The director of the Oregon Zoo announced this week that he will retire at the end of August after more than four decades in animal care and management.
Don Moore, who has led the zoo for the past four years, said the coronavirus pandemic has given him a chance to reflect, and he came to the conclusion that he wanted to spend more time with his family, many of whom live on the east coast. With travel back and forth from Portland less feasible, he decided it was time to step down from his position leading the zoo.
“Like a lot of us, COVID-19 has offered me a chance to step back and have some deep personal reflection,” he said. “For a while, we thought it was going to be kind of short, but it looks like it will be with us a little longer. I started to think about what’s important. For me that’s family.
“I’m here, and they are there,” he added. “Life is short, and I’m not getting any younger.”
Moore, known by people in the zoo world as “Dr. Don,” got his start in zoos at an early age, volunteering at the zoo in Syracuse, New York, where he grew up. After he graduated from college, the zoo hired him full time, and he would go on to work in zoos in New York City, Washington, D.C., and as co-chair of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s renowned Animal Enrichment Program before he came to Portland in 2016.
Under his leadership, the Oregon Zoo continued its conservation work, focused on endangered animals both native to Oregon and from more exotic locations. The zoo has breeding programs for California condors, the western pond turtle and the silverspot butterfly. It also contributes to science that benefits wild populations of Asian elephants, polar bears and giraffes.
The Oregon Zoo encompasses 64 acres in Portland’s West Hills, small in comparison to some other cities’ zoos. But Moore said, like the city itself, the zoo on the hill punches above its weight.
“The Oregon Zoo is small and mighty, like Portland,” he said. “We may be a small place, but we’re a player on the national stage.”
Like any such facility, the Oregon Zoo has been hit with criticism from animal welfare advocates, specifically about the zoo’s elephant herd. Even with the relatively new addition of the Elephant Lands enclosure, which was a vast upgrade to the previous home for the herd, critics have repeatedly called for the zoo’s pachyderms to be moved to a sanctuary where they would have more room to roam. Periodic outbreaks of tuberculosis among the animals have only sharpened critiques from advocates.
Moore defended the zoo.
“We respectfully disagree that a sanctuary is better than our beautiful Elephant Lands habitat,” he said. “We have an expert vet team and a good social group of elephants. Yes, we have had cases of TB and herpes virus, and that is unfortunate, but the flip side is that our vet staff is very well-known for their knowledge of elephant diseases.”
Moore said that, when an elephant in a zoo gets sick, vets are able to study the illness in ways that would never be possible in the wild. The knowledge gained from that, he said, helped the captive elephant’s counterparts in the wild.
“Asian and African elephants are not doing well,” he said. “It’s tragic when an elephant has a disease and dies, but the flip side is it adds to our understanding. We are deeply committed to our animals at the zoo and their relatives in nature.”
Moore also said he was proud of the partnerships that the zoo has forged during his tenure, specifically with state and federal wildlife agencies. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a biologist that works full time at the zoo’s education center, and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife often sends staff to give talks to youngsters.
“We’re a scientific action organization, but we’re also a storefront window,” he said. “We work with (the agencies) in the field to save species, but they’ve also been able to come into the zoo to tell their stories to the more than 1 million visitors that come through our gates every year.”
Moore plans to stay in his role through the end of the month then transition to a director emeritus role with the Oregon Zoo Foundation to help with fundraising.
-- Kale Williams; kwilliams@oregonian.com; 503-294-4048; @sfkale
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