Larry Killmar, Ph.D.

Dr. Larry Killmar, Hancock, Michigan, November 6th, 1951.

And who were your parents?

What did they do?

Oh, my mother raised five boys, that was her job. And my dad was a banker and he worked in a small bank in Hancock, and Hancock had maybe 2000 people in it. And that was all driven by the copper mines. That was what they did in upper Michigan, was copper mining. In fact, his father and my mother’s father all worked in the copper mines at one time. And he started to see that the copper mines were gonna go bankrupt because they couldn’t mine the way that they needed to. So he decided it’s time to move. And he had a friend in San Diego, California.

And so 1957, packed up and moved myself and two of my brothers to San Diego. And that’s how I ended up in San Diego. So tell us a little about your childhood growing up.

Were animals part of your life?

Well, being the youngest of five, you know, it was always a challenge because my brothers would precede me in many areas. And wildlife was one of those where they’d go out in the woods and they’d hunt squirrel. And, you know, I was the kid just tagging along. So I kind of got my fill of that as a young child but never really was able to engage in anything, because my big brothers were always in front of me. So my parents didn’t like to have dogs and cats. That wasn’t their thing. But I finally convinced them to get a dog. And that was maybe the beginning right there.

But it was a struggle because they were like, okay, that’s your thing. It’s not our thing. You take care of the dog. And so that’s how I got started. When we moved to San Diego, we didn’t have any pets then, we finally got some pets at that point. But, you know, I do backyard stuff with butterflies, and snakes, and lizards, and things like that. And, you know, that was always kind of in the back of my head. But I wasn’t really thinking about wildlife as a teenager, young adult.

I was actually gonna take my father’s business over. When we moved to San Diego, he started his own business as a CPA. And so I would help him on weekends, and days off, and things like that. And that was where I was headed, was to take his business over. And then I got a part-time job at the San Diego Zoo.

So when you were growing up, what zoos did you see growing up and what kind of impression did they have on you?

I didn’t go to zoos when I was growing up. San Diego was probably the first one. And I can remember riding my bicycle. It was like five miles from our house riding down there, watching the Sea Lion show. You know, walking around the zoo and enjoying it. And that was, really, my first exposure because again, my family wasn’t really into wildlife. They just weren’t. So I was the first one to go down that road.

But San Diego would’ve been the first one. So tell me a little about your schooling.

What kind of schooling did you have?

Well, went through, you know, all the elementary school and again, really focusing on taking my father’s business over, when I graduated from high school that was where I was gonna head. And then I got the bug, when I went to the zoo I got hooked and that took me down a completely different path. I decided I wanted to go into wildlife, I wanted to test that out. Especially once I was hired as one of the first keepers at the wild animal park. I was in that first cadre of staff up there. It was like being a cowboy, you know, it was in the early days. And it really started to get seeded in me that I like this a lot. And so I started then getting my bachelor’s degree and working on that, I then took a pause on all of that for a couple of years and informed my dad that I was, I thought this was gonna be the toughest conversation I ever had with my dad.

I said, you know, I really wanna work at the zoo and I wanna work with wildlife. And he was great. He said you do what you want to do. You could always fall back on this if something doesn’t happen, doesn’t work out for you, but you do what you want to do. So that was actually pretty beneficial for me. I didn’t have to fight over it. And then in my career, I decided maybe I wanna be a zoo director. So I then went ahead and started after my master’s and PhD and that’s how I got down that path.

I said, you know, I think I wanna be a zoo director. I got a little taste of that, believe it or not, at ZooTampa, when there was a directorship change and they put two of us in charge to manage the zoo. We shared the responsibility.

And at that point, I said you know what?

I don’t wanna be a zoo director. I wanna stay with the animal side of this business. And so I continued with my schooling, finished my PhD, and that’s where that all ended up. But, you know, I decided I’d rather, you know, if I’m going to be a director, I’d rather direct the division and the department, which is a big department in most zoos, than to be the CEO or president of the organization. ‘Cause you get so pulled away from what I think is the traditional work of a zoo.

So you pursued your PhD?

Right In what?

It’s in business administration and then I have a master’s degree in business as well.

So when you were going to school, did you have any teachers that influenced you and helped you make some of these decisions or not?

No, it was actually not teachers so much as some of my close friends, you know, why are you killing yourself holding down a full-time job and trying to, you know, attain a master’s degree and a PhD at the same time?

And, but they were all supportive.

I mean, they questioned it, you know, is this really what you want to do?

And I said yeah, it is what I want to do. And I think I probably had one really strong mentor who wasn’t even in the animal business at all. He was actually a psychologist who had been doing some work at San Diego and we just hit it off and had a great relationship. And he worked in several departments in the zoo but he kind of pulled me aside and he said, you know, if you’re going to do this, if you are going to pursue these higher-degree levels, you’ve gotta wanna do that. It’s like nobody should be pushing you into it. It’s something that you’ve got to want to do.

‘Cause when you hit the wall, and you’re going to hit the wall, when the caseload or workload gets so great that you’re wondering, why am I doing this?

You gotta come back to that and that’s gotta be the thing that drives you.

And sure enough, you know, he was very perceptive and I hit the wall a couple of times saying, why am I trying to do all this?

A very supportive wife through this whole process. I mean, many hours, you know, hitting the books and not paying attention to my family. But she was extremely supportive and that made it all possible. I look back on it now and, you know, when I finally did get my degree, I didn’t realize how much time I had been investing in that. And then I didn’t have to do that anymore. It was like, well, I’ve got many hours I can spend, you know, doing things I want to do now around the house or the family or travel or whatever it might be. So it was worth every bit of it. And I wouldn’t recommend people going the route that I did, but, you know, if they want to pursue, they need to make sure you got it in your gut.

And I’ve been able to coach other people in that process as well, saying, are you sure you want to do this?

Nobody’s pushing you into it. So now, from 1969 to 2007, you worked at the San Diego Zoo, but you started in 1969 at San Diego.

What was your first job there?

Picking up paper on Cinco de Mayo, which I thought I might’ve made a mistake, ’cause that’s a day when the zoo is extremely busy and there’s a sea of trash, you know, and your job, you’re given an area, is to keep it clean and make it look nice. So very serious about how the grounds should look at all times. So the lowest position in the organization, picking up paper. So you’re on the grounds crew.

How did you get this job?

Well, I applied. So my application was on file and a gentleman in the department had to leave for bereavement leave. And I was just the next one in line.

They called me up and said, you’ve got a job for two weeks, do you want it?

Well, at that time in San Diego, if you got that call, you took the job because getting into the San Diego Zoo is very difficult. Good thing is they worked with you on your school schedules and all of that. They were very, very generous when it came to that. So I had a job for two weeks. He did come back and they kept me. So 37 years later, you know, I left.

They kept you on the grounds crew?

They kept me on the grounds crew after he came back, yeah.

When you started at the San Diego Zoo, what kind of zoo did you find?

Can you describe it?

I mean, my impression at that time, it was animals all over, you know, things I’d never seen before, birds I’d never seen before. It was an exciting place even though on the grounds crew, you felt really engaged in the facility. And the then-director, Dr. Schroeder would walk the facility and he would walk the facility on Sunday afternoon. You know, most people are heading home. Or certainly seeing a zoo director out walking the grounds on Sunday afternoon would be unusual, very engaging individual. He would say hi to you, it didn’t make any difference where you were in the hierarchy. And so you felt like you were truly part of the team. It wasn’t just a saying.

And I remember my boss getting messages from Schroeder and we’d hear about it the next day saying, how come this area wasn’t cleaned up?

And what about this and what about that?

And that was just his tenacity and his wanting the zoo to always look the best it could. So I found it a really exciting place to work and a place that, you know, I wanted to be. And people were great, the staff was great. And when you have the director walking around and saying hi to you, it doesn’t, in my impression, that was like, it doesn’t get much better than that. But you weren’t staying on the ground crew.

How did you, or when, the year, if you have?

Yeah.

When did you get your next promotion?

Yeah, so I moved up in the grounds crew to a couple levels. And then they put out bid sheets for jobs coming up. And the wild animal park was in its very early stages. There were no animals out there. It was beginning to be built. So in the very formative years. And they were looking for animal care people but they wanted people with no experience. So the diehard animal care keepers at the zoo, they weren’t applying, they didn’t wanna go out there.

It was hot, and dusty, and dirty. And so I applied and didn’t get the first job but got the second one that I applied for. And it was like, holy cow, I’ve never done anything like this. But they didn’t want anybody with experience because this was gonna be such a new way of managing animals that they didn’t want some old habits following people out. So you took all the jiding, and the kidding, and you know, you’re crazy for going out there, and, oh, the zoo will be here when you come back, don’t worry, you know. And I never looked back. And it was, I mean, there were days where you’d go home totally exhausted. You were out there working in the hot sun but you didn’t care, ’cause it was such a cool place.

And we grew up, there’s a whole group of us that grew up together, seven or eight of us that all kind of grew up together under that. And you know, actually, one of the gentlemen I worked with is still my best friend today after all these years so.

When did you become a keeper, what year?

It was 1971. So it was a year before the wild animal park actually opened up. And the month I started, they were just grading for the village to build it.

Can you give a little kind of quick history of the San Diego Zoo was established, what was the concept of this new place you started at?

Yeah, the offsite facility wasn’t going to be open to the public. It was strictly going to be a breeding facility. In fact, those were the first pens that were built there. And they were in a very remote area. And this area was, you know, the wild animal park is roughly 30 miles outside of San Diego. And they acquired this land and they started building pens out there. And so that was gonna be the breeding facility to support the San Diego Zoo. And somewhere in that period of time, the powers that be, the board decided perhaps we should open this up.

And so they floated a bond issue for $15 million, and the public supported it greatly, and they got their $15 million bond. And I mean, laughable in today’s numbers but the 15 million allowed them to build a village and opened up the public area, put the tram in place, and then open up on Mother’s Day, 1972, May 10th, 1972. And a rough start. Very rough start, the zoo’s still there making money. The park is not, the park didn’t make money for many, many years.

And a lot of talk about what do we do, how do we keep it, do we keep it?

But you know, the right decisions were made, and it’s still there today, and it’s a fantastic place. And it really set the stage for those kinds of facilities. There wasn’t anything else like it in the United States. There was no playbook for us. And we were setting standards in animal management and to some extent exhibit design because there was nothing to follow. Nobody had done it before. So you’re learning the craft of being an animal keeper. Right.

But you’re promoted then to a lead keeper?

Right.

Because of your work ethic, how did you make that transition?

Yeah, I think it was a combination of work ethic. Some people who had started in the very early years of the wild animal park moved on and through seniority. You know, you move up. Being a lead keeper is basically, you know, the straw boss for the working crew. But it gave me an opportunity to have to manage and deal with issues that, you know, you come in the morning, you never know what you’re gonna be handed when the animal collection has been out there all night. And sometimes some real challenges. So we learned, I had very good mentors as far as bosses were concerned. We were also getting a lot of animals that were being held at the zoo in anticipation of the wild animal park being open.

Those were coming in at a regular pace right up to the opening day. And so, I mean, you know, we were learning things, you know, by the seat of our pants basically. But I would say if I looked backed on it now and looked at our success rate, we did a darn good job of that. But yeah, a lot of challenges. A lot of, you know, your learning curve was pretty steep. You become a zoo technician as a position.

So what is a zoo technician?

Yeah.

What did you do?

Well, that basically is a made-up title that allowed me to step out of the union along with another individual and now take an office job helping the general curator at that time, who was going between the zoo and wild animal park. We were always at the wild animal park, we were the ones that were there five days a week. Managed the collection from that point of view, the paperwork, and the records, and all that stuff, it allowed me to step out of being a keeper. It did permit me to come into being a keeper if I wanted to or to fill in a gap if there was a low staffing day or something. But the idea was, you know, you’re now in that bottom level of management from the office point of view.

Who was the general curator you were helping?

Dr. Dolan, Dr. James Dolan. Yeah.

Who you’re talking about?

Yeah. Right, right. At some point in time, your named then the Curatorial Field Supervisor. Yeah.

What were your responsibilities?

When did that happen, what year?

I don’t remember the exact year, but it had to be somewhere in the mid to late seventies. And again, this was another bump up, taking me completely out of being a keeper and giving me more curatorial responsibilities. ‘Cause Jim, Dr. Dolan was traveling a lot, not around. There had to be decisions made. There had to be somebody responsible there so the director could, you know, talk to an individual if there was an issue. And so again, that was just a move up.

It was also testing me, you know, are you curatorial material?

Dr. Dolan was very clear. When another individual and I moved into those positions, there were two of us, he sat us down. He said, you know, I just want you to know right off the bat, I’m a one man show. And we went, oh, okay. So I guess we’re gonna figure out how to work together. And he drove everything, which he should’ve, ’cause he was highly experienced at that point. And he’s the one that put all the energy in putting this collection together and still running the zoo as well. And so, you know, we basically ears open, a lot of listening, a lot of observations, but now stepping up into more of a curatorial role than kind of this middle management thing that we were in before.

So when did you become then curator?

Your next step was curator of mammals.

What were then your responsibilities and who left the position that you became the curator of mammals?

When did that happen?

There was no curator of mammals. I was the first for the wild animal part, I don’t remember the exact year, but it had to be in the early eighties. There was no mammal curator. And Dr. Dolan put me into that position. So now it is not only collection management records, permits, budget, interfacing with strategic planning, master planning.

He had me down at the San Diego Zoo in the master plan for the zoo, which at first I wondered why am I here for San Diego Zoo master planning?

But I’m so glad I was involved in that because it gave me the knowledge to know how to master plan, which today I love, I love master planning. It’s one of my favorite things to do. But again, it was all a learning process. Dr. Dolan was great about giving you assignments and sometimes stretching you a bit, but it was all about the training and the understanding. So this was now full-blown mammal curator, making transactions, managing the budget, all of that stuff. And so now I’m full-blown mammal curator at that point. And so didn’t replace anybody ’cause there wasn’t anybody there to replace so. Not being satisfied being the curator of mammals, you now move up one more rung, I presume.

What were those responsibilities as general curator?

General curator. That was an interesting move because again, the collection at the wild animal park was growing. And Jim wanted to have some consistent management between the zoo and the wild animal park. And so he put me in the general curator role for the wild animal park to give me that title, which again, is one more notch up. And a boatload of responsibility and job duties to go with it. And then he said I want you to be the general curator for the zoo and the wild animal park. And that was, as I would say, a point where I paused ’cause I wasn’t certain I was ready for that.

And so I had worked at the San Diego Zoo, right?

But I was a groundskeeper last time I was at the San Diego Zoo. Now, I knew everybody down there, I knew everybody, but I wasn’t their boss. And the gentleman that was the general curator at the zoo was ready to give it up. He just wanted to go back to being, he was the reptile curator.

Who was it?

Tom Schultz. He just wanted to be reptile curator. He didn’t want the general curator thing at all. So when Jim appointed me, I said, Jim, what I’d like is you gimme six months. If I like it in six months, then I’ll continue on. And if you like what I’m doing, you know, then, you know, you can push me back to general curator at the wild animal park or whatever you want to do. And those six months were tough, they were a real challenge.

I was getting challenged by staff at the zoo, like, who’s this guy, you know?

Yeah, they knew me, I’d been in curator positions before, but now I’m their boss. I had budget issues at the zoo that were like, I didn’t put this budget together, I inherited this budget, but all of a sudden I’m the one that’s getting called in by the CFO and the Director to answer the following. So there were points, to be honest with you, where I wondered if I had made a mistake and just went a little too far too quick. It worked itself out, in large part, due to Jim’s counseling and coaching. And I’ll be honest, a lot of hard work, I mean, sleepless nights, long days. And I had to learn how to listen, which is something that I wasn’t always really good at before. ‘Cause rather than coming in and saying, okay, zoo, this is the way it’s going to be. And them thinking the upstart from the wild animal parks, you know, coming into our territory, I listened and I paid attention to what they were saying and slowly started to integrate new things.

Nothing overnight. Now, there’s one person in this whole process that was key to my success at San Diego, and that was Tom Schultz, the guy that stepped aside. Tom could have made my life very difficult by continuing to make decisions and undermining me. And he was great about it. He said the boss is down the hallway, Larry’s your boss, not me. And Tom and I hadn’t worked that closely together before because he was at the zoo and I was at the wild animal park but we really started working closely together and I really, I thanked him for that because he was pivotal in that first six months for me to be successful. And then I remember the day I asked Jim, I had six months marked on my calendar, so I knew when that was gonna be up. And we were sitting in the office together and I said well, it’s been six months.

He goes, it’s been six months. I said yeah.

I said are you okay with what I’m doing?

He goes, oh, absolutely. You got a lot to learn, but you’re on the right track. And you know, again, as they always say, that the rest is history. But that truly was some pivotal times in my career where I could have changed the course of where I am right now by taking a different direction. But great support from people, whether it be Dr. Dolan or whether it be Tom or other people. Had a lot of listening sessions, a lot of discussions with staff so they understood me. And it started to hone my basic overall management style.

During this time as the general curator for both the zoo and animal park, how did you spend your time?

You must have had a huge staff to oversee. Yeah, there are 300 people at that time, roughly, between the zoo and the wild animal park. I would spend two days a week at the wild animal park, three days a week at the zoo. And then I started to flip that around a little bit. I always made myself available for a meeting regardless of where it was. I didn’t want to be the one saying, oh, no, you know, I can’t be down there. I made it happen, you know. Some days doing a half a day at the wild animal park and then driving down to the zoo for an afternoon meeting.

So I had to figure out that system. And then in all fairness, I had a secretary in both facilities who couldn’t have done it without them. I mean, they were excellent. And they finally sat me down and said, you gotta come up with a regular schedule here. You’re driving us crazy. We want to know where you’re gonna be so we can set up meetings and do all this, it’s been great that you’ve been going back and forth, and I know that’s worked out fine, but it’s driving us crazy. So we figured it out and basically what I did is the wild animal park was three days a week and the zoo was two days a week unless something came up. And then Jim was just the opposite.

So we’d have one day together at both facilities, which worked out great because then we could have meetings with the staff if we were together, we could, you know, go to staff meetings, whatever it may be. We worked it out. So there was always someone at the highest level of the department available to staff, not just by phone, but in person. And we hit that probably 90% of the time. So it worked out well.

As general curator for both institutions, you must have been dealing with the director of, who was that at the time?

Well, Doug Myers was the director at the time. And then he had a park manager who I think they turned out calling that person a director as well. But he was the executive director of the whole organization. So yeah, several meetings with Doug Myers. I wasn’t in the C-level suite, you know, as far as regular weekly meetings with all of them. But I was in enough meetings where I had a lot of face time with Doug. And then, of course, paying a lot of attention to the wild animal park director at that time as well, because again, very unique institutions in how they operate. You know, separate budgets, operating budgets, so challenges for both.

‘Cause the zoo very healthy financially, park not so, so, you know, you’re always balancing those things back and forth. And so yeah, you know, starting to be in meetings a lot, you know, just to keep things going and to make sure that the animal department was getting represented. You had one, the apparently last promotion as Deputy Director of Collections. Right.

What new tasks did you have to take that on?

No new task. It was just a title change that the organization wanted to adopt. They were doing some title changes throughout the organization and so they decided to take general curator, retire that, and make it deputy director of collections. And so it didn’t change anything. It just was a title, changed my business card is all it did. Yeah. You then leave San Diego and as deputy director of collections, that was 2007, and you now leave San Diego and you go to the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa from 2007 to 2022.

