By Raanan Geberer
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN — Not just here but across the state, administrators of zoos, botanical gardens and aquariums fear that they may need to institute devastating cuts.

At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, for example, not only the Garden’s in-house exhibits could be affected, but also its educational programs, its community horticulture programs and its extensive outreach programs to Brooklyn schools, Scot Medbury, the Garden’s president, told the Eagle.

John Cavelli is executive vice president for public affairs of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which oversees both the Prospect Park Zoo and Coney Island’s New York Aquarium as well as the Bronx Zoo. He said that in Gov. Paterson’s recently submitted state budget, “Living museums, like the Bronx Zoo and New York Aquarium, are singled out for the largest reduction — 55 percent.

“Next year, 76 zoos, botanical gardens and aquariums are zeroed out of the budget ... It is clear: We can't fire our bears or furlough our sea lions. All options are on the table, including cutting staff and services.�

The funding for “Zoos, Botanical Gardens and Aquariums� (ZBGA), a 25-year-old funding program, falls within the state’s overall Environmental Protection Fund (EPF).

For Fiscal Year 2008, according to state figures posted online, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden received $646,000 and the New York Aquarium received $722,000. In addition, the Center for the Urban Environment, also located in Brooklyn, received $65,700.

“According to a 2008 national public opinion survey, 79 percent of Americans believe that zoos and aquariums are good for their local economy, and an impressive 80 percent believe that zoos and aquariums are important enough to local communities to be supported by government funding,� said Cavelli.

Medbury, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s president, said, “We can understand a reasonable reduction,� but a 55 percent cut, followed by the elimination of the fund itself, is too much. He hoped that such a measure could be headed off in the state legislature, which still has to approve the new state budget.

“We’re scrambling around for other sources of support,� Medbury said.

Funds Evaporating at the Aquarium

James Forrest Dohlin, director of the Aquarium, said that of alternative sources, private donations and contributions are down. At any rate, he said, the private sector contributes less than 50 percent of the Aquarium’s costs. And in today’s economic climate, private donors are understandably more reluctant to give money.

“Our costs are fixed,� he said. “Animals don’t stop eating and don’t stop needing care. When we are faced with these kind of really severe and disproportion cuts, have to have everything on the table. That includes cutting staff, reducing services and looking for additional sources of income.�

Some projects at the Aquarium are already under way. Among these are the plans for a new façade and the building of a new conservation hall that will showcase corals and “rift valley lakes� in East Africa and the Amazon. These exhibits, he said, are set to open in the spring of 2010.

The larger question, he said, is what will happen to the much-heralded plans to redo the Aquarium’s exterior and to enlarge the shark exhibit. “These types of budget cuts will make this so much more difficult,� he said.

Interestingly, at various times, the Aquarium and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden have both claimed to be the borough’s biggest tourist attraction in their promotional literature.

It’s Not Happening at the Zoo

According to Mary Dixon, another spokesperson for the Wildlife Conservation Society, the relatively small Prospect Park Zoo won’t be affected because it doesn’t receive money from the state’s aforementioned “Zoos, Botanical Gardens and Aquariums� fund.

Instead, she said, it receives funding from the city and private donors. “It was not part of the original 76 institutions included when the fund was set up,� she explained.

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