A Beloved Zoo of Misfit Animals Is Almost Out of Money

Ninja, a mountain lion, enjoys three activities most in this world. When a zookeeper feeds him cubes of raw steak, he emits a low purr of ravenous joy. He also likes to stalk baby strollers as they roll past the fence surrounding his habitat.

But perhaps the best moment of Ninja’s day is when he catches the scent of Herb Reed, a 78-year-old retired grade-school teacher who had once brought his grandchildren to the zoo so often that employees there invited him to volunteer. And so he did. Mr. Reed happened to be there in 2011, when Zoo New York, in Watertown, first received Ninja, an orphaned cub with a fractured pelvis. He has spent years feeding him and keeping his enclosure clean.

Now, whenever Mr. Reed approaches, Ninja, who even in captivity remains a 120-pound apex predator, rises from his sun-warmed rock. He chirps and purrs and rubs his long fuzzy sides along the metal fence.

“It’s soul warming,” Mr. Reed said recently. “We’re not a big zoo. So people who want to learn more about exotic animals get a chance to experience them firsthand.”

Exotic might be a stretch. Zoo New York is a publicly owned, privately operated menagerie in Watertown, a small and long-struggling city in the North Country of upstate New York. Its residents include Retch, a flightless turkey vulture who cuddles with (and sometimes disembowels) stuffed animals. There is Kamots, a one-eyed wolf; Tess, a chunky black bear who was confiscated from a human home, and so can never be released into the wild; and Larry, a turtle described by Emily Griffin, the zoo’s spokeswoman, as “kind of shy.”

“We are the Island of Misfit Toys,” she said.

There are no giraffes or elephants at Zoo New York. The lions and monkeys are long gone. Most of its 80 or so animals, including Pandora, a bobcat, and Suzy, a snowy owl, are native to New York State. Humble as it may be, many in Watertown adore their zoo, and have taken extraordinary measures to keep it alive during its 104 years.

One example: In the zoo’s early days, when not all animal cages were reliably heated, residents volunteered to keep the alligators in their basements during the harsh Watertown winters.

“People have done incredible stuff here,” said Mark Irwin, a biology professor at nearby Jefferson Community College. He is also the zoo’s interim executive director, a full-time position he has filled for most of the last two years as a volunteer. “We’re bootstrapping. We figure it out as we go.”

But now, having weathered a cataclysmic ice storm that cut power to the zoo’s refrigerators (Watertownians donated whole chickens and a thousand pounds of venison to feed the wolves and cougars); animal escapes (a lynx kitten, a mountain lion, numerous deer); and decades on the brink of insolvency, the zoo faces the prospect of final, permanent closure.

“We predict we’ll have enough to get us through the winter and into the springtime,” the chairman of the conservancy that runs the zoo said of its finances. “After that, it’s really questionable.”

This is bad news for Ninja, Pandora and Larry, the shy turtle. The animals of Zoo New York tend to be old, disabled or both. Few would be accepted by other zoos, which means some animals could be euthanized. In the words of the zoo spokeswoman, “Nobody wants a 14-year-old disabled mountain lion who will die in transport.”

The same is true for Watertown. The city, never a large one, has declined from its postwar peak to a population of about 24,000, as many factories closed or moved away. The Car-Freshener Corporation, maker of the Little Trees brand of air fresheners, remains, as does nearby Fort Drum, home to the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. That may leave just too few to pay the bills; this spring, the City Council narrowly avoided passing a budget that included a property tax increase of 19 percent.

As the city government struggles to repave the roads and modernize its water treatment plant, Mayor Sarah Pierce, a longtime zoo supporter, has come to view it as an expense that Watertown can no longer afford.

“Do we need a zoo?” she said.

Alligators in the Basement, Bears in the Barn

Zoo New York may die in poverty, but it was born as an expression of civic wealth. Powered by water wheels in the Black River, Watertown’s factories boomed for a century, making train parts, sewing machines and medical instruments. In 1920, decades after Philadelphia, Chicago and Cincinnati had opened America’s earliest zoos, the local rotary club proposed building one of their own. The people of Watertown were eager to pitch in, donating four owls, an ocelot, a moose, a bear cub named Bucko and an armadillo.

The practice continued for decades. Built with private donations on land provided by a local industrialist, the original zoo lacked indoor heat for many of its larger species. At other times there was no space to hold young animals before the zoo was ready for them. Just as the Fairbanks family had boarded alligators in the basement, as recently as the late 1990s a local veterinarian named David Plante kept lynx kittens and bear cubs in his barn while their exhibits were prepared.

Like most zoos of the same vintage, Watertown’s did not create comfortable habitats for its animals, housing them instead in cramped cages with concrete floors and steel bars. The monkey house was infamous for its horrendous smell; The Watertown Times ran a series of stories on the sad existence of an African lion named Timmy, who was forced to live in a 15-by-15-foot cage. As early as 1981, animal advocates demanded that the zoo be closed. A national zoo organization named it among the 10 worst zoos in the country.

“It was,” said Alfred Gianfagna, a retired pediatrician who has volunteered with the zoo for 40 years, “a bad zoo.”

The rebuilt zoo was a hit. Attendance rose. The conservancy hired trained zookeepers, who helped it, in its 80th year, gain its first accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Fund-raising events attracted thousands.

