EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — The City of El Paso confirmed Monday the El Paso Zoo is taking steps to regain national accreditation.<\/p>\n
The zoo is working with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) since a January 2024 accreditation review highlighted facility maintenance, safety protocols, animal care area conditions, and staff training issues.<\/p>\n
The zoo is working with an AZA accreditation mentor as part of the AZA’s Pathway Toward Membership program. The program helps the zoo prepare for reaccreditation and identifies areas where the zoo can improve and reviews progress as it attempts to reach AZA standards. <\/p>\n
Past reviews identified animal holding and habitat improvements, facility maintenance, emergency protocols, risk management, and proper documentation as areas where the zoo needed to improve before meeting standards. <\/p>\n
Laura Cruz-Acosta, a spokeswoman with the City of El Paso, said a third-party consultant was brought in to “support a review of the zoo’s organizational culture, with focus on employee engagement, leadership development and shared values.”<\/p>\n
On September 2025, then El Paso Zoo Director, Joe Montisano, was put on “temporary administrative leave” then officially resigned on Nov. 19, 2025. <\/p>\n
The director position has remained opened since. The City of El Paso has recruitment efforts underway for a permanent director and they expect the search to conclude later this year, according to Cruz-Acosta. <\/p>\n
“The City remains committed to supporting the Zoo, its staff, and the ongoing work to strengthen animal welfare, guest safety, conservation, and education,” she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — The City of El Paso confirmed Monday the El Paso Zoo is taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-298991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}