A hurricane helped usher the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo from a troubled location on the island, and a second welcomed the attraction to its new location 16 years later.
That’s the backdrop as Director Joel Hamilton and staff get the zoo on County Road 6, or Oak Road East, ready as another storm, what is forecasted to be upgraded to Hurricane Isaias by tomorrow, puts a bullseye on the Alabama Gulf Coast.
“Putting up some windbreaks on some of the exhibits to help protect the animals in different ways,” Hamilton said on Oct. 7. “Then Friday (Oct. 9), we'll start locking animals up and moving some of the birds and things out of their smaller cage units into buildings. Make sure everybody's got the protection that's needed and required.”
The biggest challenge, he said, will be Friday when the animals will have to be confined to shelter from the storm.
“Some of them don't like it because we don't lock our animals up on a regular basis,” Hamilton said. “We're letting the animals have access to their exhibits all night long. Giraffes are used to being locked up if there's a storm coming; lightning storm, we don't let them out in the lightning.”
At the old zoo on the east side of State Route 59 at 13th Avenue East, such luxuries were few and far between and floodwaters made regular visits in storms large and small.
“We've got buildings for most all of the animals that we can put them into,” Hamilton said. “We don't have the flooding issues that had occurred on a number of occasions down at the old zoo. You take those things out of the mix and it keeps things a little bit simpler.”
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan hit on Sept. 16 and was kind of a last straw for zoo officials who had always dreamed of a reason to begin a serious effort for an alternative site.
“Ivan kind of helped, was kind of an impetus to getting the new zoo,” Hamilton said. “I know that people were wanting a new zoo and wanting one and wanting one. We were lucky to have a local family, the Weirs, who donated 25 acres of land to us, and we were able to get started on the planning and funding of the new zoo.”
In 2020, the new zoo opened to the public and was soon welcomed by Hurricane Sally, 16 years to the day of Ivan’s visit on Sept. 16. That result was a bit different for the new zoo.
“None of the animals were impacted, which is thankfully a good thing,” Hamilton said. “And we had one exhibit that had a tree come down on it, but we were able to fix that pretty quickly. We had animals back out in our exhibits within a day or so. Sally came in on a Wednesday night, and we had all the animals back in their exhibits by Friday. The animals fared pretty well up here, which is what the new zoo is intended to do.”
Hamilton said a “storm rider team” will be at the zoo during the storm to make regular checks on the animals.