Why did you leave San Diego Zoo?

Yeah, the question was asked of me, Mark, more times than I can remember. I was being groomed to take Dr. Dolan’s position when he retired, and I didn’t get that job. And I had to make a decision career-wise.

Am I okay staying in San Diego and continuing on as I am or is there something else?

And so I started to put my application out and it was no fun. You know, as I said to my wife at the time, I feel like a piece of meat, you know, you’re getting thrown around, asked questions, taken to dinner, wined and dined, and then said sorry, you know, we picked somebody else. And then I landed on Lowry Park and everything started to fall into place. And the decision to leave San Diego wasn’t as difficult as I thought it was going to be when I finally had to make that decision. A lot of questions from other people, not my family, as to why I was going there. But what I saw was a facility that wasn’t gonna have the biggest collection in the world. That wasn’t the point. They wanted to have a very good collection.

And that’s what I did, put collections together. I also saw a zoo that was willing to look outside of its boundaries and not just stay local, you know, it was okay with international work, which was like, great, I’ve done that, so I can help you with that. And it was just, everything seemed to be right at that point. And all of the other stuff aside, you know, the salaries and all that, that all got resolved very positively for me.

And I felt wanted coming to Lowry Park but I had a lot of my colleagues who said what happened?

Why are you leaving?

I said well, you’re gonna have to come here to see it, number one. That’s probably the best way I can answer the question. But it was time for me to make a change and get control of my career. You know, I had put in, I thought, my tank was empty when it came to San Diego. It just was empty. And they decided to take off in a different direction. Okay, nothing you can do. You can’t fight a corporation, you know, you either take it and live with it or you move on.

And so I moved on. My wife retired at the same time, she was curator of primates and we moved to Florida, the biggest move of my entire career.

And you moved to Lowry Park in what capacity?

As, I think, they gave me the title deputy director at that time, or no, director of collections at that time. So I had a general curator working for me and curators. And so it was to oversee the animal collection, be part of the senior management team of the zoo with the CFO and others. And we came in, I think the budget was something in the middle 20 millions, at the point, which by the way, was smaller than my entire department budget at San Diego. So the money management didn’t scare me at all because I was managing a lot more than that in San Diego.

Who was the zoo director that hired you?

Lex Salisbury hired me, yeah.

And what kind of zoo did you find when you got there, how would you describe it?

Yeah, I think visually very appealing. I mean, you know, coming into Florida where, you know, you look at a plant, it grows because of the tropical environment. So visually, a very pretty zoo. behind-the-scenes, a lot of issues, a lot of issues with exhibits, as I always characterized it, it was a place where you could move animals in, but you’d never move ’em out unless you had to tranquilize everything to get it off exhibit. So not the best design of back-of-house facilities, nothing to enhance collection sustainability, moving males in and out for breeding purposes. Everything was a challenge. And so while visually to the public, it was great, it was small, it was a real challenge. And the staff was a challenge as well.

I had to basically rework the staff, and change titles, and do all kinds of things to get it to the standards that I thought it should be at. And with support from Lex, he was very supportive of that whole thing. So basically, I would say professionalizing the small zoo.

And you then were promoted to the title Vice President and Director of Collections?

Right.

Same responsibilities?

Yeah. Yeah, again, it was what the organization recognized. I was an officer now, you know, so as far as contract signing and those responsibilities, that allowed me to be in that position. Which the board certainly approved because they wanted to make sure that we had a robust officer corps, that we weren’t relying solely on the CEO for all that. Part of the growth of the institution.

In 2012, you’re still vice president, but now you’re dealing with animal science and conservation, added responsibilities, are you still doing the collection?

Yeah, added responsibilities and more of a focus on conservation than previous. It was time for the institution to start to ramp up. It’s conservation, and still today, the primary program is the Manatee Rescue and Rehab. That’s a big program. It’s over a million dollars a year. And it’s what we’re known for in Florida and around the country actually. But there’s a lot of other growth that’s needed in other areas, other conservation issues, and so on, and so forth. So the institution wanted to grow in that place and they wanted me to oversee that.

So they gave me those additional responsibilities. So that was kind of the umbrella then that was the complete umbrella over all of the animal care facets. And the veterinarians reported to me. And it just kind of tidied up the organizational chart a lot. From there, in 2015, you become the Chief Zoological Officer. You got a lot of titles here. Yeah. Senior Vice President and Zoo Director.

Why so many titles?

What, was it different responsibilities?

Okay, nothing really changed, but that was the advent of a new CEO and politically, it was appeasing me because I also put in for the CEO position, and there was only two of us, and I didn’t get the job. And so they wanted to make sure that I wasn’t gonna go anywhere. And they were worried about, the board was worried that I might leave as a result of not getting that CEO position. And the then chairman of the board talked to me about it.

We didn’t talk titles, we just talked about, are you still okay?

And I said I’m fine, I’m okay. But they wanted to reward me and give me that. And the new CEO was part of that title change, when he came in, he changed many titles and that was just one of them so.

So you’re the zoo director?

That’s the title?

Yeah, it’s the title, right. And you indicated that you were hired by the zoo director, Lex Salisbury.

Was he still there?

No, he was long gone.

Can you kind of give me an overview about how the zoo director position became vacant and you were able to be put in that?

Yeah, so basically what happened is we called it the period of distraction. That’s the politically correct way. Lex lost his job and then the directorship was open. So that’s when they appointed both Craig Pugh and myself to co-direct along with the CFO. So actually, three of us. But Craig and I did most of the functional operational stuff.

And while they were searching, okay?

Then the day had come and Craig and I had already decided, I said I don’t want the job. It’s yours. If they want to give it to you, go for it. I said I’m happy doing what I do, I’ll be your lieutenant, I’ll be your wingman. I’ll be happy doing that. And so they appointed him, and I believe it was Director, and then they changed it to CEO and he did that for X amount of years. And then he decided time to leave. And that’s when they brought Joe Couceiro in.

And, you know, I applied for that one. ‘Cause I wanted it at that point. And so that’s that final title change. So the director is put in there, you know, none of the duties changed.

Okay?

It was just a title they gave me to, like, someone said if you have any more titles, you’re not gonna be able to get it on a business card. And I said well, I’m happy with where you left me or where I am. And I said, you know, so it’s more ceremonial than anything. I mean, I wasn’t over the CEO, obviously, as a director, I was under them. But I was at the C-level at that point. They changed all of the department heads to C-level titles. Joe did that just to clean everything up and get the organization, you know, again, maturing the organization. So coming from San Diego where all that had been done previously, it was like, wow, this is interesting how this happens.

You know, I didn’t realize that but it needed it. And Joe saw that, and the board agreed, and adopted those titles. So then you end up with I think five officers and, you know, your CEO and all things. So everything was tidy and nice, and everybody was happy. Yeah.

Now, what was your relationship then with your senior staff?

Was it different now that you are the boss?

No, no. I had built up, I thought, a very good relationship, you know, fair but tough with these folks because again, they’re young staff, very young staff, in their twenties, I think the oldest staff member I had might have been in early thirties. So not a lot of experience. A lot of willingness to work, to work hard, put in long hours, but had to make some tough decisions on, one of the things I changed were their titles, getting a little bit off track here, but they had curator titles, but they’re not being curators. I was the curator. They weren’t doing curatorial work. And I told ’em that. I said you know, all fairness, if you apply for another job at another zoo, and you said you were a curator and they asked you curatorial-related questions, I’m not certain you would pass the interview.

So if anything, for your own career, I think it’s best we retitle everybody here, not affecting your pay, just changing titles. And so I took curator title away from just about everybody, but the one who ended up being the general curator, and rebuilt that. Now, they have curator titles back again, but they just weren’t working at that level, not the level that I came from, from San Diego where, you know, curator. Yeah. I mean, they’re pushing the general curator and, you know, everybody down the road, what they wanna do with their collection. These guys weren’t, guys and gals weren’t doing it. And the previous director just handed out titles, I think, to keep everybody happy. It was like, stop, stop.

This is just not gonna work. So again, we got all that cleared up and I didn’t lose anybody in the process of doing that. They all understood it. I was just honest and open with ’em. I said you’re not curators, you will be someday if you wanna stick this out and stick with me, I’ll help you.

So again, a lot of that seems wonky and, you know, were there additional responsibilities?

Yeah, maybe a few additional responsibilities, but basically, it was just getting the mess cleaned up, making sure they’re all getting paid equally as well, or if there’s a seniority issue, making sure that that was addressed as well. So, you know, again, there’s a lot of rudimentary work that had to be done at Lowry Park, just a lot.

Now, during this time, were you forming your philosophy about zoo management or did you already have a vision?

Already had a vision. I mean, again, I had watched and learned from people that made a lot of mistakes and people that were successful. And I tried to pick what I thought was the best approach to managing people and managing collections. One of the things, and I still have that fire in my belly today, is that any collection you work with in any zoo, regardless of where it is, as a curator, should be the best collection you can put together. You’re not gonna get that overnight but you should always be striving for that northern star.

What is the best?

If you have an opportunity to collect and get something for the zoo, is that the right move for the zoo?

Is that the best move you can make for the collection?

Or do you pause and go a different direction?

And I’ve tried to instill that into the people that when I retired are still there. And I’m still seeing very favorable results. So don’t just be happy with the status quo. That’s not the way I was raised and the way I ran the collection in San Diego. As far as my style of management, you know, I don’t like to look over people’s shoulders.

When I was growing up, never really had a boss that was an over-the-shoulder kind of person, you know?

I want people to grow.

I want people to be able to think on their feet so that if I got run over by the bus, the whole place doesn’t go, oh my God, what are we gonna do tomorrow?

You know, Larry’s not here to make the decision. I want those people to be able to step in and make the decision. Now, that’s taking risk. And, you know, some days, I have to be honest with you, I felt we were vulnerable. Not to the point where we were gonna hurt an animal or anything, but it’s like, okay, that has a questionable result, let’s see what happens. I always had a plan B. And the people that are now in senior positions at ZooTampa, carry that philosophy now. They’re able to think on their feet.

And the testament to that is in traveling and not being around, my phone’s not ringing off the hook when I was there, you know, they’re making decisions. They’re letting me know if there’s something really big. But when I get back, I’m looking at their decisions and they’ve made a series of very good ones. Now, if I thought the decision wasn’t what I wanted it to be or thought it should be, I’d counsel ’em on it, say, okay, next time, I would’ve done this rather than that. End result will be the same but I would’ve taken a different path.

And rarely did I have a case, Mark, where it was like, oh my God, what were you thinking?

You know?

I always had people that would pause, think about it, and make the decision. And whether that be an animal health issue, whether it be a policy issue, whatever that is. And I’m hoping, I’ve hoped, and I think it’s proved that I’ve given those people that ability to do that. ‘Cause again, I’m not gonna be there. I’m not there now, you know.

And what was gratifying to me when I retired, yeah, did some people miss me?

I’ll underline some, some people miss me, but the operation didn’t come to a halt. You know, the gentleman that took my spot, he’s still working into it. He’s doing a great job, he’s achieving great things, but the place just didn’t, you know, crumble. Not that I’m anybody special but I think I set that staff up to be successful.

How do you think the staff would, talking about your management style, how do you think the staff would describe your management style?

I think some people were in fear of me. Even though I’m not a guy you need to be afraid of. Very approachable.

And I had to work at that a lot because people just, you know, ooh, it’s Dr. Killmar, you know?

It’s like, no, I’m just a regular guy, you know?

So I think they would say I was fair, that I was tough.

You know, as I told one staff member one day, I said did you think I wouldn’t have figured this out?

If you told me one thing and something else happened that I wouldn’t eventually figure it out?

Now, sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes it’s a couple days, but I’ll eventually figure it out and then I’m gonna come back to you and say, why, why did you not give me the whole story?

And they admit it, you know, they just didn’t want to talk to me about it. They were afraid, you know. So what I had to do, Mark, is I had to, you know, there’s the off-work Larry, and then there’s the on-work Larry, that I had to bridge those two. And go to events and let them see me in a non-work environment. And I think the best compliment I ever got was I was a teacher at the ASAs Schools in Wheeling. And, you know, I did that for many years and enjoyed it, I enjoyed teaching. And several staff from Tampa would come through, and even staff from San Diego would come through. But now I’m a teacher.

I’m in a different, I have a different hat on.

In some cases, you know, I wasn’t in their class at all, but I was just there, you know?

And a couple of ’em came up to me and said, this has been great, you know, learning you in this different environment. And I said I’m no different, you know, I’m still the same guy. But I think people have a tendency to take a title and push it up on a pedestal, maybe incorrectly, and make people scarier than they really need to be. So, you know, for me, I had to work at that.

And I had a couple people tell me, I have to work at that, you know?

‘Cause it’s like, you know, you need to take the hat off, and get down in the mud with the rest of us, and have fun. So yeah, whatever it may be, you know, whether it’s going to a hockey game or going to a football game or whatever, it’s just in a different light than always in a work environment.

Just because you’ve said that, did people call you Dr. Killmar?

Did you encourage that?

No, I didn’t encourage it. I said I’m Larry, you know. Now, I said I’ll be honest with you, formal introduction at an event or, you know, something to that effect, absolutely. But just call me Larry. And today, when I go to the zoo, I’m down there three or four times a month.

Some people still refer to me as doctor, you know?

I’m just Larry, you know, I never felt, A, that anybody had to do that. That was way too much. I’m just, Larry, just treat me as Larry. Now, you’re director of the zoo. Some questions.

How important are amenities at the zoo?

What were your priorities, did you want to accomplish first?

Amenities meaning public or?

Public. Public. Well, very important. And I think there’s a couple of things that, and I have to give credit to the CEO for kind of instilling some of these amenities, as they call it. I think zoos cannot just stand on their own when it comes to people coming in and looking at animals. I think that’s the major reason they come. But I think today’s public wants more. Now, we’ve gotta figure out how to give ’em the more, and ZooTampa’s been a leader in what we call guest experience opportunities.

And I’ll have to be honest with you, when this first started, I was getting concerned, what does this really look like?

But we worked it through, and we worked out, and tried, and experimented, and have come up with a cafeteria plan of people having more engagement with animals. And these are upscale, they pay more for this opportunity, but getting people engaged with the animals so they understand it and they appreciate it. So whether it be an Indian rhino feeding, whether it be now the stingray opportunity where they swim with stingrays, whether it be the tortoise encounter, whether it be the white rhino back-of-house encounter. As part of my responsibilities at the zoo, we are the duty manager for a weekend. And what you’re supposed to do is go around and not do your job, but be that operations person and, you know, participate or view what’s going on in these special events, special experiences, and any other part of the public side of it. And I have to admit, when I stand back and watch how the keeper staff engages the public, man, they’re really excited about these opportunities. Stuff that you and I would take for granted, touching a rhino. Yeah.

How many times have we done that?

Hundreds of times. But the guy from Iowa has never done it. The guy from Iowa has never been in with a giant tortoise and is absolutely blown away by this opportunity. And the whole point is, A, we’re giving ’em those amenities, those extras. B, we’re giving ’em some education, but we’re not cramming it down their throat. It’s all, you know, very positive, and open, and fun. And you’ve got the expert there, the keeper, engaging. It’s not a non-keeper telling the story.

It’s a keeper telling the story. They’re the rock stars, not me. I’m not the rockstar. They’re the rockstar. And they’re going, wow, this is the keeper.

Isn’t that great?

And those have been very successful to the point now where they have a large number of these opportunities.

And, you know, yes, do we make some money on it?

Sure. But we’re not killing the people with the price. It’s very reasonable. 15, $20. And they love ’em. They love the opportunity. And it’s also taking away the mystery of how zoos operate.

You know, what happens in the elephant barn?

What happens there?

Well, you’re here, you’re seeing it, you’re seeing what’s going on. There’s no big secret here. And I think, you know, give hats off to ZooTampa for taking that lead and doing, the first one we did was an Indian rhino feeding. And at first, it was hilarious ’cause people getting slobbered on and everything else, and they were loving it. We figured, oh God, we’re gonna have complaints about people with rhino slob all over. They were loving it. I mean, we let ’em clean up, and freshen up, and whatever, but here they are feeding an Indian rhino. They never thought they’d have the opportunity.

And I’ve walked up and talked to those people who’ve done those, and they just, they love it to death. They’ve been, some of them three, four times, you know, they enjoy it that much. So those amenities, I think are, without question, satisfying the urge that the public has now to wanna know more and to be more engaged. And you’re still respecting the animal. The animal is not diminished in anybody’s eyes. No animal’s doing a trick. No animals, you know, going hoops of fire or anything like that. They’re just being themselves.

You mentioned manatees.

Why, in your opinion, did Tampa put limited amusement-type rides at the zoo when your next-door neighbor was Busch Gardens that had, in a sense, unlimited amusement rides?

Right.

What was the philosophy of wanting to do that at the zoo?

Right. Philosophy was to, a large part of our weekly attendance in the off-season are parents and grandparents with their kids and strollers, stroller moms, and grandpa, and grandma with strollers. To give those kids an opportunity to get wet, and cool down, and enjoy a ride. We’re not gonna be a ride park. That’s not our goal. But we’ve gotta be competitive with Busch Gardens to some extent. If we didn’t have anything, those people probably wouldn’t come see us as often as they do. So we give ’em a little taste of it, let ’em get wet and have fun.

You know, let the kids have a little bit of, you know, burn up the energy fun but not be in a ride park. And that balance has been interesting but it’s never been a struggle. We’ve always stayed true to our core business. And again, don’t want to be Busch. There’s no way we want to be Busch. We don’t have the footprint anyway, even if we thought about it.

But, you know, there’s always the temptation, hey, what about a new ride here?

What?

No, that’s just not us. And to be perfectly honest with you, very expensive and a maintenance nightmare. So, you know, it’s like you gotta balance that out, you know, with your revenues. Like you’re spending a lot of money keeping these rides going, and they break down, and so on, and so forth. So again, not our core business, but we give just a taste of it. So people, you know, on a hot day, they go, yeah, let’s take the flume ride and cool down. Hugely popular, people love it.

Education, how important was it to you?

Personally?

Yeah. And professionally. I’m a strong advocate of education. Again, I took a different path in my educational career, but in the animal care business it’s essential that our staff be well-educated. When I took a survey of the keepers in Tampa, which was probably five or six years after I arrived, 84% of that staff had advanced degrees of some kind. And I thought, wow, that is fantastic. I was not expecting that. So bachelor’s or a master’s degree.

And they came in with those degrees. They achieved those before they were hired. I never considered us a degree snob. We would never turn anybody away who had great animal skills just because they didn’t have a degree. We didn’t have the wherewithal to give ’em funding to get their degree. And I think the zoo might be getting closer to that now but we wouldn’t turn anybody away. We would encourage ’em to go out and get their degree if they had the ability to do that. But at 84%, we were above the industry average at that time.

And I thought, wow, I’m pretty proud of that. You know, I’ll take my staff and put ’em up against the San Diego staff anytime or any other zoo. So I’m an advocate of that, but I don’t want it to detract from a person who wants to explore wildlife management. I don’t want that to be an impediment to ’em. They can do what I did and do it later, you know, whatever they want to do. But let’s not be an impediment. Now, as far as education in general, ZooTampa is incredible. It’s got a school, it’s got a city school inside its boundaries.

