Gotham’s zoos are loaded for bear — with weapons on hand and specially trained marksmen ready to take out ferocious animals in case a human life is at risk.
At the city’s five major zoos — one in each borough — a cache of rifles, revolvers and dart guns are kept at the ready.
“Every zoo has someone on staff who is capable and prepared to use a gun,” said John Caltabiano, the former executive director of the Staten Island Zoo.
At the Bronx Zoo, “five first responders . . . are trained to use deadly force,” said a zookeeper there last week.
Both the Bronx and Central Park zoos use rifles and shotguns for the most menacing animals.
“If someone fell in with the bears or snow leopards, a shotgun would be used,” said a maintenance worker at the Central Park Zoo.
At the smaller Staten Island Zoo, where the most dangerous animal is an Amur leopard, a revolver is the weapon of choice.
The zoo snipers train at firing ranges, strategically store the weapons on zoo grounds, and are well-versed on the potential damage that an animal can cause.
After a 3-year-old boy fell into a gorilla’s enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo on May 28, prompting a zoo marksman to shoot the ape, Harambe, to death, New York City zoos are being extra cautious.
“We had a meeting to talk about how to respond to a situation like that after it happened,” the Bronx zookeeper said.
The 265-acre Bronx Zoo is home to grizzly and polar bears, gorillas, lions and tigers.
“As much as you love the animals, there is always that underlying rule of thumb: safety first for human beings,” Caltabiano said.
Caltabiano said he would lean on his curator for expert advice, but the final decision on whether to kill an animal endangering a person would be “on me.”
“If it was a lifesaving situation, the curator would designate a shooter or [if there wasn’t time] he would do it himself,” the former zoo director said. “The point is there’s always someone who knows how, when and what has to be done to put down an animal.”
The NYPD is always called in such situations, as well.
Firearms are used instead of tranquilizers in life-threatening situations because “there’s no way to predict how an animal will react to a sedative. Some animals don’t respond at all to a tranquilizer,” a Bronx zookeeper said.
Every zoo worker is required to go through rigorous training for how to respond to potentially deadly situations at least every few months, a Bronx zookeeper said.
“We would always have safety meetings on a monthly basis to determine if everything was going well,” Caltabiano said. “Sometimes, there would be drills in the event something happened. If someone got a snake bite, we had drills on how to get them [by helicopter or ambulance] to Jacobi Medical Center in The Bronx.”
He said they estimated it taking 25 minutes by ambulance.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the Bronx, Queens, Central Park and Prospect Park zoos, declined to comment.