“We just were relentless” about promoting the institution, said Glenn Dobrogosz, the zoo’s director at the time.

The period of success proved fleeting. In March 2005, near the peak of the zoo’s fame, one director drove to New York City to appear on the “Today” show along with Louie, an otter. After checking in at Le Parker Meridien Hotel in Manhattan, the director went out on the town, leaving Louie alone in the bathtub. When she returned later, the room was flooded; Louie had defecated in the tub and clogged the drain. In a panic, she blamed all the water on poor hotel maintenance. (Louie survived the fiasco unscathed, and made his television debut the next morning.)

When she returned to Watertown, the director regaled the zoo’s senior staff with the story of the deception, which was recounted in a grievance filed in September 2006 by staff members, most of whom quit.

Soon after that, the zoo’s permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture lapsed, and its accreditation was revoked. It reopened after only a week, but financial support from the city remained low. The grounds deteriorated. Visitors complained. New directors came and went, including one who quit after a month.

The Golf Course That Broke the Bank

Meanwhile, the zoo’s neighbor was also failing. The Watertown Golf Course had been struggling financially for years when the club’s board offered to sell the property to the city in 2017. The asking price was $591,000.

The City Council seemed interested, but the deal unraveled amid overwhelming public opposition. Five years later, however, the council voted to buy the golf course after all, this time for $3.4 million, more than five times the original offer. Council members were accused of fraud, and the State Police started a criminal investigation that uncovered more than 6,600 text messages sent among the three council members and a developer involved in the deal. Yet no charges were filed.

“I would have rather taken $1 million and totally transformed the zoo,” Mayor Pierce said. She voted against the deal.

The deal left the city’s cash reserves depleted, and the zoo ran out of money. In October 2023, it closed again. Most of the staff was laid off. Again, Watertown residents responded by showing up. More than 400 people volunteered to prepare meals for the animals, cut the grass and erect straw-filled scarecrows for Boo at the Zoo at Halloween.

The zoo reopened in May 2024 with $100,000 in emergency funding.

“We got just enough money from the city to reopen,” said Ms. Griffin, the zoo spokeswoman, who answers calls about the zoo when she’s not working her regular full-time job doing communications for a local hospital.

Yet hope remains. At every City Council meeting, Watertown residents wearing matching “I 🖤 the Zoo” T-shirts pack themselves into Watertown City Hall. Zoo leaders have put forth a funding proposal to make Zoo New York a self-sustaining regional tourist attraction. Various master plans envision new habitats for moose, bison, caribou, ducks and geese; an aquarium; a spruced-up concession stand and gift shop; and an “Adventure Land,” featuring a climbing wall and zip line.

The idea is popular. In a poll taken by Jefferson Community College’s Center for Community Studies, 90 percent of area residents said they would rather spend tax dollars to save the zoo than watch it close. This vision, the Thompson Park Conservancy says, would require an annual allocation of $750,000 from the city and surrounding Jefferson County.

After months of negotiation, the city agreed to give the zoo another $100,000 toward operating expenses this year. The county chipped in $59,000, plus $25,000 intended for marketing, but elected officials have made it clear they will not come to the rescue in the future.

“You can show me cute animals all day long and it tugs at my heart, trust me,” said Francee Calarco, a member of the Jefferson County Legislature. “But the county is not an endless pot of gold.”

The zoo used the marketing money to put up a billboard along Interstate 81 encouraging people to “See New York’s ONLY Wolverine.”

Zookeepers have also begun offering so-called behind-the-scenes experiences with the animals. Visitors can pay $150 to prepare meatballs for Otis and Ricky, the otters. The program has been booked six weeks in advance.

Saving a Zoo, $12 at a Time

Here, then, lies the problem: Does a city as small as Watertown need a zoo?

Watertown’s is almost universally loved, but its universe may prove too small to save it. For the people who know it best, Zoo New York offers an intimacy with wild animals that few institutions can match.

Consider Ronnie, a black bear. After he was rescued from a home in New York State, where he had been caged inside a 55-gallon drum, he was brought to the zoo, where Mr. Reed, Ninja’s favorite human, would slip him peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches (now forbidden) through the fence surrounding his enclosure.

“All you felt was that whisper of his lips over your fingers,” Mr. Reed said.

As the money runs out, and an unthinkable future looms for Ronnie, Ninja and the other residents, Zoo New York does its best to attract new visitors. On a warm Tuesday afternoon this summer, Justine Crossett took her two children to the zoo for the first time. Almost no one else was there, so Ms. Crossett felt comfortable keeping her 1-year-old, Adrian, in his stroller as she allowed Cecilia, 2, to toddle around freely.

Cecelia rounded a corner to find Steve Chorma, the lead zookeeper and one of the five current paid animal keepers. He stood in front of the otter pool, where Otis and Ricky swam and played.

“Would you guys like to meet the otters?” Mr. Chorma said.

Cecilia was afraid.

“No! No! No!” she cried.

Cecelia was handed a pair of plastic rings, which she threw into the pool. Otis and Ricky dove after them, catching them and doing a series of back flips.

Cecilia laughed and squealed.

The gap between the zoo’s emergency funding from local government and the millions required for a fuller transformation is vast. Children under 2 get in free, but Ms. Crossett had done her part: She paid the $12 admission.