It’s part of Hillsborough County school system, kindergarten and first grade, had it for years. Have a list of families waiting to get their kids signed up. Now, I’ve been told I haven’t been able to verify this, that once a family has sent a child through our school, if they get pregnant again, they right away put their name on the list so their kid can be enrolled in the school when they’re ready. It’s all based on wildlife curriculum. The teachers are teachers that come out of the school system, but they work for us. And it is jam-packed with kids all the time. And it’s a great program. Education has done a fantastic job keeping that program going.

So, you know, we’re just like Hillsborough County, except you come to the zoo. And prior to COVID, we used to have what’s called wraparound care. So you could drop your child off at seven o’clock in the morning and pick ’em up by 6:00 PM. We just wanted you to pick ’em up. We didn’t want to keep ’em overnight, but that gave the parents who were working this flexibility, they didn’t have to race from work to get to their kid. And so it’s been well received. We give the employees who have their kids in the school a break on the price, on the curriculum. And so for them it’s great.

You know, they take their kid to work with ’em and pick ’em up when they go home. And we work with the employees on, I mean, some days the employee has to work late or whatever it may be. That’s a rare occasion but we’ll work with those employees just to make sure that the kids are safe. So it’s a great program and one that has been financially beneficial and hugely beneficial in the community. Now, we have kids who started there 20-some years ago, are now adults, have their own families.

And before I left, I don’t know if they’ve done it, I asked you should go out and survey those adults now and see how beneficial was Zoo School in your educational career?

Just to see. Now, you got a handful of people you could go back and check. So yeah, I mean, all zoos have an educational program. ZooTampa’s just taking it a couple steps up now with that school being in there.

Can you talk about some of your most frustrating or challenging times as director?

Yeah, I think, you know, the lean financial years were terribly frustrating because you know what you want to get done, you know what has to get done, and there’s never enough money. I could say safely now, ZooTampa’s in a much better position. I mean, the problems still are there. All zoos have the same problems, the decimal points just in a different spot. San Diego has a list of problems too, a much bigger budget. But the problems are still there. The issues still have to get resolved. You know, aging facilities, and so on, and so forth is what I’m talking about.

You wish you could just wave a wand and everything gets done at one time and it all looks perfect, but that’s not reality. So I think those are probably the most frustrating times. Those times are easing now. ZooTampa, for instance, is a successful requester for grants that they weren’t in the past and they’ve been doing some great work proving that they use that money wisely. You know, whether it be manatees, whatever it may be. They’re really benefiting from state grants and private grants now, where in the early years they weren’t, they just weren’t on the radar. Now, they’re on the radar and they’ve done some great work with that money. State’s not easy to get money from but they’ve been successful in doing that.

So I think that’s the most frustrating thing is that you know, intrinsically, what you wanna get done. You know, I’ve got lists on top of lists and some of those things are still on the list. Now, the master plan will take care of some of the exhibit issues, but in some cases, you gotta jump in ahead of time and correct it because it’s ended up being below standard. So I think that’s the single biggest frustration. Yeah, there’s always collection frustrations, you know, that species didn’t thrive like we thought it was going to, but that’s just the work of animal management. I mean, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. And if it was, you know, no problem.

It’d be like, well, why are we even doing this?

We don’t need to. But, you know, we’re taking on some pretty challenging cases and, well, I’ll say about both institutions is nobody ever said oh, we can’t do that. Both facilities I worked in all said we’re gonna put our shoulders into this thing and make sure it gets done as best we can within the resources that are available. So yeah, I think finances are probably, you know, the most challenging and frustrating part of it.

You’ve used the word relevant, in what way?

You’ve spoken about the zoo. Yeah, well, what I get concerned about is that zoos live off their laurels and you know, those days are gone. And we gotta turn the corner. I mean, whether you were the best of whatever, you had the largest whatever, that’s great. But I don’t know that that resonates with our general public today. I think they like it if they’re community people, they probably, yeah, you know, we got the biggest and we got the best.

But how does that really relate?

I mean, if we’re not doing conservation both locally and internationally, why aren’t we?

If we keep saying this species is in trouble in Africa and we’re not doing anything about it, or we haven’t even tried to do anything about it. Now, I’m not saying that we have to bankrupt the institution to get there, but if we’re not making some headway in there, we’re not relevant to what the problems are today. And we’ve also gotta be local. We’ve gotta be doing things in our backyard. So people say, oh, okay, I got it. Now, it can be as simple as recycling, you know, a lot of people proof through recycling. No, you get some great response from the general public. If you give them the information they need, help them understand what their buying power does and what their visit to the zoo will do.

Those are not just cliches. Those are things that are actionable. And we can prove that. That’s how you become relevant. I mean, it needs to be an enjoyable visit. It needs to be an enjoyable process. And you can subtly give people messages and you can subtly tell them how your zoo is doing locally in that and internationally, if you wanna go deeper and you wanna really give ’em a lot of information, those are opportunities as well. Whether you do a behind-the-scenes tour, and I still do those by the way.

And you really hit ’em hard with a lot of conservation facts. ‘Cause they know they’re gonna get that, that’s why they’re there. They wanna know more. That’s your opportunity to really hit ’em hard. And you know, whether they turn around and donate back to you or whether they continue supporting you, to me, it’s a win all the way around. The question I always ask people at the end of every tour I do, and these are business leaders, to donors, to you name it.

What did you learn today that you didn’t know when you walked in the gate?

I didn’t realize, fill in the blank. Tell me what the blank is. And the answers are incredible.

I mean, what it tells me is that we are getting to these people, now, how do you get to, you know, 2 million people like that?

That’s the really tough question to answer.

How do you get them to resonate with that on casual visit?

So the high-intensity visits you can get them to respond to that. And I mean, and again, the responses have been, some of ’em I’ve been very surprised at, but they’re listening and they want to know. And I mean, some of our more significant donors have said, this is not a quote, but you know, I made a lot of money, made a ton of money, I wanna give back now. I’m at that point in my life where I wanna start giving back. And they find the zoo that opportunity. They find that as an avenue for them to solve a couple of things on their mental checklist. And we don’t know what that is. I mean, they’ll tell us eventually, but the fact that they’re there is an indication they’re interested.

You know, if they weren’t interested in the zoo, they’re not gonna show up. I mean, I don’t care how rich you are. But if they wanna start giving back, we need to give ’em those opportunities. And we can’t sit there and stammer, and stutter, and oh my God, I don’t know. And it’s not always about building an exhibit. It may be about supporting a program. It may be just, you know, helping us out in general, you know, general operational requirements that, you know, are hard for us to get to because of a difficult year. So that community support, in a large part, comes from relevance.

Do you have docents at the zoo and how important are they?

We do, they’re not called docents now. I forget what the new term is, but very important. I mean, these people tireless, absolutely tireless. Always available to help you out with events, and large group management, and way-finding, and you name it. The program changed in ZooTampa. It was a little loose and had to tighten it up a little bit. But the people are still there, and they go through training, and they go through evaluations to make sure that they’re doing a good job and that they’re making sure they’re sending the messages that we want them to send when they are with the public.

And boy, do people relate to that?

You know, an older gentleman standing there, you know, that could be Grandpa. Grandpa’s telling me about rhinos right now, you know, whatever that is, to watch these people, and like I say, some of ’em have been there as long as I’ve been there, very good at engaging children up to adults.

Which as you know, children can be a challenge, especially in a crowd setting, you know?

And God, you just watch the kids and they’re like really leaning into every word that they say. So you’ve gotta have ’em, you’ve gotta have those people there that are willing to fill in the gaps that the paid staff can’t get to, you know, schedules don’t permit, you know, whatever it may be. Because what you want is that seamless visit for the public. You don’t want the public to understand that you got a low staffing day and we’re struggling. The public just needs to have a good, happy day when they show up. Our job is to make sure we deliver that. And sometimes you gotta use a docent to help you out with that.

Can you talk about some of the exhibits at ZooTampa you championed and the highs and lows maybe of each of them?

Yeah, actually, it’s not an exhibit as much as a facility. And that’s a brand new hospital that we opened up in 2016, which was the first really large project after I got to ZooTampa. It was seven, $9 million. There was some ancillary, other facilities that were part of that. I’m pretty proud of that facility. I mean it designed out well, worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the veterinarian. We were the planning committee with the architect and the contractor. And as I would always say, we burned up a lot of brain cells in that process.

But when that hospital opened up, and we had staff involved in certain parts of that, nobody walked in and went, what?

Why did you do that?

Why is that over there?

‘Cause they were part of the process and we made sure they were part of the process. I do have a funny story about one thing we did miss, but nonetheless, that hospital was the first, ZooTampa was the first zoo to get American Animal Hospital Association accreditation. And still today has that the AAHA accreditation, which only about 25% of domestic veterinarian hospitals have. So it’s the highest standard of medical care you can provide. And we’ve received great compliments about that even through our AZA accreditation saying, well, if you guys did that, that’s quite an accomplishment. Now, the building provided a great base for all that, but the programs also supported that. So very proud of that facility. There’s been some other smaller exhibit renovations, but now that we’re starting to get into master planning, that’s where, hopefully, my input on the planning side will benefit from.

And we’re just getting that point now. The Manatee facility, I was part of that planning and that’s under construction as we speak. $17 million facility. The whole back-of-house of manatee, all the filtration has been redone. I was part of that, state money to do that. Boy, I learned more about water quality. You talk about a steep learning curve, it’s just like, wow, water quality, when it comes to manatee, who lives in the river behind the zoo but nonetheless, we have to have certain water quality due to the federal government requirements. But just that whole engineering, I found it interesting and frustrating all at the same time because most of these engineers have never done anything like this.

I mean, they know water quality, and they know how water moves through pipes, and all that. But now we’re asking you to make sure the standard is the following water quality. And it was even driving the engineers crazy. So I don’t feel so bad about that, that I was frustrated. But I think, you know, the hospital certainly is, I would say without question, very proud of that. That whole facility, the whole complex now, it’s actually turned out to be accomplished. New commissary, so on and so forth. Commissary, never really had a real commissary.

Kind of goofy, just worked out of a building that was turned into a commissary. Now, we actually have a commissary and don’t get dinged by USDA anymore. So that and the manatee are probably the biggest projects. I think the frustration comes with, it really wasn’t a money issue as much as it was trying to squeeze everything in a very tight campus, a very challenging campus size. I was part of the Florida renovation as well. That’s not such a big project, but we renovated the oldest part of the zoo, which is Florida, and improved the panther habitat and the bear habitat. And that had some real, real challenges because of space. We wanted to give everybody bigger exhibits and trying to figure all that out on a very tight footprint was unbelievable.

But we did it, turned out well. Landscape is one of my other passions. You wouldn’t have to pay me to do landscape, but I oversee the landscape design for the zoo and I took that on because the CEO was extremely frustrated with the look of the zoo when he came in and, you know, they gotta hire a landscape architect and do all this. And I said save your money. I said I’ll take this on, give me a year. If you’re not liking what you’re seeing, then go for it. But just give me the opportunity. So it’s a passion of mine.

I’m not trained in landscape, but I’ve done many homes and I know what I like when I see it. And I spend some of my vacation time looking at botanical gardens and things like that. So I have a pretty good feel for plants. And the zoo has a great botanical team and we have turned that thing around. And so he kept me on it when I retired to still oversee that part of the zoo. So, I don’t know if I answered your question completely or not. Well, we were wandering and this is good. Yeah.

What was your management style for dealing with negative issues?

Yeah, some, well, kind of two, if it came to animal or personnel. On the animal side, there’s a tendency for us as humans to wanna over manage all animal management facets. We get crazy with it, I think. We forget the animal’s biology and you know, we jump ahead and we put our personal feelings on what that animal habitat or medical care or whatever it might be, looks like. We’re not looking at the biology. And I’ve tried very hard to put the brakes on these discussions to say, let’s go back and look at the biology and then make our decisions accordingly. Not afraid to say the animal needs to be euthanized. If I think the animal is medically compromised and is not going to live a quality life.

That’s been a struggle with some staff who want time to think about it. I said okay, you can have time, but we’re gonna make a decision here. And when it comes to those kinds of decisions, I was very firm in saying, I will have the last say. So it may not be what you want, but I will have the last say, and I will back that up with facts. Because what I don’t want is this thing to go on, and on, and on, and on. We had a sun bear who was in the renal failure. Some great days, really bad days. Keepers like, oh my god, he’s gonna die tomorrow.

Tomorrow, and he’s up on the, you know, walking around having a great time. Oh, can’t do him. Look, he’s recovered.

Vets are going, he’s not recovering, okay?

He has renal failure. So we played this out and I said, we have got to make a decision. This is not fair to this animal. Let’s make a decision. So every time we got to making a decision, the animal’s having a great day. And we stopped talking about the animal’s having a bad day. So we finally made the decision, ’cause we based it on science. There’s renal failure, it’s there, the vets can validate it.

We validated it for weeks. It’s time to put the animal down. Very emotional for the keepers. But they finally got it, and that’s when I said to ’em, I will make that final decision.

Now, am I consulting with the CEO?

Absolutely.

Am I consulting with the head veterinarian?

Absolutely.

But it’s like, let’s, A, get to the natural history of the animal, determine, is this the best way this animal’s gonna live for the rest of its life?

And B, if it’s a medical condition, is this resolvable or not?

Manatees are a classic case. The keepers can make that call now and they do. Animal comes in, being rescued, it’s like that animal’s not gonna make it because they’ve had 500 cases to look at and they know what’s going to happen. There’s no real big decision there anymore. The keepers make those decisions. That’s great. You know, that’s the way it should be. They’ll encourage, I think we need to euthanize this animal.

When it comes to personnel, I have a very short fuse when it comes to people who repeatedly make the same mistake. That’s not rocket science. Most managers would say that.

But is it a case of not being educated, not being trained properly?

Did we give everybody the tools?

Have those questions been asked and answered?

Or is it you don’t like the person and so you try to make up what the issue may be and justify disciplinary action. So when it comes to that, I ask the manager to develop a lot of questions about that and be able to answer that.

If we didn’t train the person properly, that’s our fault, right?

Person makes a mistake.

Is the manager managing this person properly?

Did we, god forbid, put the person in a bad situation where they might have hurt themselves or hurt the animal?

I don’t get much pushback on any of that because I want them to make that very logical step forward. If all those are nos, we’ve got some issues then ourselves that we haven’t trained properly, and so on, and so forth. If we’ve got yes’s all over the place and the person is still screwing up, it’s time to sit down and counsel this person. And I don’t believe in three strikes and you’re out when it comes to animal management issues, I mean, these are serious things. It’s like you got one strike and you are gonna be gone the next time. I had to fire a manager who forgot to lock a lock. Managers are supposed to be the ones that are walking around making sure the locks are locked.

Right?

And he said I screwed up. I said you got one more, we’re done. He made another mistake. He came in, he said I’m gonna be fired. I said you’re fired. That was in the paperwork anyway, to back up what I had said his manager agreed, he said we can’t have this, we cannot have you making these mistakes. And so when it comes to that, sometimes it’s like, you know, as clear as the nose on your face. It’s like you’re not gonna survive this.

We can’t have this. So for that, I go through more of a checklist. I try to dampen down the emotional side of animal management issues by looking at the biology and pushing back on staff sometimes to say, what about, what about. I had one keeper many years ago, zebra foal was born in the exhibit. They didn’t get the stallion off in time.

Stallion’s getting fired up because he wants to breed back the mare, right?

You know, that whole scenario.

And it looks like the stallion is trying to harm the foal when in essence all he does is he wants to get to the mare, right?

So this keeper is screaming at the top of her lungs across the exhibit. He’s trying to kill the foal, he’s trying to kill the foal. It’s like, no, he’s not. So he got the stallion off exhibit and I pulled the keeper aside and I said we need to talk here.

I had her manager with me and said, were you not watching what was going on here?

I said the stallion wasn’t after that foal at all. He could care less about the foal. Now, the foal was there around mom ’cause that’s what the foal does.

His after the mare, have you done any reading on this?

Do you know anything about horses?

Do you know anything?

Ah no, it just didn’t look right. I said no, it didn’t look right at all. It looked ugly, but slow the tape down. Let’s go back and look at it, you know, and see what was going on. We didn’t fire her over that.

But I said to her manager, I said you need to watch her because she’s going down a path that on another animal evaluation, can you trust her accuracy?

If she doesn’t know her animal, doesn’t know the biology, isn’t looking at this logically. I’m upset about this too. What I’m really upset about is the fact that the staff missed this foal and the fact that the stallion was still on exhibit, they should have had that stallion off exhibit. That’s where my anger is. If you want some anger in this situation, and the manager knew that, they blew it. They didn’t get the stallion off in time.

How important was professional growth for your staff?

Very, very important. I can’t underline it enough. And I see people attempting to make shortcuts through that.

Oh, I’ve been here two years, you know, I know that, it’s like, no, what do those two years consist of?

That professional growth, learn your craft, learn your animals, do reading. Okay, I know everybody wants to jump on a computer now. Okay, that’s fine. I learn old school through books. But everybody wants to jump on a computer. Okay, great. Just use reliable sources is what I’m telling ’em. Don’t go to any site to find out X, Y, Z.

So that professional growth, if they don’t have the means to get a degree or some professional training, but they’re interested, and they’re doing reading, and so on, and so forth, I couldn’t ask for more. That’s fantastic. I wanna see the results of that. I wanna see them execute that. I wanna see them displaying that in their daily activities. I’d like to encourage people to be pushed or not be afraid to be pushed like I was. And I think that’s what drives me into this area. I mean, whether it be Dr. Dolan or even my managers in San Diego, I was pushed, you know, more, and more, and more, and more, and more.

And it gave you that yearning to wanna make sure that you were at the top of your game. You never wanted to be embarrassed that you didn’t know your animals, and that you didn’t understand their biology, and you didn’t know their scientific name, and you didn’t know where they came from. All of that stuff. All that is under, my world is that professional bubble that you’ve gotta be the best you can be at what you’re doing. And that was instilled by Dr. Dolan. And he said, you know, I’ve said it before, you know, learn what you do. Don’t just sit back and hope it comes to you. You’re gonna have to go out and get it.

And especially at the wild animal park, when we were doing management that had never been done before. I mean mixed herds of a dozen species in a hundred acres. Nobody had ever done that before. Boy, did we learn fast. And you talk about professional growth, whew. You learned that you might have pressed that envelope a little bit too much. We learned a lot of stuff and set the standard for how you manage mixed exhibits today in many cases. And so that, I mean, to me, vital, vital to the animal management field.

How involved were you in the day-to-day activities as director hands-on when you became the director?

And did you make rounds and is making rounds important?

Yeah, I didn’t do hardly any hands-on, I mean, if there was an operation going, I might jump in and help out just because I was curious. Make rounds every day. Go different directions, different routes at different times. Not trying to catch anybody but just wanna see the zoo and the collection at different points. One thing I had to be careful of was not judging something by just walking past it for a few minutes. You know, I didn’t know what happened in the previous three hours and I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the next three hours. So make sure that I wasn’t, you know, overly critical. But asking questions.

