Guests flock to Panaewa zoo

HILO — For the second consecutive year, visitor attendance at Panaewa Rainforest Zoo and Gardens could reach a new high.

To date, more than 263,000 people have stopped by, topping last year’s record of 251,436 visitors. The fiscal year ends June 30.

Last year saw the arrival of a planned alligator exhibit and an unplanned emu exhibit (the birds were found wandering on a Kurtistown farm and brought to the zoo), but zoo director Pam Mizuno attributed the boost in visitors primarily to the arrival of new tiger cubs, Sriracha and Tzatziki.

“I’ve had people from India coming in to see the tigers,” Mizuno said.

Attendance is rising even as the zoo’s annual budget remains fairly steady and the cost of admission remains zero.

For the current fiscal year, the facility’s budget — which includes the Panaewa Equestrian Center — was $787,084, up from $759,308 (the total budget for Hawaii County Parks and Recreation was $21,024,937). That covers everything from payroll and security to maintenance and food for the animals.

The zoo’s growth is the result of a variety of partnerships. KTA, for example, donates produce weekly for animal feed, as do banana and papaya growers.

The nonprofit Friends of the Panaewa Zoo group has a hand in just about every improvement and new addition to the grounds. Recently, the Friends purchased copper siding for some of the primate exhibits. The siding keeps out slugs, since primates such as ring-tail lemurs can get rat lungworm disease just like humans can.

“I think that is a perfect model of how we use a ‘Friends of the Park’ program to enhance a county facility,” said Hawaii County District 3 Councilwoman Sue Lee Loy, who represents Panaewa. “They are incredible at taking donations and accounting for it, and then getting it back to the county.”

The zoo budget wasn’t discussed at all during this year’s planning sessions, Lee Loy said.

It’s a massive change from when Mizuno first started her job 18 years ago, when annual attendance was just 60,000 and the council considered closing the zoo entirely.

“There were days when it was raining when the whole entire day we would be lucky if we had one or two visitors,” Mizuno said.

“It was kind of depressing in that every time it was ‘Oh, will we be here next year, can we get funding?’” recalled zookeeper George Saito, who is retiring this month and has worked at the zoo since its inception as a temporary space at Onekahakaha Beach Park. “But I think we reached a certain point where that’s not a problem anymore. … I think people realize the zoo is an asset to the community.”

“I think it’s a great gem,” Lee Loy said. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”

In the late 1960s, the council began to seriously consider establishing a zoo on the island. Jack Throp, then director of the Honolulu Zoo, visited the Big Island in 1967 and toured a host of potential sites.

A subcommittee of the Parks and Recreation Commission chose the current site in Panaewa, recommending that the “existing foliage and terrain constraints” be used to lay out the new facility.

The temporary zoo was established at Onekahakaha in 1969 on about 2 acres of land.

“We had a little bit of everything,” Saito said. He began working for the temporary zoo as a teenager in 1972. “Everything was kind of scrunched together. Up here (at Panaewa), it’s so roomy.”

“Unfortunately, it was an old-style zoo, and they were all just cages, like big kennels,” Mizuno said.

The zoo had, among other residents, two lions, a sun bear, llama, anteater, flamingos, donkeys and a Shetland pony. In its first year, it drew about 130,000 visitors, according to a county improvements plan prepared for Onekahakaha. But those numbers dropped off quickly.

Attendance has topped 200,000 since fiscal year 2012, when a new playground was installed at the 12-acre site. The playground was part of Mizuno’s longtime goal of making the zoo more of a community resource.

“Luckily for us, the community really bought into that,” she said.

“I think what they found (at first) was the population base was a little bit too small to support a zoo,” Saito said. “So, Hilo actually grew bigger, and ever since we put in that playground, it’s been great. The kids can come up here, do their thing on the playground, walk around, see the animals … it’s kind of a one-two punch.”

One of Saito’s most enjoyable experiences in his decades at the zoo has been working with the island’s botanic groups to create the lush rain forest landscape.

“People like the Water Gardens Society, the rhododendron society, the bamboo society, the palms society, the orchid society,” he said. “They’re so specialized and so good at what they do. We couldn’t really do it by ourselves, but with their expertise we’re able to put it all within the zoo.”

“At one point in time we were just a zoo,” he said. “But we became a botanic garden and that’s kind of neat.”

When Saito first started, conservation education wasn’t a priority for most zoos.

“Back then, nobody thought about endangered species or anything like that,” Mizuno said. “Now, we’re a little bit more focused on the fact that we’re trying to provide education tools for young people and future generations to be able to understand when you’ve got a species of animals that may not exist 10 years from now.”

Mizuno said residents such as the boa constrictor — confiscated from an Oahu owner by the state Department of Agriculture and given to the zoo in 2015 — also are important resources.

“We’ve got a lot of kids here that never leave the island, and this is their only opportunity to see a tiger or to see a snake other than in books and on TV,” she said. “On the mainland, you can get in the car and drive to a zoo … not everyone can afford to take their kids even to Honolulu.”

Those opportunities extend to the zoo’s 10 staffers as well: Saito said he was glad to have spent his career working with exotic animals without having to leave the island.

“It’s a real lucky thing to have the privilege of working here,” he said.

Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.