In Conversation with Janel Kempf Part 1:
- Camoya Evans
- Oct 23
- 9 min read
Updated: Oct 28
Camoya Evans, Program Director of Wild We Stand, interviews Janel Kempf, a Learning Coordinator at Woodland Park Zoo, about her career and views on conservation. Janel
discusses her 26-year tenure at the zoo, emphasising the shift from traditional zookeeping to cooperative care and the need for alternative conservation approaches. She highlights the zoo's role in reintroducing endangered species such as the Oregon silverspot butterfly and Western pond turtles. While also addressing funding challenges and political stances of zoological institutions. Throughout this conversation, Janel advocates for unionisation and incremental change. She envisions a world where people reconnect with nature as children do, valuing the small, essential roles of all living beings.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Would you like to start by introducing yourself and sharing your career history in the zoo industry?
Janel: I am a Learning Coordinator at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington, and that job title translates to mean that I'm a frontline curriculum developer and program presenter here at the zoo, and I've done a wide variety of things. I've worked here for 26 years. I have done everything from programs for field trips to live animal programs for schools, donors, and zoo guests, and I have developed all sorts of curricula. I'm also one of the shop stewards for Teamsters Local 117, which is the union representing educators, zookeepers, vet techs, warehouse workers, and admissions and Guest Services staff here at the zoo.
How would you describe your relationship with nature and wildlife? What inspired you to want to work with animals and become a conservationist?
Janel: My early childhood, I think, is something that really brought me into it. This is the case with many people who go into conservation–I felt a part of nature early in my life. I was partially raised by my grandmother, who had a background in subsistence farming. She had been raised in the Depression, so she had a very large garden. She had about an acre of land, and she maintained it in a very natural way. For example, we always had chickens because they ate the bugs in the vegetable garden. We also had one duck because chickens don't like slugs very much, and the duck ate the slugs. [The garden] was surrounded by forests. So rather than struggling against nature with chemical fertilisers and irrigation, the plants that needed a lot of water would be planted in a low area where water accumulated. The plants that needed more sun would be planted far away from the forest's edge. So I grew up feeling that nature was something that we should work alongside, and it is our friend if we allow it to be. And when you see segments of the rest of society battling against nature, it makes you feel like you need to shout from the rooftops the way it could be, the way I remembered it from my childhood.
Do you believe that shouting from the rooftops about a better way is an ideal that you carry with you in all of your programs and interactions with visitors at the zoo?
Janel: It really does. When speaking directly to Zoo guests, I see that many people have at least some of those experiences that weren't as woven throughout their childhood as it was for people who choose to go into this field. But it doesn't take much to bring up those memories and to make them feel that connection to either nature in general or to an animal, whether it was a pet they had or a wild animal. You know, memories such as some frogs lived in this stream in a park where I went to, or something along those lines. It's a really great way to bring people in and connect them. Or, really, you're reconnecting them, not connecting them; you're bringing them back to where they were.
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During your time at the zoo, what major changes have you observed?
Janel: The zookeeping profession, as opposed to being an educator, has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. Now, I, of course, have been primarily an educator. I was a keeper for about a year during the pandemic, as I presented live animal programs, which allowed me to be integrated into the keeper units. Throughout that entire time, I have been watching the changes, and, for example, one of the things people often don't understand about how zoos work now is the changes in cooperative care for animals. Thirty years ago, if an animal needed a vaccination or some other medical care, the way it was done was that keepers put on wildlife handling gloves, went into the animals' enclosure, grabbed them, held them down, performed the medical procedure and then let them go. Now that would be absolutely unacceptable. Animals are trained in cooperative care. Many of our animals, if you can imagine, such as tigers and bears and other large animals, are trained to press their bodies up against the mesh and voluntarily receive a vaccine, which is a much more humane way for the animal. It gives them an immensely better life. It's also much safer for the keepers, unimaginably so.
But here's the thing that often creates the disconnect between rank and file, staff, and leadership: [The updated welfare process] also takes immensely more time. Now, of course, [Leadership] is aware that it takes more time, but the sheer expansion of tasks for the zookeeping profession has not been factored in. And this isn't specifically about the Woodland Park Zoo. This is truly across the board. Across all zoos, the staffing decisions are often made by people who were zookeepers 30 years ago, and so they have a picture in their mind of how much work can be done in a certain amount of time, and that, of course, is their experience. That's completely valid, but that profession has changed so much that it often results in overwhelming workloads.
What has been a detrimental change that you’ve seen within Zoos during your tenure?