The staff knew that. I had a couple managers say, you know, I’m tired of getting your emails ’cause you’re, you know, this, this. I said you know what I expect, you know what I’m gonna be looking for. Just get ahead of me and you won’t have to worry about getting those emails. And they go, okay, okay, okay, okay. So there is a funny story, I’ll tell it on myself. Some marabou storks at ZooTampa, we set up a nesting platform for ’em on exhibit. We had two pairs.

I almost made the mistake of breaking up the pair because nobody was breeding. But all of a sudden one of the pairs started to breed. And you know how they like sticks and whatever on their nests. Well, I said to the staff put sticks on the nest. Okay. Make sure you get that done pretty quick. Okay. So I go out there the next day, there’s no sticks on the nest, okay.

Went to the manager.

I said did they get the message about sticks?

Yeah, they should have put ’em on there. I said well, there’s no sticks on the nest now. So day three, there’s still no sticks on the nest. So I said okay. I called on the radio and I said can you meet me, you know, behind-the-scenes I need to talk to you.

Okay, why aren’t there sticks on the nest?

And the manager said we’ve put sticks out there three times and they’ve thrown ’em off. Okay, all right, that makes sense, now, tell me how you’re gonna resolve that. So the next, they said we’ll have it resolved by tomorrow. I said okay, went out tomorrow, all kinds of sticks on the nest and it looks fantastic. And I said thank you for doing that. They said well, you know, what we did to shut you up, we zip tied the damned sticks down on the wire on the bottom of the nest so they couldn’t get them off. I said well, good, whatever it took, I’m glad you did it. And you know, they went on and laid their eggs and raised, but you know, it was my impatience, you know, it was kind of driving ’em crazy.

They were doing what I asked them to do. But it’s every time I went by and I went by at different times, there’s no sticks on the nest. Anyway, now today, that pair is legendary, they produce so many chicks, I can’t even keep track of it anymore. So sometimes my impatience has to be checked a little bit on that. But, so yes, I do rounds, did rounds religiously. Talked to staff. During COVID, we furloughed most of the staff. There was just a core group of people at the zoo and I was one of ’em, come in every morning for four hours picking up elephant and rhino poop and working alongside the other keepers that were there.

And they loved it, absolutely loved it. And I tell you, to be honest with you, I enjoyed it too. You know, get really tired, lost some weight, was fantastic. Enjoyed every bit of it. And then, you know, I’d have to stay back and we’d have management meetings or whatever with the CEO and did that for 10 weeks. But still to this day, I have keepers come up to me and go, man, that was so cool. You can come back and do this anytime. And I said well, I’m getting a little bit older now, but I said yeah, I would be happy to be shoveling Rhino poo anytime You’ve talked about master planning, that you enjoy it.

What would you say is the shelf-life of a master plan?

Mm, I think realistically, three to five years in today’s world, I think there’s too many variables that change and to have something current that you’re aware of public needs and perceptions. I think that, you know, five years, you need to be revisiting your plan. It depends on the exhibit, certainly, and some of the public amenities. But yeah, anything past that. And I think you haven’t given it enough energy. You gotta make sure. I’m a real advocate of being involved in master planning. And while it’s great to have companies come in and help you with that, because you do need help.

None of us are architects. You can’t turn it over to them. You’ve gotta be part of it. When I hear my colleagues complaining about, oh, that didn’t turn out the way I wanted it because, that’s because you were absent, you’re an absentee owner, you gotta be involved, you gotta invite yourself, you gotta get in the head of the architect, the designers, whatever it is to make sure you’re part of it. And so, yeah, I mean the zoo right now is starting to ramp up for its next series of master plan projects. Now, that Manatees is funded and underway and whether that’s Africa or South America, don’t really know at this point. There’s the skeleton of all of that, but it needs a re-look. And you know, things have changed and you can’t just set out and say, oh, we did that back in, you know, 2000, looks pretty good to me, let’s go forward.

It’s like, no, you know?

If anything, your cost will drive you to re-looking at some of these plans.

What would you say is the zoo’s responsibility to animal welfare?

And what does this mean?

Yeah. You know, welfare can be a slippery slope. Everybody has a different opinion of what welfare is. And some of that’s driven by animal rights community. Who thinks that welfare is in a different slot than what the conservative zoo community thinks. Without question, we have to be providing absolutely the best welfare we can. And if we can’t, it’s time to move that species out. Stop doing what you’re doing.

Don’t kid yourself. Had to make tough decisions in ZooTampa, like that species is gonna be, we’re taking it outta the collection ’cause we can’t do it well.

And yes, is it a money related thing?

It is, but the money’s not there.

Let’s be honest, okay?

We can sit here and hold our breath, but tomorrow morning those animals wake up in a substandard environment. You know, they don’t have two years to wait for the money to make that better. So sometimes you’ve gotta make some tough decisions. And it’s been an interesting dialogue with our board over some of those decisions. So welfare without question, but welfare that has been evaluated by many individuals who have the knowledge, not just one person’s vision of welfare. And by that I mean your veterinarian needs to be involved in it. Your head animal person needs to be involved with it, your keepers need to be involved with it, to hone that. Some of the welfare plans we’ve implemented in ZooTampa have had to be redone because it just didn’t work.

You know, it’s just not providing the animal with the welfare that we thought it was going to. And you need to be able to, you know, look at those, make adjustments, and move forward, that you’re always looking at that. So they’ve developed, and I think this is now pretty much a standard requirement, a spreadsheet of animals with welfare issues and the evaluation and scoring on all that. And I know in discussions that I had when I was an active employee at ZooTampa, had to go back and re-look at some of these scorings, they weren’t accurate, it wasn’t delivering what we want. But never took an animal off the list just because the score wasn’t right, we looked at that and reevaluated it. So it really caused staff to kind of sit back a little bit and go, wait a minute, you know, maybe this isn’t the best. I mean there’s a screech owl who due to medical limitations, nobody’s fault, had a hard time perching.

Well, it’s kind of vital for an owl, right?

Even though they’re little guys. So they provided some alternative methods for the animal to get up off the ground. Still wasn’t right. You know, still not right.

Is that the quality of life we want that animal to have?

Now, the animal ended up having a secondary medical issue and it had to be euthanized eventually. But even if it didn’t, there still needs to be some heavy lifting done to determine what you can do better. Because it’s just, I guess the way I look at it, if you gotta continue to make excuses why you have an animal in that situation, you’re only kidding yourself. It’s time to stop the presses, pull back and ask the tough questions. The one example of eliminating species was Grevy’s zebra, we were having a high mortality in foals, all kinds of issues. There wasn’t one single issue, but nonetheless, mortality was much higher than would be acceptable. And even with all the variables, okay, backfired motorcycle, lightning strike, you know, foal ran into the fence for whatever reason in the middle of the night. There’s something wrong there.

There’s something wrong in the exhibit. There’s something missing. And we weren’t barning those animals at night, which we probably should have. So one of the results was to redo the exhibit, create a barn and do all that. It wasn’t in the cards. So, you know, as I told the board when I made, you know, announced that decision, which we reached on the animal side collectively without much angst. I said the easy part of my job is to stand up here and tell you all the good things we do. That’s the easy part.

Tough part’s when I gotta tell you one of these stories. And I told ’em, we’re gonna eliminate the species from the collection because we don’t have the proper facilities and there’s nothing in the cards that will say that we are gonna have this in the foreseeable future.

Oh, wait a minute, why can’t we get the money to do this?

Why can’t we?

Why can’t we, why can’t we?

And the CEO jumped in and said, then all these other priorities change. The priorities that you all have sitting in front of you, that we all agreed are important. Those priorities have to be stopped to make room for this purchase. You know, silence, absolute silence in the room. And I don’t know if it was the board chair, or the vice chair who said you’re right, this is a very tough decision, but it’s the right decision. I said we’ll bring them back sometime. Don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world.

Grevy’s zebras will be back at ZooTampa. But just not in the foreseeable future. And you know, again, easy to stop, hey, we had this born, we had that born, we had. But when you gotta do that because the facilities are substandard and the welfare is the problem. And we had the stats, we had the stats indicating what acceptable mortality will be in foals, and so on, and so forth. And we weren’t cutting it, we weren’t even close, and we were just kidding ourselves. Now, until we sat down and said let’s look at this. You didn’t string all that together, once you strung it all together and looked at it on a graph, it was like, this is pretty bad.

We can’t justify this anymore. Just can’t. ZooTampa sits in an area where there are natural disasters, hurricanes.

How did you prepare for this?

And what does a zoo have to think about if they’re in an area as you were in San Diego with fire, what does a zoo have to think about in preparation for natural disasters?

The short answer is everything. We have about an inch and a half thick, severe weather protocol and policy that includes every department in it. And what they’re supposed to be doing from office staff, HR, and animal care. Obviously, animal care is a big part of it. So there’s a very detailed plan as to where the animals will be housed, depending on whether it’s a category one, that’s one level, then two, three or four is obviously another level and five is off the charts. And all of those have their challenges.

But the plan goes as deep as from food service, to HR, and where are the payroll checks going to be?

And we had a hurricane hit on a Friday. People don’t want to hear that they’re not gonna get paid. Now, yes, most all checks are done electronically, but there’s a handful of people that still get a paper check.

Where are those checks gonna be on that Friday?

And HR did a great job putting the policy together and making sure it happened.

Where are all the data records gonna be?

They’re stored offsite automatically.

What about the offsite facility?

Is it in the eye of hurricane?

What’s the backup plan for that?

So IT has to come up with a plan that secures all that, whether it be in the Cloud or whatever.

What about the computers on your desk?

Everybody’s gotta put plastic bags around them. Zip-tie ’em, making sure they’re all ready to go.

Never thought about that, right?

Come from San Diego.

What do you mean, put a plastic bag around my monitor?

Yeah, yeah. ‘Cause if the ceiling collapses, hopefully, we save the monitor.

Where does staff go?

Who stays on-site?

Who’s the ride-out team?

So the ride-out team is actually developed in January of the year. Not when hurricane season comes, which starts in June. In January. And short of having brain surgery, you will be on the ride-out team. You can’t pull off saying, oh, I’ve got a vacation, I’m going to the Alps. It’s like, no, you’re on the ride-out team ’cause you said you were gonna be on the ride-out team. So that’s all predetermined. There are 15 people on the ride-out team.

There are three maintenance guys, 10 animal care, at least one veterinarian maybe two, and then an operations person for pumps, and filters, and things like that. That team is vital to the entire situation. They stay on-site and ride it out. No one else is allowed on-site. Not even myself until we get the all-clear sign ’cause they have to go and check everything at the zoo, make sure no animals got out and God forbid, some dangerous animal gets out that it’s been sequestered, and so on, and so forth. All the animals are sequestered. But then you get to the aviaries and places like that where you got a free flight cage with 500 birds in it, what you gonna do. Well, you collect up as many birds as you can.

You’re never gonna get them all. And we know that. But the good news with hurricanes, you get several days to plan that. They don’t just show up like an earthquake. So you’ve got time to plan. The frustrating part about hurricanes is they can turn. The first one I went through in Tampa, we’re all ready, man. We are absolutely buttoned down and ready to go.

This is gonna be a category two. And it took a hard right-hand turn south of Tampa, and went off, and drove Brevard and everybody else, they flooded them out. We had a beautiful, sunny, gorgeous day. Nothing going on in Tampa. Wish we were open and we’re closed and we had all these animals sequestered, but we were ready. You’ve got material issues like back-of-house that’s gotta be buttoned up. You don’t want a two-by-four flying down the service road at 70 miles an hour. So all of that works into the plan.

Every year the plan is reviewed to make sure that it’s still current and every department head is supposed to read that and make sure their sections are accurate. All employees are sent home except the ride-out team and they’re not to come back in until all-clear is given. We accept no support from outside the community to come in to help us clean. I think I talked about that off-camera before. It’s like, no, we want the professionals in because we’ve got a lot going on in a very small environment. So we’d been through one and we’d been through a category, well, it was a two, it went down to a one as it went over Tampa. And oh my gosh, the amount of debris, took us two days to clean up the zoo just so we could get it open for the public. So then after the hurricane passes, you assess your damage, you assess what’s going on, and then you want to get open as quickly as you can to get, obviously, you’ve lost a lot of revenue.

But you want people to have someplace to go. Now, schools are typically closed for several days after.

So parents are like, I want my kids to do something, can’t you guys open up?

It’s like, well, we’re not ready yet. So we have to make sure the site is safe. So everything, I mean, the plan is very extensive to the point where we use our lodge is where all crated animals will go. ‘Cause it’s, I think, secure up to 150 miles an hour winds, but not gonna be a category five proof. But at least we get, you know, some benefit. The hospital is a secondary facility for housing ’cause it has a roof that can handle 200 miles an hour. So as we build, this is the key, as we build, we build for a hurricane. So the days of wooden structures as holding areas, they’re gone.

They’re blocked buildings now, so that they can support the overall plan. Water, we have water stored. Generators, we have all the generators are checked and ready to go in January and we check ’em frequently, but we’re not out buying generators in June.

‘Cause guess what?

Everybody else in Central Florida is out buying generators in June. Our food for the animals, our food supplier with a call within four hours will have two trailers on-site because we know no one else will care about zoo food at that point. So they’ll have a freezer and a dry trailer, that plus what we have on-site will give us three weeks worth of food. So we could go technically three weeks without getting food deliveries. So all of that is all planned out. Gasoline stores are checked to make sure that they’re all ready to go. ‘Cause again, the ride-out team might have to fire off some generators to get things going.

So all of that has been well-practiced and well-documented now to the point where each year it’s just, okay, is this still accurate?

Still good. And thank God we’ve only had to practice it one time in my time there.

Can you speak to the mission of a zoo?

You kind of talked about the support of local-global conservation activities, telling stories to educate your guests, inspire guests to take action, can you put a little meat on the bone?

Sure. Yeah. I think the mission can’t be just lip service. It’s got to be something you can show that you’re doing and not in a, I mean, in a big way. You gotta live, eat, and breathe this thing.

Now, do you want every employee to understand your mission statement and be able to recite it?

Yes, that would be wonderful. But for me, more importantly, are they practicing it, and they’ve got to be practicing it or it’s just white noise in my book. You know, so you say you want to inspire people to conserve wildlife through X, Y, Z, you gotta deliver that and you gotta prove that you can deliver it. And I think sometimes that’s a challenge.

Sometimes you’ve got to really sit back and say, okay, how does this fit with our mission?

You know, we put another roller coaster in.

Is that really matching our mission?

It may not be.

So how do we balance that out?

What are we gonna do to balance that out?

Let’s just say we wanna do another rollercoaster of some kind ’cause we just can’t live without it, right?

And all the finances look wonderful, and we got the space, and why wouldn’t we?

Zip line I think was a challenge that we had. That’s like, wow, sure we do zip line, other zoos do zip lines. But then we started looking at all the issues around zip lines and while it didn’t attack the mission, it certainly compromised us a little bit on some of our mission stances. And so we backed off of it, not just because of that, but the collective decision was this is not ZooTampa. It might be somebody else.

And gotta love ’em if they wanna do it, it’s just not us, okay?

So sometimes it’s that hard look and this is where your leadership team needs to come in and really not be afraid to voice their opinion in a meeting about whether this item or our mission is being met by whatever challenges we have. And sometimes it’s interesting where the support or the dissent might come from, you know, and people always amaze me at how they process information.

So for me, putting meat on the bones is like, if you said Larry, how does this meet the mission?

I should be able to tell you without faltering one bit. And if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t, you know, and we can’t have too many, we’re not meeting our missions issues without us really having some problems. That goes for any zoo. I think the shorter the mission, the better, as far as the number of words. You have to be able to point to it and say, yes, we are doing this. And you don’t want people to go, this mission just doesn’t, you know, the sentence doesn’t end.

Where does all this end?

What is the, you know, the meat on the bones, so to speak. So manatees is a classic. I mean it meets all the mission, check all the boxes off. It meets it perfectly.

You know, we get into some other species, you know, why do we have bears?

Is that meeting the mission?

Well, okay, iconic species in Florida, but actually, it does meet our mission because we assist in using Florida Fish and Game and U.S. Fish and Wildlife in some senses in helping them discern how a bear was found dead. We’ll do the post, we’ll intercede, no cost to anybody. It’s just part of us doing business in Florida.

Where do we stand legislatively on a new bear-hunting policy?

Now, we gotta be a little bit careful about that, but since we’re so strong in bear management, they’ll come to us and say, what’s your feeling on this?

You know, and we’ll say without any hesitation where we fit on bear management, culling, so on, and so forth in state. And that’s because our mission is strong and we can prove it through our actions.

It isn’t just a one-off like, oh, bears, yeah, well, who cares?

No, no. Bears are important in Florida.

And yes, we’ve got a lot of issues in Florida with bears and interaction with humans and how does that fit?

And we display bears. These are either rescue bears or rehab bears. They’re not bears that we went out in the wild and brought in. These are bears that have been dumpster bears as they call ’em or whatever it is. And so we’re supporting it that way. You know, we’re not out acquiring them just to have them on display. Those animals, well, they were in trouble, it served a purpose by bringing them in here.

What made you a good director?

Good question. I think my experience in the business in San Diego really helped me understand the industry and understand, you know, how it runs. And with that comes the ability to not be afraid of challenges that come forward. ‘Cause every day you’re gonna have something to deal with, whether, you know, it be something with the collection or with the organization or whatever it may be. And I use the term sometimes not being afraid, meaning, okay, you’re the director, you gotta stand back, you gotta assess the situation, and you gotta come up with a plan. You can’t run in the closet and scream, that’s not what you do. Or wring your hands and not do anything. You’ve gotta have a plan.

So I think my experience in San Diego helped me understand the importance of that. And the challenges that I’ve had throughout my career, mostly based around collection, required you to have a steady hand at the throttle and not get thrown off course regardless of what the issue may be. Whether that be the death of a keeper or the death of a significant animal, or threats to the organization or whatever it may be. So just the ability to stay steady. Someone told me one time, he said, if there was a fire in the building and I was in the building, I’d want you to tell me, you to be the guy to tell me what to do. ‘Cause I don’t get emotionally attached to that situation. It’s like, get outta the building. We’ll talk about this later but get out the building.

There’s no time to sit here, and wring your hands, and worry about it. And I took that as a compliment, you know, that yeah, there’s some things you’re faced with, you can meltdown later but you know, at the time you’ve gotta manage it. So that’s kind of built into my DNA, I’m not the warm and fuzzy guy when it comes to an emergency.

It’s like, where are we, what do we gotta, how do we have to resolve this?

What skillset does a zoo director need today as compared to when you started?

You know, I look back at Dr. Schroeder who had a lot of variety in his day, back in the late sixties, seventies. I mean, he had to worry about a lot of different things. And then it got very specialized. You know, we have specialists for this and specialists for that. You know, the director used to do the budgets and do everything. And now you have a CFO. Fair enough, very complicated. I think it’s going back to directors today, need to have the mental acuity to be flexible regardless of what their background is.

If they’re strong in animal or strong in marketing or strong in PR, that’s all great, you go back to that, you know, when things settle down. But you’ve gotta have the ability to be able to cast back and forth across today’s environment to see what’s going on and how you’re gonna manage it. You can’t always rely on your specialist to be the one to make that decision. You can rely on them to give you more information and to go deep with you.

But the director needs to be able to steer that ship and say, okay, Mark, I know you’re the animal person and I need an answer on this particular issue with animal welfare, that the press is knocking our door down for, what is your opinion?

