Who is a Zoo Curator?

A zoo curator is the head of the animal care department, also called a collection manager. In a large zoo, the keepers report to a senior keeper, who is supervised by a collection manager, who reports to an assistant curator, who assists a curator. All of the positions are based on seniority. In a large zoo (like the San Diego Zoo), there are often many curators: their management areas can be divided by the physical location of the exhibits in the zoo, by the geographic location where the animals are found in the wild, or by the taxa of the animals in the exhibits. In a large zoo, these curators then report to a general curator, then a director of animal care, then the director of the zoo facility. At the Binghamton Zoo, the seven keepers report to Curator Dave Orndorff, who is assisted by an animal care manager. Dave reports to the director of the zoo facility, Steve Contento.

Meet Dave Orndorff

Dave weighs Zhin-Li, the baby red
panda at the Binghamton Zoo in 2013

Dave Orndorff has been the curator of the Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park for a year this week. On a daily basis, he oversees the animal care department by facilitating the many needs of the keepers and teaching the keepers advanced animal care strategies. Dave also acts as a liaison between other departments on zoo grounds and with other zoos' animal management programs. Dave manages the animal collection by coordinating animal transfers with other zoos and encouraging propagation (baby animals!) among the animals currently in the Binghamton Zoo's collection. He also organizes vet rounds, facilities operations, and new exhibits, and represents the zoo to the media and donors. As the curator, Dave is instrumental to the overarching goals and direction of the zoo: he is on a long-range planning committee that seeks to uphold the zoo's mission of conservation and education by planning the new animals and exhibits that will be coming to the zoo and by conducting field work and in situ conservation projects.

Dave, age 15, holding a lion cub he hand-raised at his first
job at Lion Country Safari

The career path that led Dave to the Binghamton Zoo was complex and exciting. Dave attributes his success to being in the right place at the right time, and based on his career, I would say he possesses precognition. Dave began as a high school volunteer explorer scout at Lion Country Safari in California in the 1970's. He acted as a nursery keeper, and hand-raised many exotic animals. Lion Country Safari eventually hired Dave, and he left high school every day at 11am to go work full-time caring for animals. In the late '70's, Dave was hired by SeaWorld in Florida. He worked as a keeper, aquarium supervisor, aviculture supervisor, and senior animal care specialist. Dave helped create the original SeaWorld Orlando Park and trained the staff to care for the animals at SeaWorld standards. He was often sent to the Florida Keys to collect sharks and other marine animals for the SeaWorld collections. He spent days at a time on a boat and developed some of the first shark morphometrics (measurements to determine the age and health of a shark). Dave also documented the first Galapagos shark in Florida waters. Additionally, while at SeaWorld, Dave worked with a manatee population monitoring program that rehabilitated and released injured manatees. Dave was the first person at SeaWorld to hand-raise a baby manatee, and that manatee is still alive today at Disney.

Dave swimming with a shark at the SeaWorld Shark Institute in the 1980's

Feeding a captive-bred kagu in New
Caledonia

After his 12-year term at SeaWorld, Dave was hired by the same man who gave him his first job at Lion Country Safari to work at The Zoo in Gulf Breeze, Florida, as the curator of birds. Next, Dave worked as the Senior Tropics Keeper at the Beardsley Park Zoo in Connecticut. For the next 11 years, Dave worked at the San Diego Zoo as the bird department collection manager. While working for the San Diego Zoo, Dave participated in the first international meeting for harpy eagle conservation in Mexico. He also founded a national park in the southern province of New Caledonia for kagu preservation. Dave worked with local biologists and citizens to run the studbook and manage a captive kagu population for release. The national park still exists today. Dave also ran a studbook and captive Guam rail release program through the San Diego Zoo for five years as well as the AZA species survival plan for fishing cats. Additionally, he spent a summer in Kenya and Tanzania tagging and trans-locating elephants.

After exhausting his advancement opportunities at the San Diego Zoo, Dave moved to the Mill Mountain Zoo in Virginia as the general curator and then director for four years. Subsequently, he became the curator of birds at the Tracy Aviary in Utah, followed by the assistant curator at the Gulf Breeze Zoo in Florida. Dave then became the curator of Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo in Maryland, and finally became the Binghamton Zoo's general curator in October 2012.

Dave caring for a takin

After 41 years in the animal care business, Dave has done it all. Not only has he met Jane Goodall and Michael Jackson, but he has traversed the world, from Kenya, to Guam, to Iceland. He has hand-raised 365 penguin chicks, three Asian elephants, and countless big cats. When asked what his favorite aspects of being a curator are, Dave replied that as a curator he has "the opportunity to make a real difference with captive animal management." As a curator, Dave is able to participate in every facet of the animal care business, from keeping work to big-picture decisions. His favorite animal is "whatever he happens to be working with at the time." According to Dave, the only downside of being a curator is the fact that "the longer you are in the business, the farther removed you are from the reason for going into the business in the first place." Dave's curatorial job involves much more paperwork and much less one-on-one time with the animals than he would like. Additionally, every curator's dreams and ambitions are often curtailed by their zoos' budgets. It is difficult, even for innovative curators like Dave, to provide their animals with state-of-the-art facilities without excellent donor support.

According to Dave, a curator's job is whatever he or she wants to make of it. In the future, a curator's role may not change much in small zoos like Binghamton, but it may fluctuate drastically in large zoos. As the economy changes, the curator's job may become more multi-faceted as other positions are cut. That may be good news for Dave, who loves that no two days are the same; he still can't believe that he gets paid to pursue a 41-year hobby.

Dave with hand-raised chimpanzees