Janel: Well, it's the funding model for zoos and museums in general. We also hear a lot of concerns about this from our colleagues in all other types of museums as well. Because zoos and botanical gardens are what one might call living collection museums, as opposed to non-living collection museums. However, there is an increasing number of public-private partnerships. For example, when I was first hired here, our zoo was a part of the Seattle Parks Department, so the City of Seattle operated it. Then it moved over to being operated by a private, not-for-profit organisation, which does have certain advantages. Like, there are some grants you're not eligible for if you're a government body. However, in other ways, it tends to lean institutions more toward being run as a business than as a public good. One of the not-so-good changes often seen is viewing employees as a group rather than individuals with specific skills. For example, keepers used to be in units. So if someone was hired, they were a raptor keeper, a big cat keeper, or something along those lines. And now it's much more of a keeper, is a keeper? In fact, we've been told that in contract negotiations, there's one job title, and anyone in that title should be able to do any work in any unit in the zoo. So while that's an efficient way to do it business-wise, to make sure the job duties are such that anyone can do it, it's not necessarily ideal for the welfare of the animals.
Camoya: And also the welfare of the working teams.
Janel: Yeah! It's absolutely not great for the team's welfare. What it does is make teams move away from having highly experienced, expert frontline staff and toward having a rotating series of entry-level staff, and that's often reflected in pay structures. Just in this last contract, we got a pay scale back, which the city used to have, and then we lost it. For a long time, a person in any of the represented [unionised] positions was hired as an educator, keeper, electrician, or anything else. That was the amount you got paid. What you started with was the pay rate across the board, and now our pay scale is back to reflecting that someone who has been in this field for 10 years probably knows more than someone who just started on Tuesday and should probably have more compensation as a result of that, but that was a struggle to get that.
Camoya: I remember that battle during my time at the zoo and how that holistic understanding of teams and people skills is so important, but not everyone gets that. It's especially needed in conservation work because if we are trying to save ecosystems and wildlife, we have to do that to the best of everyone's abilities, whatever those abilities are. Forcing people into a role that doesn't allow them to be individuals with their own knowledge, experiences, and ways of connecting is detrimental to the overall movement. So, I really resonate with that.
Janel: This is also reflective in my specific field as an educator. I work a lot with schools, and as academic standards change, you need to have skilled frontline staff who can tailor programming to the schools' needs. Because, of course, teachers are so overwhelmed that they cannot book a conservation education program from a zoo unless that program will allow them to meet their required academic standards. So, you need skilled staff who know what those standards are and are experienced enough to make that program something that meets the teacher's needs and also conveys our messages, which often have to be done on the fly. And someone who is brand new to the field can absolutely learn that. But if they come into the field, start learning that they can't survive on what they're being paid. Then you lose that expertise every time. And then we end up moving more toward one particular segment of society, being the ones who are employed here, because it's only people who have some other source of income, which means that you have a fraction of the perspective you need.
So, how do the funding mechanisms within zoos impact the way they run their programs and work as conservation organisations?
Janel: A significant portion of our programming is grant-funded, and therefore, we must meet numerous needs in that regard. If we're developing a program for schools, for example, we have to meet the school's needs and get our conservation message out, but if another organisation is funding it, we also have to meet their needs as well. And sometimes you find yourself in an impossible situation, and inevitably, you don't get the programs booked unless you're meeting the school's needs. You don't get the programs funded unless you're meeting the funders' needs. So what has to give? It's the conservation mission that has to give, and that's untenable. We're not even being ourselves when we're in that situation. I mean, and that's a sticky problem that's been [consistent] if you look at the history of art or anything else, what gets done is what gets funded by the people who have the money and the power.
What piece of advice would you give to incoming conservationists and zoo professionals?
Janel: I would first say, please, do it. Welcome. Come, join us. The other thing I would say, and this comes directly from my experience, is find an institution that hears your voice, or if you find yourself in an institution that doesn't, which may be very large, as organisations get larger, it becomes harder for people at various points in the circle to hear each other. Take steps to amplify your voice. Our unionisation history at the Woodland Park Zoo has been slightly different. Some of the work groups came over already unionised from the City of Seattle. Others, for example, our educators, decided to join the union eight years ago. And I can tell you that, of course, there have been ups and downs, and unionisation doesn't solve every single problem, but it certainly helps you solve a number of them. We have seen union membership decline in the United States for decades, and with that, worker power has also declined. Incomes have declined, access to healthcare has declined, and the way to rebuild it is to come together as workers. So always unionise.
Camoya: Oh, I've been meaning to ask, are unions common in American zoos?
Janel: No, it's not common, really, in any museum type; it's most common in those that used to be run by cities. It's much more common for municipal workers to be unionised. So, it's more common in that sense, but less so across the board, and not very common in zoos generally.
Janel and other Woodland Park Zoo staff protesting for an equitable contract, 2024
How do you feel about the future of your work as a zoo educator? Is there something you're hoping to introduce or continue in your role?
Janel: I'm hoping to keep rolling on in a sense of pulling in all the new things that we are learning and all the new ways of engaging people and engaging everyone. I'm hoping to keep going and improve. I feel like there's absolutely a place for revolution. There's also a place for incremental changes that perhaps won't get opposed so strongly by those in power. You have to have both.
Learn more about Janel and her experiences working as a zoo educator in part two of this interview, published next Wednesday, October 29th.
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