As a follow up to the post here.
To: Tom Barton, Chair
Board of Directors
Tracy Aviary
Salt Lake City, Utah
August 13, 2011
Greetings Mr. Barton,
No response has been received to the August 7th letter I sent.
I am highly concerned that head Aviary keeper Jennifer Evans is treating the Aviary as if it’s her own private zoo. Hiding birds away that are “too friendly,” and driving long time members like me away as a result.
Additionally Ms. Evans has a rather unfortunate habit of going online and making petty & shallow comments, in the name of, and on behalf of, Tracy Aviary. Is Ms. Evans the new executive director there?
In response, I have some questions for you:
Are employees of the Aviary employees of Salt Lake City, or are they employees of a non-profit organization registered with the State?
The actions of Ms. Evans pale in comparison to the work of past curators there, when there was a sense of professionalism, respect for the public, and appreciation for the value of allowing individual birds to be how they are - even if they happen to like human beings and to not punish the birds for this trait. And also respect for where the money comes from to make the Aviary possible.
Having your current head keeper treating the Aviary as if it’s her own private zoo, and having her going online, representing the Aviary as she does so (and stating as much), and making comments for and on behalf of the Aviary in all the places where this can be done nowadays - is this acceptable behavior?
Is this appropriate Mr. Barton? Is the Aviary a department of the City? Just how much of my tax dollars go to support the Aviary? And as a participant in the local economy, how much corporate profits garnered from the public here also go to support the Aviary?
Aside from the donations I’ve personally made over the years, how much tax money and how much corporate profits which result from the community here are resulting in your staff being able to treat the Aviary and the birds there as if they are their pets, while at the same time being overly concerned if given individual birds exhibit the apparently abhorrent trait of actually liking a human.
By allowing your Jennifer Evans to be the defacto representative of the Aviary in all online discussions and forums, you are, with all due respect, cutting off the nose of the Aviary despite it’s face. Petty, shallow, and juvenile comments from Ms. Evans in online forums, forums where she states that she is writing on behalf of the Aviary - this is absurd!
I don’t pay taxes to the City, County & State, and I don’t make donations to the Aviary, so that you can have a rogue head keeper who acts in such a juvenile manner online.
No other zoo that I have known does this. Their employees don’t go online and seek to make comments & to participate, in the name of those institutions, and to respond to whatever social media related comments people may have made about a given zoo. And when I think about my own associations with Grenville Roles, and with the other curators who came after him, and when I think about all the friendly people I’ve met at the Aviary over the years in the front booth and in the back, the rather petty actions of your current head keeper really are hurting the Aviary and it’s mission: unless your mission is now to pretend like a bird cannot like a human. They can. They do. There’s ones at my home that prove this every day.
In this case, the harmless actions of a little birdie, a bird that delighted visitors and kept them coming back, has been turned into a large problem by a misguided, fearful, and zealous anti-visitor anti-bird-human-interaction type of ideology, where the littlest glimpse of a bird liking a person results in the affected bird being hidden away in the back.
Hypocritical animal hoarders with their own private zoo. Is this what the Aviary, my Aviary, has become?
Sincerely,
Jonathan
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