But as the director, you need to be directing Mark to do that and to make sure that you then have checked other sources so that when your statement comes out from you as the director, you’ve done your homework. And you can stand behind that and substantiate it because you have the resources to back you up. So I think you’ve gotta even be more acutely aware of all of the different things that are affecting our industry today. And like I say, if you’re a specialist, that’s fine, but you gotta set that aside when the crisis comes up.

When you say directed, do you feel, in your opinion, is it better to have an animal person at the helm making directions or a business person at the helm making directions?

Yeah, it’s a very good question. I will always fall to the animal side because that’s what I think, that’s what zoos are. It’s about animals. And not saying the business people aren’t important but that’s a profession that to me, the skillset comes from a different realm, I guess, for lack of a better word. One that can be replicated and repeated easily and often. Now, a business person might argue that with me at this point, but the animal side has some real important intrinsic issues that only experience is gonna bring to the table. So, you know, whether it be a manatee issue, whether it be an elephant issue or a primate issue, without some scientific background to work through those issues, I think it just makes it harder on the person who’s not the animal person. It doesn’t make it impossible, just makes it very hard because whether it be the interview natural response isn’t there because they’ve never experienced it.

Unlike just pointing to a spreadsheet saying, you know, this is how we got to this number.

Okay?

Or this is our business return on investment. You know, those are hardcore numbers that come out of a database. You got some real unknowns in the animal business that you’ve gotta be able to work through and be able to explain. Nothing is ever a hundred percent in the animal business, never. And so as the director, you gotta have a little bit of that ability to be able to weave through that. Like I say, not impossible, just harder for those people to do.

What do you think a small or a medium-sized municipal zoo today, what they have to do today to be involved in wildlife conservation, either nationally or internationally?

Yeah. They have got to set forward with their bosses, the priorities budgetarily to make sure that they are in those fields. They can’t ignore it and say, oh, you know, we’re a municipal zoo, we don’t have the money to do that. The public’s not gonna buy that. The director of those facilities has to make sure that their goals and objectives, that their plan or business plan for the organization includes conservation, locally or internationally. Now, again, you’re not gonna be, you know, going to Asia and rescuing this or going to Africa and doing that necessarily. You might be supporting it through financial means but at least you’re there and at least you’re doing something. Those programs will build over time.

You know, to me it’s about street credibility in conservation. You don’t just waltz into Africa and say, hey, we’re here to save everybody. And we got a big, fat check and we’re gonna write it for you, and here we go. Or, I’ve got three scientists who will help you follow. If you’ve never been in and you’ve never done, you’re not gonna get much of a reception when it comes to that.

Now, will they turn your money away?

Probably not, but street credibility, I think is extremely important. You have to build that over time. And so if the institution starts off small because it can’t do anything else but, and you build up that credibility, then it only gets better through time.

Considering the financial resources available to many small and medium-sized zoos, what should be the focus of their collection?

Yeah, I think, yeah, again, I always look for uniqueness and that can be locally or nationally or internationally, but part of our job is to get people to come through our gates, right?

That’s the business side. We can’t exist without them. People aren’t gonna do it just naturally. They’re not gonna come in. Oh yeah, woke up this morning, decided to go to the zoo. Well, maybe not, unless you had somebody in town. So why would someone visiting Tampa from Montana or Indianapolis or wherever, whatever, you just pick a city.

Why would you want to come to ZooTampa?

Because A, I won’t see Okapi in any other place unless I go, I mean, I’ll see ’em in other zoos, but they’ve got Okapi, I want to go see Okapi. They’ve got shoebill.

Some directors, zoos in many cases today, are afraid to confront animal welfare rights groups that are anti-zoo, can we have your thoughts on the best way to deal with these groups?

Right. I learned this from San Diego ’cause, obviously, San Diego was in the crosshairs of animal rights a lot being in Southern California. And the strategy that they used, which turned out to be pretty successful, was bringing the parties to the table, inviting them to the zoo for discussion. Both the radicals, moderates, and more passive groups. And airing their issues. Not in a public setting, but in a, you know, closed-door setting. Having a good positive dialogue with ’em, giving the facts out, not the sound bites that ends up on the five o’clock news. And it turned out that, other than the radical faction, most of ’em said okay, that’s a logical approach.

We can accept that. Well, okay, that’s great because that’s what we can do. We can’t do much more. The radicals always wanted you to do more than you could financially even begin to hope for, or wanted to close you down, one of the two. And I’m saying, well, that’s not gonna happen. But that’s the San Diego gravitas. They could talk like that and they could do that. But it was sincere.

I mean, you know, I was in the room, Dr. Dolan was in the room, we had veterinarian in the room, the director was there. I mean, it was a very healthy discussion, sometimes, you know, irritating, but nonetheless, a healthy discussion. And I learned that. So coming to Tampa, it’s not the same. We’re a hunting, fishing community and you don’t have that kind of vocal groups. They’re out there. They just take a different kind of tact on you, typically, attack you in the newspaper or something like that.

So to me, it does not get much resignation in the community because again, it’s a hunting community, right?

It doesn’t mean we have to ignore them though. We have to still pay attention to them. So we base our responses on facts. We say, okay, we can be better at that, so on, and so forth. We don’t kowtow it to them, though. We’re very factual with them. And that’s proven to be very successful. And the track record has shown that, yeah, they’ve done some demonstrations, but because of private property, public property issues, they can only get so close to the zoo.

So it has less impact than it did in San Diego when it comes to the physical presence of them. But, you know, again, there are still groups out there that don’t want zoos. We end up on the worst elephant habitat list every few years and then fall off of it. But we haven’t changed anything. We have had some interesting dialogue with local leaders who don’t like zoos. And by taking them on a tour and talking to the facts, they go, well, you’ve given me pause to think and I still need to process this, but thank you for your time. That’s all we can ask for. So, you know, the approach of just hitting it head-on, professionally, not emotionally has worked quite well.

Some directors have said there are too few good curators in the community.

Do you think this is a problem?

And how should curators be trained today to do what you feel should be expected of it?

I think it’s a hundred percent accurate. And I think my generation did not do their job. We did not mentor enough curators in the industry. And so there’s a void now, and there’s people that are title curators that I don’t know, in my estimation, if they really understand what their job is. It’s not the end of the world but it’s not a trend I’m happy with at all. And I call the majority of today’s curators, keyboard curators. All they know is what they see on that computer screen. And some of ’em don’t even have the practical experience.

I think that’s extremely important.

If you’re gonna be a curator and you’re going to be directing keepers and other staff to take care of an animal, if you haven’t taken care of it, how can you possibly do that with any kind of accuracy or reliability?

And I’ll cite a story about that in a minute here. And I think that the industry, for some reason, this has happened over time. And there’s less and less curators that know their craft well. I mean, they just don’t, they just happen to be the head of the department, they’re called a curator. But if we put them to the test, I think we would be shocked at the lack of knowledge. The thing about knowing your species, when I got to ZooTampa, they had Indian rhinos, had a pair of Indian rhinos, but they weren’t together. They had just received the male or the female, I can’t remember. They said well, we gotta put ’em together.

And the staff shuddered with fear at putting ’em together. All kinds of cues. The exhibit’s too small, this is not right, that’s not right. The exhibit’s not the issue. And we’ll look at the perimeter and we’ll fortify that, but we’re gonna put ’em together because that’s what we do here. You know, we don’t exhibit single species. You know, we’re trying to breed species that need help. And Indian rhinos is one.

So a long story short, I said, we’re gonna put ’em together when the female comes into heat. And the staff’s like, we’ve never done this before. I said okay, I’ll be there with you. We’ll do it. Put ’em together. Four hours later, had mounting and breeding and said well, let’s wait 16 months and see what happens. You know, we should have a baby. And they were like, oh my God, you know, this was so interesting and scary all at the same time.

I said yeah, it is a scary thing. These are big animals, you know, and they put up quite a ruckus. Now, we also closed off that portion of the zoo when we were doing it. It happened at the end of the day. So that was some advantage to us. But, you know, just in case, we didn’t want the public seeing this. ‘Cause it’s pretty violent, it can be pretty violent. Anyway, baby produced, off we go.

By the way, that female’s still at the zoo today. Second time this happened, said to the staff, okay, ready to breed ’em again. Well, not as nervous as I was before, but I’m a little nervous. I said okay, I’ll tell you what, next time she comes into heat, I’ll be here. Not gonna come down there, but I’ll be here. You know what to do. And the manager was pretty good. Put ’em together, another breeding.

Today, Mark, it’s like, hey, Larry. Yeah. Oh, we forgot to tell you, they bred three days ago. So on autopilot, they know what to do. And it was just holding that hand, getting through that. But they intrinsically knew what to do. They just didn’t know how to get the job done.

And, you know, one of ’em said to me, well, how did you learn this?

And I said well, I learned it at the wild animal park from a guy who knew a hell of a lot more about Indian rhinos than I did. And we were in 40 acres where we had as much room as you could possibly want, but no control. We had absolutely no control. And, you know, that’s how you learn these things. And so I think today’s curators, some of ’em don’t even have that rudimentary experience with their own animals, which I think makes it terribly difficult on them. And so I don’t know that they’re doing the best job, now, not all of them, but I just think it’s the majority right now. We gotta turn this around. This is not good for the industry.

Long-term, this is not going to be good. Because when it comes to permits or imports or exports, whatever, they’re fearful of this. I mean, I can remember when I was still active, I said if you wanna learn how to do this, call me. See me at a conference, I’ll be happy. I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve done many of these and I can help you with this to get over your fear. Because it is fear. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be doing this. And collections are now starting to suffer in my estimation.

‘Cause we haven’t recruited enough species, new genetic material, whether that be from Europe or whether that be from the wild, whatever it may be. And we’re not on the radar anymore. It’s just not happening. I don’t think there’s been a mammal import, I might be off a few years, but probably in 20 years there hasn’t been a hoofstock import in that period of time. That’s not good. That’s just not good.

What changes have you seen during your years in the zoo field regarding visitor attitudes at the national level?

Yeah, I think, again, it’s their desire to A, to wanna know more about how we do what we do, but also to have that, as I was talking about earlier, that ability to get closer to some of these animals, but in a respectful way. I think that’s what’s changed. I mean, the days of people going on weekends to the zoo with the family to look at animals and walking from one exhibit to the other, they want more now. They just want more, you can just sense it. And very good questions, by the way. I mean, people have really, really good questions when you’re out and about walking around doing my rounds, people have some really good questions. So there’s a need for us to be able to answer that. And as I said earlier, well, we can get a handful of them at a time.

How do you get to 2 million people a year that come through your gate with that kind of intensity?

And it’s very difficult. Don’t have an answer for that. But we have seen a shift. And whether it’s driven by, you know, your cell phones, and all the games that are played, and they want all of this action, and they wanna be part of it. I think that plays into it as well. I think there was a time when people were getting away from nature. I think people want to get back to nature now and they appreciate zoos for that ability, giving them that ability. I think people are tired of computers and cell phones and they wanna break from all of it.

And we can fill that niche, as long as we’re giving ’em a quality experience. And so those are the shifts I’ve seen. We kind of went from a nature base away from it, now, kind of back to that and then that ability to be more engaged in what happens at the zoo than they were before.

Okay, what issues caused you the most concern during your career?

And how do you see the future regarding these concerns?

Yeah, that’s a big question. I think, again, my concern settles on the fact that I’ve strong belief that our collections are not gonna sustain genetically where they need to be because we haven’t been recruiting enough new genetic material. I’m not saying the SSPs are doing a bad job. I think many of ’em are doing a great job.

But I think there’s been so much dial-down in not importing, not exporting, not doing this, not doing that because maybe it’s politically difficult or maybe it would, you know, raise the ire of someone because why are you importing these animals?

And that’s all manageable and can all be answered without any difficulty. But the tendency has been to stay away from it. If I don’t have to deal with it, then I don’t have to worry about it. So I see us in kind of a stalled mode right now. I don’t think the pandemic helped but I’m not gonna blame the pandemic for it. I think it just stalled us out even further. So it’s like a gas engine, it’s like stalled for oxygen right now. It can’t get going.

So everybody seems to be in the same kind of status quo is fine and status quo cannot be fine in our business when it comes to animal management. It’s a very dynamic process. It needs input, it needs change. And I’m not seeing the leadership to get us there. I’m just seeing it kind of like neutral. Nothing’s happening.

So what major directions do you think zoos should be taking for their future?

I think we gotta pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and say, hey, you know, we gotta get back to some of our roots here. We gotta get back to the days of making sure we have good robust collections.

Why are we here if we’re not doing it?

I mean, you’re gonna sit here and store animals. Is that what we’re, you know, that’s certainly not why I got in the business anyway. We’re not sitting here to store animals. I think there was this whole thing about some people going to single-sex species so they don’t have to worry about breeding offspring and what to do with them. It’s a horrible decision. Now, you might want to use that selectively, but not as your major goal and objective for a collection. So we gotta pick ourselves up and we’ve gotta get some leadership in place, whether that be from the director side, pushing initiatives forward that, you know, will get our collections back to what they, maybe not what they used to be, but better than they are now. But that comes back to their knowledge and ability to assess that is an important thing.

Not the fact that we sold X amount of widgets today. Good day. Well, that’s important too. The widgets are important but what’s also important is your animals, ’cause that’s why people are coming. And I got into this wonderful discussion with the food service guy in San Diego about people do not come here to eat your food.

Well, what do you mean, we sell a lot of food?

I know you do. That’s ’cause we got a lot of people coming through the gate. I’m not saying it’s bad food but they did not park in the parking lot, pay whatever they paid to walk in to go buy a hamburger.

Okay?

They didn’t do that ’cause they can do it at McDonald’s or Burger King or anything else, okay?

Oh, I disagree with you. I said well, you can disagree all you want, but they came here to see animals for crying out loud. And so that’s still important. People misinterpret when I say that, that that’s not important. It’s vitally important. But don’t forget, you’ve gotta have animals out there and you gotta have good exhibitry, which we do, by the way. The exhibits that are being built, fantastic. I think they’re excellent.

But then what’s going in ’em, you know, if you’re not putting things in ’em that people are going, whoa, that’s very cool or has a story to tell, then what’s the point about building a $10 million exhibit?

You don’t have to, you can build something a lot cheaper. So I think the exhibitry side has been fantastic. I mean, technology, and the imagination, and all the things are great.

What the heck is in the exhibit?

You know, it’s like, it’s a shoe store.

What are the shoes like that you’re selling in the shoe store?

You might have the greatest store in the world.

Doesn’t make you a difference ’cause they aren’t buying your shoes, you know?

So you moving forward on that, education you talked about, is education important in boosting the image of the zoo among the public, in the face, maybe of people who don’t like zoos?

You mean educating the public?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, again, these, we call ’em signature experiences in ZooTampa, other zoos call ’em different things. Getting the people to understand what really goes on is really important for us. I mean that’s a big, to me, it’s a big part of our messaging. It can’t just be signs anymore. Signs are great. Signs are giving you the basic information, as clever as we are with our graphics, that’s all wonderful.

But you take that person and bring ’em behind-the-scenes and show ’em something up close or give ’em an opportunity to see how an animal’s managed, it’s off the charts. They’re absolutely, I think you’ve got ’em for life at that point. If you can get ’em into that experience, you got ’em. So it’s important for us to have good quality, respectful to the animal, experiences behind-the-scenes. So we’ve gotta do that. I mean, and it’s proven to be very successful. People like it. You can still have all the other exhibitry you’ve got going on.

Not saying get away with any of that, do away with any of it. But you got to have that ignition, that emotional ignition that people need to say, wow, I want to come back here. This is very cool. And if you’ve got a controversy, you can think about it the other side, you’ve educated people on that side for them to go, wait a minute, I can’t believe that that would happen at that zoo. ‘Cause I’ve been there and I’ve seen the following. I can’t believe that that would be going on. So you’re kind of giving yourself a little insurance policy as well by educating. And we gotta talk about everything we do.

This is another part about education.

You know what?

Animals do die in a zoo and you gotta talk about that. You don’t have to talk about everything that dies, but you gotta talk about significant cases when they died, what happened, what your pathologist did, what your veterinarian did. Explain the passion that goes into taking care of these animals. Not just say we’re passionate. Show you’re passionate.

Should zoo education have a role as it relates to conservation?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That to me has ramped up not only the way they deliver messages now through many mediums, but zoo education needs to be in the center of that wheel making sure that all those educational points are being hit on. Whether it be through interactions from people to people, staff to our guests, graphics, literature that is sent out from the zoo. Make sure there’s a consistent, solid educational message in all of that. And again, I am not an advocate of cramming it down anybody’s throat. I think that’s the worst way you can do it.

Leave those for special workshop situations. But the general public, they need validation.

Why do I need to recycle?

Does my recycle bin make any difference when I put it out on the curb?

Well, you know what?

The zoo could play a little role there and explain why it’s important or maybe dispel some myths about what happens in recycling. Don’t leave it to the media. Be an integral part of that and explain it. So in Florida, alligator interactions with people usually ends up in the dog being a problem or the person being bit and god forbid they’re killed.

What’s going on here?

Zoo, be in the middle of that in the community. Be the go-to institution, educate the people as to why this might be happening. You can still have your university biologist in there. You can have your state game officer in there. But zoo, you need to be in the middle of that. Helping educate. You talked about bringing people through the gates.

Any advice that you’d give the neophyte zoo director about the importance of marketing zoos and what do you consider are the most important aspects of marketing?

Absolutely. Marketing is essential. You gotta compete with everybody else that’s out there. And depending on your market, it can be a challenge. You know, in central Florida, you’ve got big theme parks, you got zoos, you got nature, you got all this.

How are you gonna get ’em to walk through your gate?

You gotta market. You gotta let people know you’re out there at every interval. You’ve gotta have activities in the zoo to encourage people to come out and have a good time. It could be a party, you know, beer fest, whatever it is. All those extremely popular gets people again engaged here, you can go have a beer down the street. No, let’s go to the zoo and have a beer. You’re gonna pay more for that beer but you’re gonna have a good time while you’re there. So the marketing part of it is very important.

It has to dovetail in nicely to the zoo with the educational messages, and so on, and so forth. It’s all hat in hand as far as I’m concerned. And for the neophyte director, he, she needs to pay attention to that. Now, there’s a certain, I don’t know what the percentage is, but there’s an ideal percentage of marketing dollars spent to operational budgets. And you need to pay attention to that. I know it’s not cheap to market. I know, you know, whatever medium you use is expensive. And so you gotta get the biggest bang for your buck that you can, your websites are essential now.

I mean by God you don’t have a website you might as well close down. And that’s where you can catch people quickest and get ’em more engaged in you. And then all the other media and marketing stuff only supports that. At one time, it wasn’t that way.

It’s like website, what you talking about website?

Now, website’s the driving, in my estimation, is the driving force in marketing. So be careful where you’re spending your marketing dollars because they’re expensive and valuable and maybe some traditional marketing platforms you don’t need to pay attention to, ’cause you’re not getting much out of it. So yeah, the neophyte director, make sure you got a robust marketing, otherwise.

I mean, we had one of our new trustees years ago say, you know what?

You are the best-kept secret in Tampa. And that was an eye-opener.

It’s like, really?

Yeah, people don’t know you’re here. You’ve been here for a long time. People don’t know you’re here, that’s a marketing issue. I hear you talk about, again, different groups of people.

