The selection of Linda Santos as the new Honolulu Zoo director won praise from her co-workers and the head of the nonprofit that supports the troubled facility.
More than a dozen zoo employees stood behind Santos and gave her a cheery round of applause as Mayor Kirk Caldwell announced in front of TV cameras that she was to become the zoo’s 11th leader, and its sixth since 2009.
“I’ve been here, obviously, for 30 years, so that should say that I’m rooted, committed, and hopefully my staff will be as well,” Santos said when asked about her merry-
go-round of predecessors. Santos began working at the zoo in 1986 and has worked almost every job there.
She began as a trainee in the bird section and in the zoo commissary preparing food and organizing the diet cards for the animals, and then was an animal zookeeper, bird specialist and zoo general curator. She became assistant zoo director in July 2015.
She replaces Baird Fleming, who resigned Nov. 30. Santos has been acting zoo director since then.
This was the first time she applied for the job, she said.
Santos’ tenure comes during a stressful time at the zoo, which lost its accreditation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in March 2016. Unstable leadership was one of the reasons cited by the AZA, but the bigger concern was the lack of a steady revenue source.
A civil service panel chose Santos from a field of 10 candidates. The city received applications from
47 people hoping for the zoo director post, but only 10 were deemed qualified, city Human Resources Director Carolee Kubo told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in June.
Caldwell said that under Santos’ stable presence and with a now consistent revenue stream, “I hope the troubles of the past are truly behind us.”
He noted that Santos is the fifth zoo director he’s worked with since he took office nearly five years ago.
“We don’t want to have that repeated again,” he said. “And I believe in Linda we’ve found someone who is rooted in this community, rooted right here in the soil of this zoo and is committed to stay and make sure that we see the process to get reaccredited with the AZA.”
He added, “Linda knows this staff. She grew up with staff. She knows this zoo inside and out. She’s committed to conservation, which zoos are very much about today.”
A Roosevelt High School graduate who grew up in Pauoa four houses from the surfing Aikau family, the soft-spoken Santos praised her co-workers, the Caldwell administration and the Honolulu Zoological Society for their work.
“I’m really, really pleased and proud of our zoo here. It’s a gem,” she said.
Santos said a backlog of deferred maintenance is being tackled by the administration, and that’s the first step toward reapplying for accreditation in 2019.
Among her other top priorities will be to “get people to come and see how wonderful the zoo is,” adding, “I’d like to challenge people — if you haven’t come to the zoo lately, you need to come because we’re doing great things here, and I hope people appreciate what our staff does.”
In the wake of the loss of accreditation, voters in
November approved a Honolulu City Charter amendment that requires at least 0.5 percent of annual real property taxes go into a special zoo fund to help the zoo regain its accreditation. That ensures the zoo will get at least $6 million annually, city officials said.
Several of those who gathered Monday to show their support for Santos’ selection were ecstatic.
Nancy Leong, an animal keeper who works with reptiles, said Santos was there when she began working there nearly 18 years ago.
“I think they finally got it right, they finally got it right!” she said. “I think she’ll do an awesome job. We stand behind her 100 percent. She’s been here for
30 years. She knows the zoo inside and out. She’s worked in all the departments of the zoo. She knows what it takes to get things done, and she knows the staff.”
Leong noted that there was a learning curve for some of the previous directors who were not from Hawaii. “It’s a little bit different. Hawaii’s different. And she knows how that works,” she said.
Laura Debnar, curator for reptiles and the Keiki Zoo, also applauded Santos’ selection. “Linda Santos is committed to the zoo. We work great as a team. She’s rooted; she cares about her staff; she’s appreciative and supportive of her management team. She listens, she’s progressive and she wants to see the zoo moving forward in conservation, and that is the modern way that zoos are going right now.”
David Earles, executive director of the Honolulu Zoological Society, said his nonprofit already works well with Santos and believes that relationship will only improve.
“Stability inside the zoo is probably, in my opinion, one of the most important factors to its success,” Earles said. Noting her years of commitment at the zoo, Earles said, “This is her whole life. We want someone whose whole life is the zoo to be our leader.”
The job pays between $102,192 and $170,100 annually.
