A Conversation With ... Melinda Arnold

Dickerson Park Zoo sits on … about 75 acres, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 to 57 of those (acres) are developed into exhibit space, and the rest is service area or green space. Our animals represent a variety of geographic regions. The zoo is organized in that way, primarily, with South America, Australia, Africa, tropical Asia and Missouri habitats. There’s also an area of the zoo that we refer to as Diversity of Life, that represents the range of habitats that animals come from around the world. The centerpiece for that is our Ambler Diversity of Life building, which is our reptile exhibit. Within (that exhibit) the three themed halls are Deserts and Dry Places, the Rain Forest and Ozarks Caves, Glades and Streams, to represent animals from around the world that have in common the type of habitat that they live in. We have more than 500 animals representing more than 160 species.

How many people visit the zoo annually?

The last three years, we have had more than 200,000 visitors each year. That’s a combination of our daytime visitors and the 20,000-plus people who come to our Halloween Spooktacular event.

From past visitors’ surveys that we’ve done, we know that somewhere between 15 (percent) to 20 percent of our visitors come from outside a 120-mile radius. We are really primarily a regional attraction, and our local residents are our bread and butter. We work a lot with (Springfield) Convention & Visitors Bureau, because we don’t have a large marketing budget for the zoo in general. … We have an advertising budget from Friends of the Zoo of $30,000, and much of that is used for tourism marketing. There is advertising money for the zoo through the city of Springfield’s budget … and that varies, usually $25,000 to $30,000, but that also depends on how the rest of the budget is going. Sometimes that gets reallocated to other expenses, so we have a total of $50,000 to $60,000 for the whole year.

What’s new at the zoo this year?

This year, we haven’t opened any new exhibits … but there’s a lot, still, to see and do. Very popular is the giraffe viewing and feeding deck, where our guests can purchase crackers to feed to the giraffes. Over the course of the year, we’ve had three giraffe calves born; the most recent one was on Father’s Day. Our elephant calf, Nisha, turns a year old in July, so she is certainly a highlight for a lot of people to come out and see. We have a colobus monkey that was born at the end of December, and he and his older sister are very entertaining.

Are there any new attractions on the way?

The zoo has been very fortunate. With the countywide parks sales tax, we received … more than $5 million for exhibits that all opened in August 2004. That excitement has generated the renewed interest in the zoo over the last few years. That tax was renewed and in the next five years, we’ll receive $2 million for additional improvements at the zoo. The two that will be the most obvious to our visiting public are another African primate exhibit … and then, a winter holding building for our tortoises, so that in the wintertime, … they’ll still be on exhibit and viewable by the public. Right now, they go off exhibit for half of the year.

When is the zoo open?

The zoo’s open year-round –April through September daily 9 a.m.–5 p.m. and October through March, 10 a.m.–4 p.m., weather permitting. The only time in the winter that we’re closed is when there would be ice or snow on the walkways. We’re also closed on the three major holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.

Did the ice storms cause problems for the zoo?

The ice storm was pretty damaging to the zoo in general. We were closed for seven weeks for cleanup following the ice storm. … There was a lot of damage. We were able to trim some of the trees, but some of the trees had to be removed. Because the weather forecasts were forecasting the ice storm well in advance, we were actually well-prepared in terms of having our animals brought into their shelters.

Tell us about your family and spare-time interests.

I spend a lot of time at the zoo or doing zoo things. I have a 4K-year-old son, Anthony, who loves the zoo. He participates in zoo classes, and we’re going to St. Louis on vacation to go to the St. Louis Zoo. Beyond that, I enjoy reading and gardening and having fun with my son.

Interview by Features Editor Maria Hoover. You can e-mail her with suggestions for future installments of this feature at mhoover@sbj.net.