How could zoos improve their connection with kids and teenagers to height their zeal, their awareness about the natural world?

That is a tough group.

Okay?

So typically, I think it’s Gen Xers don’t like zoos unless you’re into rescue rehab and until they have children. And then all of a sudden you go way high on the list again because they can take the kids out to the zoo to visit.

So how do you get that group, you know, when they’re in that period where they don’t like you to like you?

One of the ways, of course, is to be a rescue rehab facility. They gravitate towards that. I think teenagers are tough. They want that thrill.

They want the rollercoasters, they want all that stuff, right?

And zoos are like totally boring. I know the mother of the house is a key figure in all of this. And if she decides it’s time to go to the zoo, y’all are going to the zoo. So you’ve gotta make sure that you’re playing your cards towards the mother, the wife, the girlfriend ’cause they play an integral role in convincing the family where to spend those discretionary dollars. I don’t know, teenagers are tough. I don’t have an answer for it. And I’m sure some marketing people probably have some ideas when it comes to that. But once they get out of that thrill-seeking mode and become young adults, they seem to gravitate back to zoos again.

It’s a cool place to be. It’s just not cool when you’re a teenager. So I don’t know how you get past the, it’s the cool factor. Just don’t know. That’s a tough one.

What issues would you like to see the various national zoo and aquarium member associations to be addressing now?

I think zoo sustainability, coming back to the collection. Nobody seems to want to talk about it. I mean, I’m not in every meeting. Maybe they are but I’m not seeing the results of it.

So where is the zoo’s future?

Where are they?

We don’t want ’em to become dinosaurs. And with that, if we are not delivering the product, if we’re off base and haven’t done our homework, we will become a dinosaur if we’re not careful. Zoos could be a thing of the past, which would be a big shame because we contribute a lot to collection, sustainability, and conservation when we’re doing our job. And I would hate to see that happen. But I think that’s something that would keep me awake at night if I was the head of one of these associations.

Like, what are we doing to ensure our viability?

And every business has gotta look at it. I just think they haven’t been paying attention. They took their eye off the ball. And it concerns me a lot. And I would hate to see that, since I invested my entire career in the industry, I’d hate to see it die. But I don’t think it’d be good for anybody if zoos, it’s quality of life. You know, wealthy communities have great zoos.

You know?

Communities that have arts and science in their dossier have great zoos. You know, zoos are a part of our culture and we’ve got to make sure that we’re keeping ’em in the forefront. Whether funding’s an issue or awareness or viability. I’m not saying it’s easy, I’m just saying there needs to be a think tank to sit down and figure this out. If I’m wrong, I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.

If you could go back in time, what, if anything, would you have done differently?

Personally or professionally or both?

Well, you could do both, but certainly professionally. I don’t know that I would’ve done anything different professionally. I’ve been very blessed and I can’t complain. I retired from an industry under my terms and I felt it was time, I had done my thing, you know, it was time to move on. So professionally, I’ve been very blessed and I think that leaks into my personal life. I mean, I look back on it and said I have met a king, I have met two presidents. I have traveled the world and am so blessed as a result of it. I think it’s made me a better human being.

And I can’t think of anything I would’ve changed.

Yeah, are there hiccups and disappointments along the line?

That’s life. Life is full of ’em. It’s what you do with it that’s important. And I know that’s a cliche, but it is.

What did you do with it?

Some people throw in the towel, walk away, go do something else. Okay. I’ve never been driven by money.

Yes, do I wanna live comfortably?

Sure. But, you know, I want to be a billionaire by the time I’m 55. Okay, that’s great.

That’s not how I’m driven, you know?

And so I don’t think there’s anything, Mark, that I would’ve changed, some things might’ve been ordered differently, in a different order. But I’ll tell ya, both my wife and I talk about it, how blessed we feel and how fortunate we feel.

Are there programs or exhibits that you would’ve implemented during your tenure at Tampa that did not happen?

Yeah. Wow. There’s a couple of, I think I would’ve liked to, we started breeding shoebills. We were the first zoo to breed shoebills. And that program, unfortunately, stalled out mostly because we didn’t have enough birds to rely on to build a population. That was frustrating ’cause we did such a great job in producing the first chick ever parent-raised outside the Native range. I mean, it was just so monumental and the staff embraced it so greatly and as well as the community. And so that was frustrating.

I would’ve liked to have seen, but I know it’s still going on now. I started a keeper training program in San Diego, which just now blossomed into a national keeper training program, which I would’ve never, in my wildest dreams thought it would ever get to that level. And we’ve participated with that in ZooTampa. I’d like to see more of that because I think the program has some really great benefit to keeper staff. I’m just pleased I was part of the initial establishment of that program. But to see it now, it’s just, you know, amazing to me. On a slightly different note, I would like to see, just didn’t get it done, ZooTampa be a botanical garden. And that’s gonna require some work, plant identification, cataloging, and so on, and so forth.

All very doable. Just didn’t get it on the checklist, that’s all. ‘Cause I think, A, it deserves it. And B, it would be a great distinction to have for that facility. Considering where we are in Florida, like I say, you just look at the plant and it grows. So that was one thing that didn’t get done. And I would like to see a more robust conservation program. Again, we’re crawling right now.

We’re the baby that’s crawling. We need to get a more robust program in conservation as far as what programs we participate in. I mean, Manatee, you know, is the stabilizer. That goes without question, but there’s so much else we should be doing. So I have to leave that for the staff now to get.

Do you have a proudest accomplishment?

Yeah, I do. Not in any particular order, but the importation of the elephants from Swaziland. Ah, that was a huge thing. Participating in the Arabian Oryx release when I was in San Diego into Omani, was another, I think I said at the time to Jim, if I die now, I will feel that I’ve accomplished a lot. Not all of that done just by myself. A lot of other people, obviously, part of it. But those two projects are huge. I wasn’t a big part of the California Condor project.

I was the department head, but other individuals did all the heavy lifting. But it was nice to be, you know, a footnote on that one. But I think elephants, the Arabian oryx, California Condor, and I think that the implementation of that training program made me feel good that the institution supported it. And I think the other thing on elephants is the operant conditioning. The fact that we switched from angus to operant conditioning and was a big part of that. Worked with a lot of really good trainers to take that. We took a lot of heat in the industry over that. We changed the industry.

And there are people around now that don’t even know that happened. But when it did, it was a pretty volatile situation. And we personally took heat for it. The institution took heat for it. But after you have a keeper die on your watch, if that doesn’t sober you up, that you’ve gotta change something, I don’t know what would. And the critics can be the critics, they can do whatever they want, but we knew it was the right thing to do. So really proud of the fact that we stuck to it had ultimately, a board and senior management at San Diego that supported that without question. And that made it happen.

The rest of it was up to us to do all the heavy lifting. So yeah. Yeah, those are the things I’m most proud of.

Are there any zoos in the world that you particularly admire?

And why would that be?

Yeah, I think the Berlin Zoo in Tierpark Berlin. I think I’ve always admired them. They, again, strong, strong science collection related, collections of animals. And still today, are working on some great stuff. But I always admired them as far as the width and breadth of their collection and the things they accomplish. I mean, the scientific work that they’ve done, and so on, so forth. And they’re around the world doing things and still to this day. So again, it’s gotta be that German vigor, you know, that keeps ’em going.

But yeah, I always admired them. Every time I was in Germany, I always made sure I stopped by to see, not necessarily visit with people, but see the collection and what was going on.

Given your experience, you’ve kind of alluded to it, what’s your view regarding zoos maintaining elephants and how it should be done correctly?

Yeah, I think we’re in a much better spot than we were 10 years ago. I think the days of one and two elephants in a zoo are gone. And they should be, we should not be exhibiting or housing elephants like that anymore. It needs to be in a heard, you need to have a big enough exhibit for that.

Some will say, well, what’s big enough?

Well, okay, we can use the standards as a baseline, but you know, you’re never gonna be big enough. Tampa’s not big enough for the elephants that we’ve got in there, but they do fine in the exhibit. Zoos still need to be part of elephant management, whether it be managing the disease issues that we are right now and the viruses that are cropping up. You’ve got to have elephants that you can get ahold of to draw the blood and do the work. Otherwise, you’re not gonna get the answers you want. This herpes virus that’s, you know, just a devilish thing is a good example of that. I think the operant conditioning has taken the angus issue and all the aggression off the table. I think we’ve got a whole different and better generation of keepers that are now managing elephants on a daily basis.

Not saying it’s a hundred percent, but it’s certainly much better than it was. And you talk about care and passion. You talk about working with their animals to accomplish things. The best example I can give of doing the right thing for an elephant is we have the oldest female at ZooTampa now post-reproductive. But when she wasn’t, she was an AI candidate and they were working with her to do AI, getting her to stand, and take the probe, and do all that. And asked me to come down to the elephant park, you know, stop by, I want to show you what we’re doing. It’s like, okay, great. Come by and they’ve got, her name is Elie, they’ve got her backed up into the training shoot and they’re working with her, and the probe, and so on, and so forth, without the vet there.

They’re just getting, you know, her ready for all that and it’s going great. And I looked down and the chute door is open so she could walk out into the rest of the habitat. I said the chute door is open and she’s still standing there. And they said yep, that’s what we wanted to show you. And I said that’s terrific. She’s here voluntarily. She’s either getting a food reward or she’s getting a command to stay there. And I said that is incredible because, you know, before there was no way that was gonna happen.

But they worked with this animal and that’s the tenacity that they have to say, okay, we can take this and make it better. And I just think, I was able to see the sea change in that species management from the days of an angus and forceful management to total compliance now. And you know what, she could have walked out and was like, okay, session’s over. We’ll bring her back, we’ll try it again. And it’s that not willing to settle for anything other than a positive response from that animal is what makes that successful. So when the vet comes in, it’s no big deal. You know, she’s already been used to the probes. She knows there’s a bunch of people behind her, touching her and feeling her.

You gotta have the door open then I’m sure it’d be fine. So I just think that is such a sea change. And when you talk to the novice who haven’t seen that, while they get a little goofy about the probe and everything, but that’s all part of it, they just remark at how well the animal is standing there, you know, and not objecting to what you’re doing. I mean, here’s, you know, a 7,000-pound animal that could just walk outta there and go, I’m not having anything to do with this. And that’s not the case.

What was the most important piece of advice you received that stayed with you throughout your career?

Relationships?

You know, it came from San Diego, deep pockets, not the best at paying bills. I had a zoo director in a European zoo, remain nameless, call up and say, you know, I’ve got the following species. We know you’ve been wanting these when they become available and we’re ready, we’re ready to send ’em to you now. And he said and I know you don’t pay your bills really quick, but we want ’em to go to you. And I was like, wow. So you know, how many conferences, and how many dinners, and how many drinks, and how much interaction, and it’s all about the relationship. It’s not about how deep your pockets are. And I’ve carried that through my career.

And you know, some days market’s been tough because people, you give ’em an honest answer they don’t want to hear it, but they eventually come around, because they trust you and you’ve got that relationship. And I was always told, if you keep the relationships going, I still, like you, have friends in the business many, many, many years after we met. And the only thing that keeps us apart is that we’re just not active in the industry anymore. But we can text, and email each other, and send Christmas cards, whatever it may be. We’re still friends and yeah, all tough roads, and all difficult decisions, and all, you know, difficult meetings, and so on, and so forth. But it’s that relationship and I’ve stuck with that. And boy, has it been beneficial. The benefit has really been the zoo, hasn’t been me personally, I haven’t benefited at all.

But the zoos that I, you know, San Diego or ZooTampa has benefited. Before I got to ZooTampa, I wanted to bring in a male Okapi, they only had a female and they couldn’t get a male. So I called Anne Patrick, she was the coordinator. I said Anne, I don’t need a favor.

I just need you to put us higher on the list, okay?

We need to get a male in, it’d be really important. Mark, that animal was there 60 days after I started. I was the hero. I really wasn’t the hero, I just made the right phone call.

They weren’t making the right phone call, you know?

And she said you called me at a good time. We have an animal available and we’ll get it down to you right away. That’s relationships.

I mean, if Anne didn’t know who I was and I didn’t know Anne, it’d be like, boy, how do we even start this?

You know, I’ve tried to make sure that Chris, the individual that took my spot, takes that same stance. He’s very good at it. He’s a very good relationship builder. So I think ZooTampa’s in great hands when it comes to that.

Would you recommend the zoo, aquarium field to a young person with sincere interest in wildlife and conservation today?

And then why would you recommend it?

I would, I would, I’d wanna make sure that they truly understood, you know, where do you want to be?

Where do you see yourself in the five and 10-year range to make sure that they didn’t have some expectations that were, you know, maybe not realistic, but I’ve counseled a few young folks who are on their path right now, who wanna know how do I, you know, I love this, I’ve been a volunteer keeper, now I’m a paid keeper. I want to eventually have your job. At which time I told ’em, you can have my job.

But, you know, how do you do that?

And I’ve encouraged them to do it, but you gotta have the fire in your belly, you know, it’s like, okay, this is really what I want to do. Because I tell ’em, you’re not gonna be rich, if you’re looking at this to make a lot of money, go do something else, you know, don’t even try. The parents are usually the tougher ones.

You know, they want, oh, you know, I want my son or daughter to be a veterinarian, and this is a son or daughter, do you wanna be a veterinarian?

No, I just wanna work with animals. Maybe they’ll change their mind in a few years but you gotta get them initiated into the industry. So yes, I would encourage them to do it. I mean, I think this is, it’s an extremely rewarding industry. It has unbelievable opportunity if you’ve got the willingness to try things. It’s fantastic.

What can or should a zoo or you as zoo or aquarium do to affordably help upgrade developing countries with their zoos?

And why do you think there are not many sister zoo relationships?

Yeah, sister zoos are almost a thing of the past anymore. I don’t know why, I don’t know why. It just kind of fell out of favor. But I mean, to be honest with you, there are certain cultures that just should not have zoos, period. And I think we have to be big boys and girls about that. And say that, your job is not to have a zoo. Your job is to make sure the wildlife out there is manageable. You don’t need ’em in a captive environment when you’re sitting in the middle of some countries in Africa, it’s like, no, this is not a good use of your resources.

Now, there’s gonna be an opportunity for rescue, and rehab, and so on, and so forth. But that aside, there are certain cultures that just are not good at this. And they need to get away from it and invest your time in the wildlife in the wild. So if there’s any relationships that can be built, it might be having that honest discussion. Now, that’s saying something coming from a zoo in the United States. But, you know, I had to laugh when, so I’m kind of reversing my course of discussion here a little bit. But in this case, it made sense. So in South Africa, you know, there’s Pretoria Zoo, it’s a wonderful zoo.

There’s Johannesburg, big beautiful zoo. You’re in the middle of Africa for god’s sakes.

Why do you need a zoo?

You can just drive down the road, you know, 20 clicks and you can be in a wildlife park. Because the community, the individuals can’t afford to go into the wildlife parks. The zoos are affordable to them but the inner city kids have no opportunity. And the director of the Pretoria Zoo said, look how many people we got here. It’s loaded today, absolutely loaded with people. ‘Cause they can afford this. They can’t go 20 clicks down the road to the park because they can’t afford to get in.

Now, you might say to the wildlife park, why don’t you drop your numbers for crying out loud?

And you might get a lot of people coming in. So that’s the reality of Africa. So you’re in the middle of Africa, you and I kill to get to Africa to go on safari. It’s in their backyard and they can’t afford it. So that makes perfect sense to me. And both those facilities are excellent facilities, so they’re doing a good job as well.

But isn’t it ironic, you know, it’s like why are we going to the zoo, we’re right here in Africa?

But in some other countries it isn’t like that. It isn’t as robust and they need to stop. They need to say, we shouldn’t be doing this. You talked about euthanization.

Does euthanizing of endangered species, surplus genetic issues, still pose a political problem for zoos and aquariums?

Yeah, because we haven’t done a good enough job explaining why that might be necessary. And I have to tell you, it bristles my hair on my back when I hear that we euthanize due to genetic issues. I think that’s an excuse, it’s not a reason. I don’t think there’s, to be honest with you, theoretically, there is no overrepresented animals in this world. There’s gotta be another animal that it can mate with. I just don’t believe it. I would not authorize euthanasia for genetic reasons. Now, if there’s physical issues, that’s different.

But I’m talking just because the animal is, you know, mean kinship is all whacked out, it’s not a reason to euthanize. I think those are excuses and I don’t agree with that at all. And you know, it’s like you tell me that you can’t find a suitable mate for the animal, may not be the best. I do remember in my career as a keeper at the wild animal park, we had two Indian rhinos. They produced a calf, a female calf. At that time, the SSP couldn’t find a mate for the female who was getting older and more mature. So we did the unthinkable. We bred her back to her father.

And you would’ve thought that we’d just dropped an atom bomb into the SSP. But our answer was, leaving her open, as they say, and not breeding her, is more detrimental to her than having her dad breed her back. You’re telling me for one minute this doesn’t happen in the wild. Sure it does. Dad breeds back his daughter, mom is bred by her son.

Okay?

It happens. There’s nobody out there going, oh no, no, stop, stop. Don’t do that. You’re related. It’s gonna happen. It’s not the end of the world.

Do you wanna do it repeatedly?

No.

Is it advisable with other options?

No. But to leave that female stand open, we thought would be a huge disservice. Now, I wasn’t in the leadership role, but I was certainly part of the discussion. And I learned a great deal from Jim and others about the importance of this. That animal, by the way, lived a fruitful life and produced many, many calves. Her offspring was a perfectly healthy calf. And it was also a message to the SSP, come on, we gotta get more animals going here. You gotta start moving things around.

So on and so forth. So in that case, again, not advisable, but it’s kind of like, it’s my relief if I don’t have any other options available. Euthanasia for medical reasons, quality of life, I have no issue with that. My biggest issue is, I think we sometimes wait too long. And there’s a veterinarian that told me a great story and I’ve been imparted this to my staff.

He said, you know, you’ve gotta euthanize your dog, right?

Quality of life, old animal, you know, just it’s time. So you take it to McDonald’s, you give him a hamburger, give him a milkshake for his last meal, and then you euthanize him. The best day of his life is when you euthanize him. Not the worst day of his life. And there’s a message there. Let’s not wait for the animal writhing on the ground in pain and whatever. Say, okay, it’s time to euthanize. Let’s pick a better time.

That’s hard, easy to say, hard to do. But it gets back to the sun bear story I was telling you. Animals writhing on the ground one day and the next day is like, hey, I’m healthy. No, this animal is in trouble and is going to die. We need to jump in. So figure out what that perfect time is, if you can. And don’t always wait till the animal is on the ground and ready to die to give it its final rites. I think we’ve gotta get better at this.

So cannot embrace doing it for genetic purposes unless it’s a physical abnormality that, you know, you can’t get around. And certainly understand the medical side and quality of life side. But we haven’t had that serious discussion with our public. We avoid it ’cause it’s euthanasia. We avoid it. And that’s where zoos have got to be the voice of reason. They’ve gotta come forward, they’ve gotta talk about this, they gotta talk about it before it happens. So the public is prepared for it.

You gotta get your pathologist out there, you gotta get your geneticist out there, you gotta get your veterinarian out there, you gotta get your curator out there, everybody talking about it. So when the day comes that you’ve got to put down that high profile animal, they go, well, they followed their policies, they followed what they needed to do. Nobody likes it. I don’t know anybody that enjoys any part of that. But it’s the reality of what we have to deal with.

