Leaked AZA Report Offers a Damning Look Inside SF Zoo’s Leadership Failures
2011 AZA Accreditation Documents Reveal Decades of Decline—and a Culture of Concealment at the San Francisco Zoo
For more than a decade, the San Francisco Zoo has kept its AZA accreditation reports hidden from public view—even from its own staff and oversight bodies. These reports are meant to ensure animal welfare, safety, and professional standards. But in San Francisco, they’ve been treated like state secrets.
Now, a leaked copy of the 2011 AZA Accreditation Report, along with internal responses and follow-up documents, pulls back the curtain. The findings? Deeply troubling. And what’s worse—many of the issues flagged in that report still exist today.
Scroll to the end to download the full leaked AZA report and the Zoo’s written response.
The Report, Buried
The 2011 AZA site visit flagged numerous safety hazards, infrastructure failures, and operational dysfunctions. Yet not a single keeper, educator, or member of the Zoo’s Joint Zoo Committee was ever granted access to this document. Nor, as far as records show, were many of the problems meaningfully resolved.
Here are just a few of the most concerning revelations.
Animal Welfare Accountability: A Shell Game
In response to criticism that the Zoo’s whistleblower system was inadequate—relying on a rigid, top-down chain of command—the San Francisco Zoological Society pointed to a supposed solution: the Joint Zoo Committee (JZC), which they claimed could serve as a neutral forum for addressing animal welfare concerns.
But in practice, the JZC has never addressed a single documented welfare complaint. In fact, when the JZC’s own Animal Welfare Advisors released a report in 2024 highlighting urgent animal care issues, they were met not with collaboration—but with malice and contempt. Rather than engage with the findings, Zoo leadership dismissed and discredited the advisors themselves.
These failures speak to a deeper problem. Robust animal welfare reporting systems are critical to a healthy zoo. They ensure that employees feel safe speaking up about animal care issues—and that those concerns are taken seriously, not punished. At well-run institutions, concerns can be submitted anonymously, and leadership provides public-facing updates on how they are addressing them. Transparency builds trust. Accountability drives improvement.
But at the San Francisco Zoo, the opposite culture has taken root. Zoo Watch has received multiple reports from current and former employees describing a workplace where speaking up about animal welfare can lead to retaliation or professional penalties.
Despite these failings, Executive Director Tanya Peterson has portrayed the Joint Zoo Committee as a transparent, public-facing venue for accountability. The truth is quite the opposite. The committee functions as a carefully staged performance—rubber-stamping Zoo initiatives, shielding leadership from scrutiny, and providing no meaningful process for reviewing internal concerns.
As far as public records show, not a single whistleblower report has been formally addressed or investigated through the JZC process.
This is not oversight. It’s theater. And the consequences—for animals, employees, and the public—are far too real to ignore.
Persistent Pest Infestations
The 2011 AZA accreditation report flagged extensive pest control issues—including rodent infestations in sensitive areas such as the Children’s Zoo and Tropical Aviary. The Zoo promised to develop new protocols with pest control vendors and address the problem. But more than a decade later, the infestation has not only persisted—it has grown worse.
In January 2025, the San Francisco Department of Public Health ordered the Zoo’s Leaping Lemur Café to close after inspectors discovered a full-blown rodent infestation, with live rats, droppings, and contaminated food storage areas source. According to the inspection report, food prep surfaces were “visibly soiled,” and live rats were observed in both front and back-of-house areas.
In April 2024, the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that orangutans were housed indoors in an exhibit plagued by active rodent infestation.
Despite years of warnings from AZA inspectors and internal staff, Zoo leadership allowed these conditions to fester—placing both animals and the public at risk.
Internal complaints continue to document active nests, structural damage, and pest presence in areas frequented by animals, visitors, and staff. The African aviary, Children’s Zoo, and behind-the-scenes facilities remain hotspots of activity.
The picture is clear: the rodent problem isn’t an isolated issue—it’s systemic. And it’s been ignored for far too long
The Master Plan That Never Was
The 2011 documents reference a sweeping "Americas" master plan that was supposed to revitalize the North and South American exhibits. But like so many promises made by the Zoo’s leadership, the plan was quietly abandoned.
The squirrel monkey exhibit, long planned for reconstruction, was never completed. The monkeys were eventually sent to a new facility between 2021 and 2022 after years of unstable housing.
The North American species component of the plan was never developed.
Millions of dollars were allocated for capital projects, but few tangible improvements followed.
A Culture of Disrepair—and Disappearance
Some areas once praised by AZA inspectors have dramatically backslid:
The education program, hailed as “excellent” in 2011, has been gutted. Staff were laid off. Programs were cut.
The maintenance department, once commended for reducing work order backlogs, is now routinely overwhelmed. Basic repairs go uncompleted for months.
Human Resources, once a functional department, has dwindled to a single employee.
Turnover across leadership has been staggering. According to the 2011 report, AZA inspectors met with a full suite of directors and VPs. Today, only one remains: Tanya Peterson.
What It All Means
The AZA’s accreditation process is designed to hold zoos accountable to high standards of animal care, safety, and institutional integrity. In most cities, these reports are seen as tools for improvement. In San Francisco, they’ve become liabilities to conceal.
Zoo leadership has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent the release of the 2022 accreditation report, despite growing calls for transparency. The 2011 report makes clear why: when the truth gets out, it’s damning.
The leadership's strategy has been consistent for years:
Conceal negative findings.
Suppress whistleblowers.
Use oversight bodies as window dressing.
The Bottom Line
The San Francisco Zoo is a public institution, operating on public land, funded in part by taxpayer money. Yet its operations are shrouded in secrecy, with no meaningful animal welfare oversight and no accountability to the public.
The leaked AZA report shows us not only how the Zoo has failed—but how it has been allowed to keep failing.
We don’t need more spin. We need the truth.
The leaked 2011 AZA Accreditation Report and the San Francisco Zoo’s internal response:
