Baird Fleming grew up in Honduras raising orphaned river otters, monkeys and sloths, to name a few. So it’s no wonder he became a veterinarian — and the latest Honolulu Zoo director.

Never mind that he’s the fifth director in the last six years — Fleming, 42, is showing signs that he’s a keeper. He was hired as assistant zoo director in August 2012 and served as interim director three times before becoming the zoo’s bonafide director in February 2015.

He inherited a facility plagued by inconsistent city funding, the root cause of the zoo’s loss of its Association of Zoos and Aquariums accreditation last month. Still, Fleming is unfazed, setting his sights on reaccreditation.

“There was a member of the AZA who called me up recently and said, ‘Look, I really want to make sure you understand something. We want you guys to know that we don’t blame anybody that is currently in any leadership role at the zoo, in the city, in the (Honolulu Zoo) society,’” Fleming said.

While accreditation is a priority, Fleming someday wants to include a Hawaii exhibit at the zoo that would feature native species.

“It’s mostly birds, but you know what a great place to talk about volcanoes, what a great place to talk about invasive species. What a great place to talk about the travel of the Polynesians. We can do all that stuff.”

Fleming earned his undergraduate degree in biology at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., and graduated from the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine.

He returned to Honduras and, with the help of an investor, built a for-profit biopark, Maya Key, that took in orphaned, injured, donated and confiscated wildlife, with the goal of rehabbing them and releasing them back into the wild.

He ran that for about three years before becoming director of wildlife at the private Austin Savanna in Texas. He left Austin after 1 1/2 years when he was hired by then-Honolulu Zoo director Manuel Mollinedo.

Fleming lives within walking distance of the zoo with his wife, Karena, and daughters, Alice, 8, and Téa, 7, who think it’s funny that their dad works at the zoo.

The director would not divulge his favorite animal at the zoo. But he is quite fond of the river otters he raised in Honduras.

Fleming recalled his river otter Ottie would eat raw fish for breakfast and then “she’d crawl up on my chest and she’d breathe in my face.” Her goal was to see him squirm, he said.

The real chaos broke out when the family’s white-faced capuchin monkey snuck into the house behind the otter, Fleming said.

“The monkey would run through the house and he would jump off my head and the otter would be chasing the monkey and then it was just a wreck.”

Question: Tell me a little bit about your daily routine. What do you do?

Answer: That’s the nice thing. Honestly, there isn’t really much of a routine. It’s always changing because you never know what’s going to happen. We’re dealing with, basically, a living museum … these animals change every day and everybody’s getting older and everybody’s got issues. Animals get arthritis like we do. There are all these things that we’re constantly having to look at. Then on top of that, it’s very interesting because our demographics are extremely varied. We have a lot of people from all over the world who come in.

Q: Who is your favorite animal? Or is there a certain exhibit you’re more partial to?

A: I can’t play favorites at the zoo, but I can say that in general, I grew up in Honduras and by the time I was 8 … I raised a lot of orphaned animals down there. Unfortunately that was a regular occurrence. By the time I was 8, I had my first river otter. From the time I was 8 until the time I was 17, I had river otters in my house amongst many, many other things — kinkajous, koaties and sloths. Somebody even tried to give us a tapir once. We had ocelots, all kinds of monkeys and parrots. The otter was probably my favorite. They are very, very smart, very charismatic and complete goofwads.

Q: Obviously this upbringing influenced your career path.

A: I really connected with the animals. I understood them, I knew what they were trying to do, I knew what they needed. It was very frustrating because I didn’t understand why people would orphan them, essentially kill the mothers and there they are. That was really hard on me and I realized that that’s something that I wanted to get into.

Q: So now you’re zoo director here. Can you tell me a little bit about the accreditation situation?

A: I describe it as an opportunity. And I think that’s the way that we should all take it. It’s an excellent opportunity to kind of look at ourselves and say, OK, what needs to be changed and how do we do that? Let’s really put some effort into this because this is where we want to go and this is who we want to be.

Q: Where do we want to go?

A: I think we want to get reaccredited. The way I look at it, Hawaii is one of the most critical places in the world to have a zoo. By zoo, I mean a modern zoo. Modern zoos for me are conservation entities. … Hawaii is considered the extinction capital of the world. We also have a lot of invasive species, which is one of the big threats or one of the big pressures that pushes things to extinction. Another big one is wildlife trafficking. We have the ability to educate and impact a lot of people from areas where wildlife trafficking is fairly prevalent. So we have the ability to make a huge impact with our over 600,000 visitors a year.

Q: How do you go about getting reaccredited?

A: The great thing is we know it’s not the animals, we know it’s not welfare, husbandry or anything like that. What it is is (financial) consistency. I think that the AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) is happy with next year’s budget. It’s a healthy budget. We’re real happy with it and so they’re saying hey, that’s great, now let’s keep it up, let’s maintain it, keep it consistent. Same thing with our director. Same thing with our partnerships that we have and our relationships with things like the (Honolulu Zoo) Society. It’s really hard on everybody when we go through so much change. … So they want to make sure that we know that, “Hey, we really like the direction you’re going in, so let’s keep moving in that direction. Once you can show us some (financial) consistency, then we’re going to be happy, we’re going to put that stamp on you guys and you’ll be back into the club.”

Q: Is there any indication that animals on loan from other facilities will have to be returned?

A: Not that we know of. We do have a list of animals that we have on loan from other institutions. I’m going to be sending out personalized emails to each institution asking what they want to do. There are some species survival plans (SSP) that we won’t be able to participate in, but that really means that, OK, so we’re not going to get animals from the U.S. We’re going to go abroad probably and get them, maybe from our sister zoo in Japan or something like that.

Q: What animals are you hoping to acquire? Is there a priority list?

A: As far as acquiring animals, there’s a big, long planning process that goes into that.

… We just recently got a few penguins in. They’re all males. So they’re kind of looking around and saying, hey, where are the girls? Now this is a great example of an SSP that we won’t be able to participate in. … Most likely what we’ll end up doing is we’re probably going to turn our sights toward Asia and see if we can find any genetically unrelated animals. … We have a lot of animals here that are very valuable in terms of genetics. … We have things like African wild dogs, birds of paradise, our sloths, very popular.

Q: How many sloths do you have?

A: We have three. We may be getting another one soon (whispers). Mom might be pregnant. Shhhh. You can say it, but you have to say “may be pregnant.” Opi is now almost a year old. Opi was born last April so it’s going to be her birthday soon. And she is a hit, thanks to Disney’s “Zootopia.”

Q: Anything else with regard to accreditation? What are you hoping to do with the society?

A: The society, what we’d really like to do is figure out how we can generate some win-wins. …That’s the coolest thing about this whole thing. We’ve just got to make it so that it’s perceived and everybody understands that what benefits the zoo, benefits the society. What benefits the society will benefit the zoo. We’ve got to make sure that everything is locked into place and we’re all moving forward as a single unit so that we can really make this a cohesive, functional entity moving forward.

Q: Tell me what you think the zoo’s role is in the local community.

A: The vision for the zoo is we’re trying to become one of, not the, but one of Hawaii’s leading conservation destinations where we provide lifelong learning experiences and inspire aloha aina in our guests. And we shared that with the AZA and they loved it.

Q: Are you going to appeal the AZA decision?

A: I think it’s in discussions right now, but one thing the AZA doesn’t want us to do, they don’t want us to rush. They want us to make sure that we do things properly, that we’re comfortable with where we’re going and how we get there. They want to make sure that we’re not shooting from the hip. We really want to plan it out, make sure that everything is sustainable so that we develop that (financial) consistency.

Q: In a perfect world, how much revenue would you like to see the Zoo Society bring in?

A: We’ve done really well with the budgets that we’ve had in the past. If you think about it, the AZA’s concern was not with the zoo, quote unquote. Keep in mind that, for example, the past few years the budget has actually been increasing over time. So that’s great. Hey, if we can keep that going, perfect. What we don’t want is these big spikes. If we get a spike it’s almost not manageable for us. We need this gradual growth… and if it’s a gradual growth, then it’s sustainable and it’s functional. So if you take that back to the society, there are models out there where anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of municipal zoos are supplemented by a society.

Q: Forty to 60 percent?

A: Forty to 60 percent of operating budget can often be seen as something that’s supplemented by a society.

Q: So that’s an ongoing discussion with the society?

A: Absolutely. We don’t want to pigeonhole and say … we want you to do this, we want you to give that. It would be great, but I’m not sure if that’s going to be sustainable. So we need to help them grow it and every year add more and more and more. Who knows, maybe one day we can get up to $2 million, $4 million.

It would be terrific.

Q: What would you do with that additional money?

A: We think that we need to do more about Hawaii. You come to the zoo and OK, we have nene, but that’s kind of like the only thing we are showcasing here. We want to put more local into the zoo. It’s actually in our last master plan … this big Hawaiian exhibit, which had shorebirds. It went basically makai to mauka.

Q: Is it more ideal to have more interactive types of exhibits? What’s the trend now in zoos?

A: That’s a great question and it’s very geographic. I think that there’s a modern push right now and I kind of feel like it’s almost coming from Europe where exhibits are being designed around the animals and the people are kind of allowed to experience that with the animals. And I love that. It’s an immersive experience that really kind of gets you into the animal’s world, if you will. …

What I would like to see us do is gradually update the zoo. I would like to systematically go through and change out exhibits that are aged and get them into a more modern exhibit that’s more conducive to the viewing of the animal and the educational aspects of it as well.

Q: Do you think that our zoo is unique in that so many animals are older?

A: I would have to say in certain circumstances we are unique. For example, we just had an alligator that passed away. He (Goliath) was over 80 years old. According to the records that I’ve read, he was the oldest alligator in captivity ever. …

Djelita, our female tiger, is the oldest tiger in captivity. … She is 25. We’re not here to try to make them live as long as they can. We definitely want them to live a happy, healthy life for as long as possible. But we recognize that age is not a disease.

Q: How is morale?

A: I think it was pretty low after we lost accreditation. I’m hoping that it’s getting better, that they realize that it’s not anything you’ve done. It’s not your fault. You guys are actually doing really well. And you just need to keep doing exactly what you’re doing because AZA loves it. And if AZA loves it, it means we are going in the right direction.

Q: Is there anything else you want to emphasize?

A: I think that we really need to be proud of our zoo. It’s iconic. We’ve been here for literally a hundred years and we have distinctions like, in several cases, we have the oldest animals in captivity. In many cases we were the first to breed a lot of these animals. … We need to be proud of what we have and keep supporting it and moving it forward.