Do we need or do we have, in this day and age, any charismatic committed heroes to help shift public opinion for conservation?

I mean, an example might be a Jacques Cousteau, a Jane Goodall. The short answer is I don’t know who that would be. And that’s where I think were we need to find that person. Nobody’s coming to mind.

But we need to have, we need to have that person who you look at and go, you know what?

I trust this person a hundred percent and they know what they’re talking about. We’ve kinda lost that a little bit. I think we had some charismatic zoo directors who could have pulled it off, but they’ve retired or passed away. And I don’t know of anybody who’s replacing that, that national voice of reason. You might have a community support for someone. But the national voice of reason, I don’t know. To me, the stories I hear on media sometimes are goofball stories. They’re not really putting our science out there in a positive manner.

It’s whoever can do the best soundbite and get that 30 seconds out there. And it’s not always, to me, not degrading, but I wish it was done better, more professionally. I don’t know who that is, I really don’t. I think we’ve lost some, we’ll get ’em back, but I don’t know who that is right now. Kind of a, we’ll talk later about an exhibitry. When a zoo spends multimillion dollars on a gorilla, elephant, tiger exhibit and critics ask why this money is not used to help the animals in the wild.

You say what?

I say it is because the people that are coming through their gate to see that brand new wonderful exhibit is giving us the money to support conservation in range countries. The exhibits cost what they cost, exhibit costs have gone up dramatically for a variety of reasons. That doesn’t make any, they just are expensive. People want to see animals in the best environment and exhibit that you can provide. You take that elephant and put it in the, you know, if you could hold ’em in a chain link, you know, 50-acre exhibit, they go, well, boy, they didn’t put any effort into that.

What’s that all about?

You know, you’ve gotta have the sizzle, you gotta have the wow, you gotta have all that. People want that. You can also show them, hopefully, what a native habitat might look like. Granted it’s artificial but what it might look like. So yes, we do. Now, maybe it’s not the $10 million right away, but over time, it gives us the opportunity to build up our conservation funds so we can help these projects. I mean, San Diego and ZooTampa are good examples of that. When we supported elephant conservation work in Swaziland, after we brought those elephants in to tune of $350,000.

Okay, maybe that’s not a lot of money, but at the time, it was a lot of money and it helped them dramatically restore habitat, get fencing that needed to be done properly. I mean, they used it, they send us reports every year. We knew exactly where the money was going. And that was a good example. Had we not had elephants, well, we may not have had the 350 to do anything, but we did. Plus we spent $4.2 million to bring in the elephants. So we spent a lot of money to help out everybody. We didn’t build any new exhibits.

We just brought animals in, and then turned around, and sent some of the money back. And by the way, 350,000 in Swazi world. Oh my gosh, that was like a godsend. They said 350,000, my God, that’s gonna help us out so much. They were thrilled to death with it. I can’t remember how we came up with the number to be honest with you, but we did. And for 10 years, they were able to use that.

Are you concerned about zoos and aquariums staying viable and pertinent or relevant in the next 25 years?

Yeah. Yeah, we touched on this before. I am very concerned. I think we need to get some different thinkers at the table to be asking some of these tough questions. I mean, we don’t need to have the rock hit us in the head to say we’ve got some viability issues and awareness issues. I mean, the world is crazy right now. I don’t think it’s gonna change. It’s gonna get crazier.

How do we fit in the niche here to give people the relief from the craziness of the world?

Might be one approach, but are people so distracted by all the other things going on in the world that zoos are way down the list?

How do you get that higher on the list?

How do you get us up there?

If there’s discussions going on, I hope so. I don’t know of any, but I think we need some real creative thinkers, not zoo people, but people outside the zoo world that can help shake the timbers a little bit and get us thinking like that.

What are your thoughts about private zoos owned by people of means?

Will they survive the length of time that municipal zoos have?

What are the pluses and minuses of this type of ownership?

Yeah, I actually think they’ll survive past us, ’cause we all started from them. People forget that, zoos started from private collections. And thank God there were private collections. And the people with means, I think the only Achilles heel there is if the person of means doesn’t have it protected after he, she dies, then it’s at risk. But if they do, they will surpass zoos because these people have dedicated their own money. And some of these facilities are phenomenal and thank God. And thank God they were here before our zoos started, because without them, there’d be no zoos. People forget that part.

And why?

They misdirected criticism of the private sector.

Are there bad private individual zoos?

Yeah. There are bad zoos too. People forget that part of the equation. But the ones that have done it right, put their money in it and have sustainability. Incredible. And I’m glad they are. They don’t have the ability to hold a lot of species, but what they do, they do well, which is also very smart in their part because they’re not diversified over so many species that they’re not doing anything well. So I think private collections will be around forever.

And you know what?

In my experience in setting up new animal transaction guidelines, when we went through the period of distraction in Tampa, the only pushback we ever got were from zoos, not the private individuals. They were happy to accept the new policies and procedures, which were more stringent for them than they’d ever been under the previous administration from our facility. And still today it hasn’t changed. But the zoos push back on us, then I thought, that’s interesting.

Why did we get zoo pushback?

I would’ve thought that, you know, private rancher, Mr. X, would’ve pushed back on it. Nah, we’re fine, we’ll do it. So, you know, when the truth comes out, when the actual, actual story comes out, sometimes the information is a lot different than what you’re hearing on the headlines. So yeah, strong supporter of private collections.

During your long career, what would you consider to be major events that affected zoos in general?

I think, well, two things. One, before my career was the advent of new exhibitry, open exhibits. I think that was a significant change for zoos to. But I think on just as significant, but maybe smaller scope, was the whole elephant situation where, you know, threats of no longer zoos being allowed to house elephants because they couldn’t treat ’em properly. I think that whole change in training is phenomenal and hopefully, is now, you know, behind us, those are two big ones in my book. And I think veterinary medicine, from the days of taking borrowed equipment from hospitals after they were done with it, human hospitals to now having an entire industry that supports them is just incredible. I mean, you talk about providing quality care, holy cow, it doesn’t get much better than that. I mean, having outfitted a hospital with new equipment, and to see what’s available, and the technology that keeps improving, it’s like, wow, you know, it’s 20, 25 years ago.

Yeah, well, when the hospital closes down, they’re gonna send you the x-ray machine, you know, when it shows up in pieces, you know, those days are all gone now. And so those are significant events in our industry.

How long have you been in the profession?

I retired at 52 years, 10 months, and eight days.

But who’s counting?

And what do you know about the profession that you’ve devoted so many years of your life in serving?

What do I know today about them?

What do you know about this profession?

I know that it’s first and foremost, a great career, a great opportunity if you’re interested in this. It has challenges. It has the ability to make a huge impact in our world, not all businesses or professions do. And it has, I think, provided a quality of life and certainly, in this country and in Europe because of it. It’s a part of our culture. And that’s why I think it’s so important to keep zoos. I think this world would be a lot poorer without them. We’ve gotta hang onto our wildlife and we gotta make sure people know it’s out there and what’s happening with it.

How would you like to be remembered, your legacy?

It’s tough. I mean, I’d like to be remembered that I contributed, I think bottom line that I contributed because many of the projects I’ve been involved with, they’re not done yet. They’re still gonna go on, you know, after I’ve retired. But that I did my best to contribute positively to whether it be the conservation side, the research side, habitat issues, whatever it may be, that I contributed. And that I held a standard that can be handed down to the next generation. That those standards under the worst of conditions or the best of conditions was always paramount in my mind. That we always did the best thing. So, you know, that I did the right thing, that I contributed.

You said let animals be animals.

What’d you mean by that?

It’s basically back to the micromanaging, let’s stop micromanaging species. Let’s let them follow their natural behavior and let’s learn from that rather than trying to micromanage everything to the point where we’re causing trouble. And I think I’ve seen certainly my share of animal care people, and managers, and in some cases, veterinarians who, you know, want to push the envelope with an animal that is just, that that’s not what they do.

Okay?

Just let them be animals. Some of the veterinarians I’ve worked with, I appreciate a great deal when it comes to their approach to a medical evaluation. And the ones I like are the old-school vets who go, let’s give this a day or two before we jump in there. And other vets want to, you know, do brain surgery right away. And instead of watching the animal, understanding what’s going on, you know, learning a little bit from past cases, I much more appreciate the vet that goes, let’s give this a couple more days. The animals not gonna die overnight. And that’s kind of letting the animal be the animal. Let’s let the animal tell us what’s going on rather than us trying to figure this out and outthink them.

Should all newly constructed exhibits incorporate some conservation conclusion?

I think for the most part they should. I don’t know if every exhibit, you know, should have to do that. I think we’ve got to make sure that we’re messaging and doing what we should with the public to make sure that they understand why we’re investing the money, why we have the species, and what part they can play in it. But not every exhibit’s gonna be able to deliver that kind of message. 1980s saw the death of a keeper with elephants.

Can you talk about safety with elephants?

Yeah, the death at the wild animal park was, I don’t know how else to put it other than it brings you to your core and the keeper didn’t do anything wrong. The keeper actually wasn’t doing anything wrong, was just in the wrong place. And when two 10,000-pound elephants decide to get into it, she happened to be in the middle of it, there’s no way she’s gonna win that battle. That shook the industry, it shook us.

And the focus that we were told by the board, the board had the final decision, are we getting out of elephants or not?

I mean, this is how devastating that was. And said give us an opportunity to come back with a better management philosophy and style. And they did. And that’s operant conditioning with a lot in between what I just said from the beginning to end of that. But that death, unfortunately, to me, was a pivotal point in elephant management.

It’s like, should we even be doing this?

Is this a species we just need to leave in the wild and forget about it. But we have learned a lot and we’ve done a lot on the science side with elephants and this virus that they can contract is all been because they’ve been in managed populations. And we get our hands on ’em, we get blood samples from them reliably. But elephant safety, elephant keeper safety has increased dramatically as a result of operant conditioning. We’ve pulled a keeper out of the habitat, put ’em in a safe area. It’s not a hundred percent safe but it’s about 85% safe. And we’ve trained the keepers and spent a lot of money on training the keepers, which they in turn train the elephants. And the situation is very positive and good for the animals as well as for the keepers.

Can you tell us about the importation of the elephants from Swaziland?

What were the challenges, what were the issues?

Right, we were asked by our board what was the most significant animal in our collection that we needed to work on. And Jim and I did a presentation to the board and said it was elephants, it was African elephants. And so the short answer to that story is they said, okay, then take care of it. So we looked around and bottom line is Swazi could provide us with family group. We wanted a family group of elephants. We couldn’t get that out of Europe. Other countries in Africa weren’t even responding to us. Swazi wasn’t responsive in the beginning but they warmed up to it and they actually sent an emissary out to see our facility.

And at that time, Lowry Parks facility and the comment from the emissary is, your elephants live in better conditions than some of my people. So the answer back to the king of Swaziland was, yes, we should go forward with it. So again, making a long story short, the capture, it took three days and the veterinarians were hired from South Africa who do translocation of elephants. So they knew what to do, they had the equipment, we had helicopters. One of the key objectives from Swaziland is they did not want these elephants tranquilized from a vehicle because they’re drive-through parks. And they didn’t want the elephants that didn’t leave to be associating those vehicles with something negative. So all the tranquilizing had to be from air. And so we had two helicopters and a miraculous crew of veterinarians from South Africa.

And our two vets, each institution sent a vet along. I was there, Randy was there, and Lowry Park sent a couple of staff. And we did reproductive exams on all the elephants to make sure they were viable. And then we basically divided up the elephants and said okay, those are San Diego’s elephants, these are Tampa’s elephants. And we had built holding areas ’cause we knew this was gonna take a couple of weeks to get everything worked out. And then the lawsuit happened by the animal rights community in the United States. They filed a suit against us in federal court. And one of the proudest days of my career in San Diego was sitting in an all-board meeting to make a decision whether we were going forward or not to fight the lawsuit.

So here we have animals captured and the stop button was hit. And that brought in not only all existing trustees, but trustee emeriti showed up, the room was full. And we were sitting on the edge watching all this. And the first trustee stood up, not the chairman, but a trustee stood up and he said, I don’t know about the rest of you, but we’re going forward with this. This is ridiculous. We’re gonna beat this lawsuit, we’re gonna bring these elephants in. And there was this resounding applause by everybody else in the room. So you knew you had the backing.

And the next question went to the attorney, how much is this gonna cost us in federal court?

And he said well, between 250 and $400,000. So the board chairman said it’ll be 400,000, let’s call our attorney in Washington. And sure enough, he came in at $400,000, but they were actually suing Fish and Wildlife. But we had to be there to make sure that our interests were being covered. So we covered for ZooTampa as well as San Diego. We sent our attorney there and won the suit. The judge was, he listened to all sides and threw out a couple of the complaints. ‘Cause they said it doesn’t apply in US Federal court.

And he really put everybody through their paces, our attorneys as well as the animal rights group. And he made his decision, and he turned to our attorneys, and said get your elephants in now. And we’re like, yikes. So we surveyed five transportation or five airlines. Everybody wanted it. Two of us turned it down because of pressure from animal rights. And Cargolux out Luxembourg took it. Cargolux flew weapons for both sides of the Falkland the war.

So they didn’t care, they were fine. They said no, we’ll do this. We’re not worried about it. Lufthansa had to turn it down. South African Air had to turn it down because of pressure from animal rights community. So flew these animals in, again, crated them up. The king in Swaziland made it known that if anybody interrupted this transfer, they would be going to jail. So it took care of the Swazi side of the issue.

But then we still had the animal rights community in the US and our intelligence through the FBI and whatever, indicated, okay, they’re gonna be trouble, so you need to get ready for this. So they helped us. We had great intelligence, local police, FBI, to help us ward off what was going to be, basically, we had death threats on ourselves, death threats on trustees to disrupt this shipment. So just one little side note on this, you have to have international imports inspected at the airport.

And that just goes out to a pool of inspectors, right?

And it’s the first airport they land in the US which was gonna be Tampa. And so that goes out to a pool.

And so any inspector who’s vacant and available takes the job, right?

We said could you do us a favor and not do that?

Don’t let anybody know that the shipment’s coming in until the very last minute and then have your best person on it. They said we’d be happy to do that. So once wheels were up out of South Africa, we had to fly from Swaziland to Johannesburg, and then out, because the planes airport wasn’t big enough in Swaziland to take the big 747s. Once wheels were up, all bets are off. Anybody can track the plane at that point. Landed in Tampa and Cargolux blacks out the plane on the runway, it was at night, takes the taillight, turns it off so nobody can trace the plane going down the runway. Unloaded everything in Tampa and then headed off to San Diego. And I’ve never flown from Tampa to San Diego as fast and as direct.

So when the airlines want to, they can, but they got us there. We landed at 1:00 AM at the airport, it’s closed at midnight. They kept it open for us. We had all that done ahead of time. We had the truckers ready. Put them in a hotel room, put somebody with ’em so they wouldn’t do anything stupid while they were in the hotel room. Loaded everything up and headed up the freeway at 5:00 AM in the morning with 11 elephants on board or I should say, seven elephants on board. And a police escort and the whole bit.

And we’d come to a freeway overpass and they would slow down, and then we’d speed up again, and they’d slow down.

And you know, what the heck is going on?

‘Cause I was in one of the pilot cars and we found out later from the FBI, he said well, we have credible information that they were gonna be at these bridges and they were gonna throw a cinder block on a cable over the bridge. So what we’re doing is we’re just leapfrogging guys ahead of you to make sure the bridges are clear. It’s like, wow. I mean, they were doing stuff, we had no idea what was going on. And then we had a little luncheon for everybody on our end who helped us in law enforcement and the FAA, air traffic control guy was there.

And I said oh, what are you doing here?

You know, he said well, he said, we blacked out the space above your motorcade when you came in. And there’s only one person that can do that. And that’s me. And the only other person that gets that privilege is the president. But we didn’t want anything to go wrong. It’s like, wow. You know, everybody did stuff that we weren’t really expecting. We’d asked, you know, for protection, we’d asked for secrecy.

And they went even beyond that up and to the point where, since this was overtime at the airport, we never got a bill from the airport for the unloading and all that. And finally, called the airport and said, just send us a bill. And they said on us, it’s like, wow. Lex had the same opportunity here in Tampa. They put a helicopter over the motorcade from the Tampa Airport to the zoo. And basically, the police chief said listen, this is my last year on the job and I don’t want anything to go wrong on this transport, so we’re gonna protect you. But the animal rights community was bent on giving us trouble. Nothing ever happened because we had all the right people and agencies in place with their ears open, paying attention to what was going on.

So highly stressful. Our families, we had undercover cops outside our homes, at least for about a week or so afterwards, just to make sure they didn’t do anything silly because they’re capable of all that stuff. And I think more so in Southern California than in Tampa. So a lot of stress, a lot of negativity, got a little bit of heat from the industry. But most people are like, thank you for doing this, thank you for taking the risk. Thank you, thank you. Now, the whole shipment in monetary value, including the lawyers in Washington, $4.2 million. That’s what it cost.

And now, there’s been a subsequent import that Kansas City, and Omaha, and Dallas did, you know, so kind of set the stage for that. By the way, they were sued as well, but not the same things, ’cause you can’t sue again once the case has been settled. So at least we paved the road for that for a little bit. But it was worth it in the end and we’re happy we did it. And boy, you talk about logistics, and timing, and I mean there were dozens and dozens of people just on the San Diego side and many of ’em we don’t even know who they were, they just did their job. And the elephants arrived. Last Elephant walked out of the crate at 60-plus hours from Johannesburg. So all the success, they dropped a lot of weight, but they put that on pretty quick.

And you know, like I say, they’ve done a great job in helping that population now tick up in a positive direction, which was the whole goal. So we call it a success, in the end. I think only one bull hasn’t reproduced in all those years. I don’t know why but he just hasn’t reproduced. Talk about bringing things in. The relationship of zoos and aquariums with animal dealers has dramatically changed during your career.

What do you see as the cause of this change and how has the role of individual dealers and companies changed with respect to the development of zoos?

Well, I don’t think there are many dealers left anymore. They’ve either retired, passed away, and nobody’s filled their shoes. Which is a shame. Now, it’s really a unique niche and you’ve gotta have the financial backing to, you know, you gotta put out money and you gotta wait a long time to get it back. So if you’re financially stable enough, you can put up with that. So just because you start a deal and put a deposit down doesn’t mean the zoo’s writing you a check to get that deposit back. You’re gonna wait until that animal arrives at the zoo. So the brokers have gotta have some money behind them to do that.

Those were the heydays I called it where imports occurred. I think we had the hoofstock quarantine station in New York full every month for a couple years running. We had that much stuff coming in. Also pre-quarantine in Europe, you know, we had to pre-quarantine ’em in Europe and then bring ’em to the US. All of that orchestrated, I mean it was quite a mechanism. We had people on that end taking care of the European quarantine as well. I wouldn’t say the regulations haven’t increased or anything. There’s some more regulations, permits really haven’t changed.

But what’s changed, its attitude and knowledge. As I said earlier, we have a whole cadre of curators that don’t even know step one. If you said bring in a white rhino from X country, they wouldn’t know where to begin. So that’s certainly dampened it. And then you have the fact that we’ve lost some of the brokers who, you know, were so reliable in the past. So that’s been the kind of double whammy when it comes to importation. The last thing I know, we were going to quarantine primates at ZooTampa, ’cause we have a CDC facility that two zoos were going in together to bring in some marmosets and we said you’d be happy to quarantine ’em for you. And the quarantine never happened.

