Prospect Park Zoo director Denise McClean was on her daily rounds when she stopped to hand a peacock feather to a girl enthralled by the gossamer plumes adorning the grounds after shedding season.
The youngster’s eyes lit up.
“You’d have thought I was giving her a fairy wand,” says McClean, who has spent more than 30 years inspiring people to value nature as a key member of the Wildlife Conservation Society management team — and its first female zoo director.
She is the operational mechanic at the organization that manages the city’s five wildlife parks, including the New York Aquarium, fulfilling our fascination with animals, educating us about endangered species, and promoting our planet’s biodiversity with more 500 exciting projects in 65 countries.
McClean is the Woman of Distinction making the visitor experience happen. She opens new zoos, hires staff, creates communications systems for new facilities, bushwhacks through budgetary jungles, forms and oversees committees, and even feeds animals if necessary.
She implemented the start-up functions for the Central Park Zoo, which she helped unveil on Aug. 8, 1988 to a 25,000-strong crowd of visitors with free admission, a fish toss to the sea lions, and an imposing collection of polar bears, penguins, red pandas, and Japanese monkeys.
“It was a sweltering day, but we still had lines waiting to get in at closing time,” says McClean, who also transformed Prospect Park Zoo from a fading, kiddie animal park into an exotic wildlife sanctuary for all ages.
She added organic signage, posted photographs along nature trails, and boosted the critter stockpiles to more than 100 species, bringing in Australian dingos, African hornbills, Pallas’s cats from the Chinese and Russian steppes, and rare North American river otters that birthed the first pups in these parts since 1951.
McClean — who has trekked to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, visited rainforests in South America and Africa, and eye-balled tigers in India — prefers her feedback straight from the horse’s mouth.
“I like to know what visitors are talking about,” says the administrator who rushed to amend the texts when she heard people were mystified by the rosy rumps of the hamadryas baboons.
“It was probably the most-asked question, but our graphics didn’t reflect that,” says McClean, who obliged with signs explaining the red pigment.
Anita Tendler, 17, is among her corps of volunteers enrolled in one of the zoo’s several teen ecological internships helping to keep visitors on track. The aspiring environmentalist made a memorable impression on a family which later recognized her on a bus as “the zoo girl who taught us about how cool meerkats are!”
“Educating visitors has allowed me to realize my passion for animals and motivated me to pursue a career in conservation animal science,” says Tendler.
Denise McClean is animating nature lovers by engaging people in the moment.
“It’s all about observing the world around you,” she says. “I want people to put their cellphones away and look at the nature in front of them.”
OCCUPATION: Director.
COMPANY: Wildlife Conservation Society.
CLAIM TO FAME: First female zoo director at Wildlife Conservation Society.
FAVORITE PLACE: Patagonia, Argentina.
WOMAN I ADMIRE: My great-grandmother, Toby Nettler, who sacrificed her life to give her family a new start in America.
MOTTO: Only connect.
