1.8m fence was all that kept tiger from zoo public

This weed mat-clad 1.8m fence was all that kept a tiger from the public in an incident at Hamilton Zoo in March 2013.

It wasn't just a Hamilton Zoo keeper who had a near miss with a tiger in 2013 - the public and other zoo staff did too.

Hamilton News can reveal that the path taken by tigress Sali in the 2013 incident as she made her way into the main tiger display enclosure where the keeper was preparing to give a tiger talk was through an area fenced only by a non-electrified weed mat-clad 1.8m fence.

The main tiger enclosure has a 5m fence with 1m overhang. It is well documented tigers can jump up to 4metres.

Hamilton City Council said at the time the safety of the public was never compromised and pinned the blame on the keeper who left a gate open.

At the time, Zoo director Stephen Standley said, "The incident was a result of human error and failure to comply with the zoo's existing operating procedures".

We were told one gate had been left open when it is now clear that three gates were open.

'Normal practice'

Council's general manager community Lance Vervoort admitted in a written statement to Hamilton News last week that it was "normal practice" to leave two personnel gates open "for operational reasons".

That flies in the face of the zoo's operations manual at the time and contradicts Vervoort's previous statement to media that "there should always be two guillotine gates between a keeper and an animal".

Vervoort's statement was in response to a query from Hamilton News about why the council had continually referred to a single gate when discussing the 2013 incident when Stephen Standley's hand-drawn map showed the tiger walked through three open gates.

"The single-gate reference is the personnel door to the tiger den that the keeper did not shut behind her and lock," said Vervoort.

This photo, taken from the leaked Council report, shows the keeper area in the tiger house. The keeper removed meat from the fridge and is understood not to have noticed the open door to den 3.

"The other two gates are also personnel gates and it was normal practice to leave these two open for operational reasons, hence our explanation in 2013 relating to one gate."

The two gates Vervoort refers to are the one that leads from the area that houses the fridge into the outdoor personnel area and another that leads into the main display enclosure.

Leaked report

A leaked copy of zoo director Stephen Standley's report into the 2013 incident shows one of the "corrective actions" listed following the incident was to replace the 1.8m fence around the tiger house with a "fully tiger-proof fence" that would be 5m high with a 1m overhang.

However, in an email a few days later to Crystal Lange at Ministry for Primary Industries, Standley outlined a revised list of corrective actions to reflect discussions with Lange.

He wrote: "It has been agreed that replacing the fence around the old tiger house is not required but a number of structural changes will be made to slides, doors and lighting to improve day-to-day operations in this area."

Also in the corrective actions section was that Standley briefed staff on the Monday morning after the Saturday, March 16, incident.

All tiger keepers instructed the tiger house door is to be locked closed when exiting the building even when servicing the exhibit.

Stephen Standley

He noted the operations manual was to be updated to reflect that and assigned that task to Samantha Kudeweh.

She subsequently added in several paragraphs including a section that said "all gates and doors into service areas or animal areas must be shut behind you whenever you are working in an area. This includes, but is not limited to, driveways, kitchen areas, airlock areas etc".

Opportunity to comment

Hamilton City Council cancelled the face-to-face interview it had agreed to with Hamilton News to discuss the 2013 incident after taking legal advice not to discuss the matter with us. Instead, we gave council several written questions, with a deadline of 11am Wednesday. It did not respond.