Opinion: Zoo must explain wallabies' deaths

Federal authorities need to investigate how three wallabies died after being transported from Ocala to Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo. The animals' owner filed suit against the zoo this week, claiming it transported the wallabies in an unventilated box truck, causing the animals' "inhumane and unnatural death." The zoo's not talking, which is a mistake, given the support it receives from this community.

The animals, which resemble small kangaroos, were on loan to the zoo as part of a new multimillion dollar Australian habitat exhibit. The animal's owner, Melinda Morgan, said zoo employees who came to collect the wallabies placed the animals in the back of a rental truck. But rather than drive directly home from Ocala to Tampa, the staff, Morgan said, stopped to eat at a Dairy Queen. After the animals died, the lawsuit states, the zoo did not comply with Morgan's request for their bodies to undergo an outside necropsy. The zoo, Morgan said, also blocked her request for the bodies and information on how the deaths occurred.

Millions of tax dollars have been committed to the zoo, and zoo officials are obliged to publicly answer the many serious questions about this case. Did they load the animals into a box truck when federal regulations -- if not common sense -- make it clear the carriers must be thoroughly ventilated? Did the staff stop for a break along the way without taking care of the animals? Why would the zoo not seek an independent necropsy, why would it stonewall requests for records and why would it handle the affair so secretly when the public has a vested interest in the zoo's success?

The zoo has done a terrific job overcoming the embarrassment it was barely a decade ago. But it got there because taxpayers and the private sector kicked in. The public made the zoo what it's become, and it deserves to know how responsibly the place operates. This understanding is too important to be left to the parties in a civil claim. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which enforces the Animal Welfare Act, said Tuesday the agency hadn't begun an official investigation "but we're looking into it." They should. We need to know if this tragedy was anything but a preventable, human mistake.

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