managers have already been fired. More layoffs are said to be imminent. Inside the institution, one question is moving through the staff with no good answer attached: who’s next?
The numbers behind the emergency are stark. Last year, the San Francisco Zoo posted a $6.3 million operating loss and a $5.5 million drop in net assets — nearly $12 million gone in a single fiscal year. Attendance remains approximately 40% below pre-2019 levels, down another 11% last year alone, even as tourism returned to the city and San Francisco’s broader economy recovered. The zoo is not struggling despite the recovery. It is struggling through it.
The panda explanation deserves to be examined carefully. The zoo spent significant resources pursuing an agreement that has now fallen apart. It made financial commitments based on a program that never opened, animals that never arrived, and revenue that was never generated. The institution bet public money on a deal it did not have — and it is now asking the people who care for its animals to absorb the consequences.
The departures already carried out were not handled with care. According to sources, multiple animal care managers — several of them holdovers from the Tanya Peterson era — were met by security and HR, handed black trash bags to empty their desks, and escorted off the premises. No farewell. No acknowledgment of their service. Just removal. And by most accounts, that is not the end of it.
Meanwhile, the operational picture inside the zoo remains troubled. Sources describe ongoing confusion about where animals are being placed and moved — disorganization that has persisted across leadership changes and shows little sign of resolution. The names on the org chart have changed. The patterns, in too many places, have not.
The San Francisco Zoo is not a private company. It sits on public land, operates under a city contract, and is funded in part by public money. When it declares a fiscal emergency and begins cutting the people responsible for animal care, the public deserves a full accounting. That accounting did not come today. The fiscal emergency went unmentioned at this morning’s Joint Zoo Commission meeting — the one oversight body that exists precisely for moments like this. That accountability cannot be allowed to quietly disappear into the next round of cuts.
If you work at the zoo and have information about the layoffs, the finances, or conditions on the ground, you can reach us confidentially at sfzoo.watch. We will keep reporting.