It just all dissolved. I don’t know why, didn’t know anything about it. So, you know, it’s not the high-profile animal thing as much as it is awareness and nobody’s pushing this issue.

I’ve talked to a few zoo directors years ago who said, don’t you think we need to get started again?

I said absolutely, nothing happens. So again, I’m not certain it’s the money thing. I mean, not everybody’s gonna be bringing in elephants and rhinos, that’s not realistic. But even some of the more common stuff, not cheap, but not crazy expensive either. So you’ve got the lack of brokers and dealers that are in the business now and you got a huge lack of knowledge.

Well, how does zoos deal then with surplus animals?

They move ’em amongst themselves, you know, including private ranches and things like that. Or they just stop breeding, which I think is a crime. You know, these are not cows and horses, okay, you need to keep them breeding. You need to keep them, you know, mentally and physically fit to breed. They’re, designed for that. That’s why they are what they are in the world. They’re designed to keep breeding, and reproducing, and, you know, keep their species going. And to stop breeding, to chemically alter that, boy, I tell you, unless there’s absolutely no resolve.

But you know, that gets back to the question of export.

Why aren’t these animals, the surplus being exported to Europe?

The European zoos have needs, zoos in Asia have needs. China, whether you, you know, wanna send animals there or not, they have needs. So there’s outlets for all these animals. And people I think, basically, get lazy about it, and then get worried, and frightened. So nothing happens as a result. So like I say, that gets back to my first comment about this, where this whole situation, need to hit the stop button, sit down and have some serious discussion about what we want to do.

Can you talk about your philosophy of mixed exhibits?

Yeah, that’s kind of how I was born into the industry was mixed exhibits. I think they’re great. A lot, a lot was learned in the early days at the wild animal park about what you can mix, and what you can’t mix, and how many of everything you can mix. On a smaller scale, they work very well. I think it’s enriching for the animals. I think it’s fantastic for the public ’cause they understand relationships of all these animals and how they live in the wild. So I’m a great fan. Now, not everything can be mixed, okay.

That’s just not possible, mostly due to space constraints. But through some very clever engineering and architecture, it’s amazing what you can do to an exhibit to make it compatible for multiple species. So it is very possible now. I think it’s a great, great philosophy to have. And even to the point now where some zoos are mixing birds and mammals together and it works out fine. The Europeans have taken it to some great levels and especially Savannah exhibits where they have elephants, zebra, rhino, giraffe altogether. I mean, it’s fantastic. It’s just, and some of these things are gonna be employed in ZooTampa’s master plan.

We’re gonna start more mixed species because it’s all very doable. It’s all very possible. We wanna talk about some people.

Can you talk about Dr. Schroeder, who he was and your relationship with him?

Yeah, you know, the wild animal park was his brainchild. It was his baby. A practicing veterinarian that became a zoo director. And as I said earlier, he used to walk around the zoo, he loved it, he’d be there at all hours, you know, walking around and taking notes to make sure his zoo was always looking good and presenting well. Oh, man, steadfast supporter of his staff and the facility. And I remember I got to know him more at the wild animal park when I was there. He lived not far from the wild animal park. So he’d come in a couple days a week to have lunch.

And it’s amazing, people were afraid to sit with him, they’d sit away from him, you know?

But having had some interaction with him before I’d go sit with him and he thanked me one time, he said thank you. He said it gets lonely here sometimes. But he’d pick up his mail and he’d go home. And I can remember one day in admin, I just happened to be walking through and he was walking through and a lady was complaining about something having to do with the wild animal park and he interrupted her and said excuse me, let me correct you on a few things. And the person that was going to talk to this person’s like, uh-oh. But he was very good about that, I mean, you know, politically correct. But he was just, you know, you handled him, treated him like he was your grandfather, you know, he was so dedicated to the facility and spent a great deal of time at both places. As he got older, it just got harder for him to get down to the zoo.

So he’d come to the wild animal park. But yeah, I mean, what he did for that institution and facility is remarkable and they still benefit from it today.

Can you share your relationship with Jim Dolan?

Who was he, what did he teach you?

Wow. He was my mentor. He taught me all the basic information about animal management and being a curator, how to be a curator, what it meant. Brilliant man. He forgot more than I’ll ever know and whip-smart, multilingual, and he had the ability to retain so much information about collections. Not just the San Diego collection. Just a remarkable individual. I don’t know, I dunno if there’ll ever be another Jim.

I mean, he was certainly, avid reader. Oh my God, his book collection, legendary, you know, just incredible ability to gather information from all kinds of mediums. And when we would travel, which we did quite a bit, he was so knowledgeable about zoos, and foreign countries, and wildlife in general, that traveling him was a joy. ‘Cause we ended up having great debates, and discussions, and philosophical discussions. And that’s how I learned and honed my craft was by having these discussions with him. And I used to enjoy it when we were working together. You know, we’d be together two days a week and, you know, we’d sit down and we’d have discussions about the collection, and, you know, speciation, and breeding animals, and all this stuff. I mean, it was great.

I mean, I was doing more listening than I was doing talking. But he would impart information that was just, you’re not gonna get this out of a book. His experience was incredible. I’ll show you how smart he was. He went to Europe to get his PhD, and he went to Germany, and he was rooming with two other guys. And they said okay, we’re gonna speak English for 30 days. And after that it’s all German. So you better start learning you’re German.

Well, not only did he learn German, he spoke it fluently. He also was able to write in German and he did his doctoral thesis, he wrote it in German. And his doctor-father told him, oh, you didn’t need to do this, you could’ve done it in English. And he went, well, now you told me. But that’s how whip-smart he was. He could do a PhD thesis in German. So a remarkable man, I’m glad I had the opportunity to be around him, even though sometimes very frustrating guy. A very demanding individual.

But that’s what it took, you know?

And some people used to say to me, well, you know, you’re just like a mini Dolan. And I said I take that as a compliment, a full compliment. Good, bad or otherwise, whatever you thought of him. I mean, again, once you knew him, once you got to know him, again, I don’t know anybody who could come close to him as far as his knowledge. San Diego had a very large animal acquisition budget.

Would you say that Jim Dolan was a collector?

Oh yeah, without question, but not the negative collector part. He was always looking as to what’s gonna benefit the zoo ultimately by this acquisition. And you know, he could justify all that. He had to justify a lot of it because if we exceeded our budget, we had to go to committee to get approval. If it was beyond the director’s signature capability, he’d stand up and whole class with the committee who, you know, knew a 10th of what he knew. And he would convince ’em every time. I don’t know of one rejection we ever got from that committee to spend money beyond what our budget had been because they also saw the results. And that’s really the key.

I mean, Jim didn’t collect to collect, he collected with results in mind. And you know, the Sumatran Rhino project was probably one of those disappointments we might’ve had because we weren’t able to keep the animals alive. And it was Los Angeles, and San Diego, and Cincinnati. I don’t know if New York was involved in at the time, and I mean a lot of money to bring these animals in, but we just couldn’t get it right. It was their diet. It was several things that just, we just couldn’t get any traction. And you know, I was relatively young in the business at the time, but I could tell that was hard. It was hard for Jim to take because he thought, you know, we should be able to do this.

There’s no question about it. And sometimes it’s just not meant to be, you gotta move on.

But, you know, a lot of money spent but everybody bought into it, you know?

He wasn’t the lone ranger out there just spending money and everybody else had to figure it out. He had to get justification for all that and did, he was a very convincing person though.

Can you talk about San Diego and giant pandas?

Yes. So first acquisition was a temporary acquisition. They were there for three or four months I think. And then I think it was a combination of US Fish and Wildlife and AZA said, we gotta stop this or do long-term loans. And so that’s changed the entire philosophy around. We had a very strong relationship with China. We were, I think, the first zoo to do any significant non-panda acquisitions and did for many years, and sent animals to them for their facilities. And so we created this relationship, sat in on many negotiations for pandas and other animals as well.

Really learned how to negotiate with the Chinese on things, the dos and don’ts. But the pandas were certainly the icon of all of this and kind of handled separately than the other animals that we were dealing with. But, you know, bottom line is the final resolve to acquiring pandas is that all projects needed to be signed off by both governments. That that was where the money was gonna go and support Chinese wildlife conservation. And yeah, certainly popular, but when they’re there for 12 years, people come in when they want to. And had successful reproductions. A lot of people invested in the project, a lot of team members hired for it, a lot of resources spent. But we’re able to recoup some of that through donations and support from other people who thought it was important.

So it started off kind of like, you know, a one-off, let’s see what happens, to a long-term animal management program, which, you know, now, it’s coming back around again one more time. I mean, all the animals went back to China and now they’re starting to come back out again. You know, it’s an icon species for them. There’s no question about it. And you know, they guard it carefully, which is fair enough, but it’s a high-maintenance species without question, on every level of it. There’s nothing simple about a panda acquisition. So whoever ends up getting pandas on the second go-round, get ready.

Can you talk about the philosophy you may have regarding exhibit design?

My philosophy, you know, I’m always looking for the more space, the better. I want to maximize space. And sometimes that’s a battle depending on the footprint of the particular part of the facility we’re working with. I love aesthetics and I think it’s fantastic to be able to frame our animals in. I try to be careful that we’re not getting crazy with all of that, spending a lot of unnecessary dollars on concrete and gunite and things like that. And so sometimes there’s some philosophical struggling going on with that. But with today’s technology, Mark, I think it’s like, you know, it’s limitless what we can produce now to contain animals. We’ve got excellent technology in glass and other mediums now, it doesn’t all have to be hard concrete barriers.

And the other thing we’re learning, which I found very interesting, and both San Diego and Tampa participated in different studies about the amount of heat that we are bringing into these exhibits due to the gunite, the amount of radiated heat that comes off of that and what it can do negatively for an animal. So let’s lessen this gunite as much as we can and be careful of that. I mean, when you see some of these studies, it’s like, wow, we’ve been making some big mistakes here when it comes to that. It’s an easy way to create a barrier and it can be done looking like a rock and it looks fantastic, but the end result is it’s creating a lot of heat sink at the same time. So you know, there’s always challenges in exhibit design and I try to keep a very open mind. I enjoy working with architects that have experience in zoo architecture and like everybody else, I’m getting frustrated when the architect has no experience in zoo architecture. But I really, really enjoy it.

I think the other focus that I have is the behind-the-scenes housing and how we can improve those areas from basically concrete and steel to what else can we do to make it more comfortable for the animal?

‘Cause they spend, you know, good part of their day back there too. It’s their bedroom. So when it comes to Tampa, there’s few more hurdles because of hurricanes. We have to be careful what we’re building and how we’re building them. But the process I enjoy, I enjoy master planning and exhibit design.

You know, I get a little crazy when they want to do, so which way should the door swing?

And there’s other people that can answer that question. I’m just, there’s where the door should be.

You figure out how it should swing, you know?

So yeah, I enjoy it. It’s a creative process that I think is just, is very enriching.

We’ve talked about different animals now, what would you say was the secret in Tampa for the birth of the shoebill stork?

Wow, look, bottom line, we had two pairs that were close to one another in different habitats, and they were vocalizing back and forth, which I think was the biggest part of the stimulation. The pair that produced were in about an acre-and-a-half netted-in pond. That was, you know, pretty much what they live in in the wild, water, and hyacinth bogs, and all this stuff so they could feel like they were in their native land. And the fact that they were free-flight, fact that they could fly. I think the bill clacking in close proximity was the biggest part. The fact that they could fly was number two. And just the fact that the habitat was very natural. And well, I’ll tell you, that was a, as I would say, a red-letter day when that egg was found.

And it was like such good news but then we were so nervous, should we touch it?

Should we not touch it?

What should we do?

And not a lot of data to go on. There was some very old publications that, unfortunately, were dated and weren’t giving us a lot of information. So again, we were flying a little bit by the seat of our pants. And we used stork data to help us out as far as incubation rate times and things like that. But we learned a lot with the first day. And yes, it was successful. And I tell you, the staff again, shown through on how dedicated they were to make sure that that egg survived, and the chick hatched successfully, and grew to sub-adulthood. But we got all nervous ’cause they made huge nests.

Their nests are like six feet across and three feet thick and they continually resupply the nest. And when the chick fledges, which is a long, it’s 122 days before it fledges. That’s a long time.

We’re going, what’s gonna happen?

It’s gonna go into the water, what’s it gonna do?

And we posted a staff out there to watch about a week before we thought the fledge date was. And all of a sudden the bird just takes off and flies across the pond like it had been doing it, you know, forever. So it’s like, well, we worried about nothing then. We did have one scare when the chick was about, it was about a month old and getting pretty big. Mother was having a hard time covering it at night. ’cause it was getting bigger and bigger. And we had an unseasonable, cold rainstorm come through Tampa. I mean, when we get rain in our winter, it’s usually cold, cold for us.

And we were super nervous about this bird not making the night because of that cold rain. The good news about rains in Tampa in the fall, they rarely last very long, but they can come down pretty hard and cold. So I called a colleague and said help me with this. I need some reassurance here. He said here comes back to the biology of the bird, we know the biology and behavior, perhaps not the smartest bird in the world, but very attentive to their chicks. So he said what I would do is I would pull that chick at sundown, bring it inside, keep it warm, and just before daybreak, just before it gets light, bring the bird back out and put it on the nest. Well, that was 100% correct. They never missed it.

They kinda looked at the bird like, where were you?

You know, and they were all hunkered down. They got through the storm just fine. The bird was nice and toasty and off we go. We also noticed there was a nutritional downturn and we think that mom and dad just weren’t getting enough fish into the chick. So our veterinarian came up with a meatball that had vitamins in it and we would supplement the bird for a couple of weeks with what we called Murphy’s meatballs. And the chick just thrived on those things. But again, it’s just a learning process.

You know, were we not putting enough fish out, were there or not enough fish to fish in the pond?

So on and so forth, but weren’t gonna take any chances. Anyway, successfully raised the chicken. And it could not have been happier with the results. Now, we have not replicated that. We’ve replicated egg laying but we have not had a chick since. So we have a different pair. We don’t know how old these birds were when we got them. So they might have been very old birds.

The old question is how did you catch ’em?

You know, it’s the old birds you catch because they’re slow. I dunno, we don’t know. But the zoo is still working on it. So keep our fingers crossed. And what does a shoebill stork, I’m gonna get into the weeds just a bit.

What does a shoebill stork eat in captivity?

We feed them fish and there’s a certain amount of insects you’ll put into that too, you know, into the dish. And then mom will pick ’em up, and feed it to the chick, and then the chick eventually picks it up. But then these meatballs turned out to be just a miracle because he loved those things. It was raw meat, you know, but had vitamins in it and everything else, so that just gave him more protein to help him grow. So yeah, we replicated as much as possible. We put some vitamin dressing on the fish and things like that because again, it wasn’t gonna hurt, but certainly help if the chick was, you know, having some nutritional struggles. So yeah, we learned a lot. We documented it all, published it.

So now next generation will know.

Can you give us some examples both in San Diego and possibly Tampa of captive propagation and reintroduction?

Yeah, I think the big one in San Diego was the Arabian oryx. We were the clearing house for Arabian oryx going back to Oman in the Middle East for release into the wild, terribly successful program. We participated in that for 10 or 15 years and each subsequent release went easier and easier. So what they do is the first batch, they’re very careful with, make sure they get oriented, take a lot of time in the pre-release areas. Then every subsequent release after that, the animals that have been released in the wild come back to these pens ’cause they’re familiar with ’em. And then they just sister the new animals with them, and they take them off into the wild, and get them ready. A really interesting study off of that Arabian oryx one was, and these animals are all tagged so we know who they are. One of the males born at the wild animal park became the herd male in the wild in Oman for one of the herds.

And by the way, the Omanis track these animals, they’re with them all the time in Jeeps, following them around. He went seven days in one direction looking for rain. And they tracked that, he didn’t find it. He turned around and came back to where he started. And that’s an animal that was born in captivity. So when people say they lose some of that instinct, I beg to differ with you, that animal was remarkable. And we’re talking desert, that’s like the top of this table. There’s no markers, there’s no indicators, it’s just flat forever.

But that’s been validated by the Omanis. So that was certainly one of the big success stories was doing that. There’s been California Condor certainly would be number two as far as releases into California and Baja California. And participated with the LA Zoo in that. And we supported it through birds and got birds ready for release. And these pens at the wild animal park are way away from the public. They’re way out in the boonies. So they have no interaction other than with the keeper staff.

So those are probably the two big ones. And then we attempted captures, giant Eland and Senegal. We were not successful with that for a variety of reasons. There’s been some bird importations that we didn’t necessarily participate in the capture. There’s been some rhino work, again, we didn’t bring, the rhinos that came into ZooTampa came in in 2005, 2006, but those were collected by a broker. Those weren’t anything the zoo did itself but helped support the population. Those animals are still in the breeding population today.

Did I answer your question or did I miss part of it?

Okay. All right. Yeah.

Can you gimme some pros and cons of animal shows?

Animal shows, yeah, I’ll tell you, you definitely need showmanship because they can be deadly boring or disinteresting if the person who’s on stage isn’t good at performing. This was reinforced by the now CEO of ZooTampa who said we need someone with an entertainment background to be on stage to really make these shows hum. Otherwise, it gets too much of the same kind of constant patter. Interesting but you know, not real exciting. So I’m okay with them, think they’re fine to a level, but I think, again, respectful of the animal, make sure we’re giving factual information, and that the demonstration part of it is one of their natural behaviors that we’re not making them do tricks. We’ve stayed away from all that trick stuff at ZooTampa. We don’t do any of that. I think the days of Sea Lion shows and whatever, they’re cute, but you know, it’s a little bit of carney and I know some zoos now that have sea lion shows where it’s all natural behaviors and it’s just much better.

I think the public appreciates it. So I like them. I don’t think you need to get crazy with them. But you know, it’s all about the dwell time. Having people stay at your zoo as long as possible. So sometimes those 20-minute shows make a big difference in keeping people on your site, giving ’em something different to do. The pros and cons of ambassador animals. Yeah, so I know there’s some studies, I haven’t seen the end of them yet of, if animals in ambassador programs are under stress, this would also equate to shows.

You know, just because they show up and do their thing doesn’t mean they’re not stressed. So let’s find out where the stresses are, if there are any, maybe there’s some species that shouldn’t be in shows that we’re doing shows with right now because they do get stressed out. They just exhibit it a different way, the stress a different way. I think, again, it gets down to that person with the animal on their hand so to speak, and what messaging they’re doing to the public. People love that.

They love to be as close as you and I are, but what messages are we sending?

Because the critics will say, the message that you’re sending is, it’s okay to handle, fill in the blank, whatever animal it is. You don’t wanna encourage that. You don’t want people to go out and buy that animal and have it in their backyard. Yes, you’re right. And we’ve gotta qualify that when we talk to the public. This animal’s here because of the following reason. We just didn’t go out and buy it for that reason or acquire it for that reason. Now, there was a day when that happened and we couldn’t say that, but in today’s world you can’t be doing that.

You gotta be careful with that. Animal encounters. I give them a higher mark than I do shows and animal ambassador encounters because I think it’s again focused on the animal’s natural behavior and its natural history. That’s why you have them do those. There’s no tricks involved, there’s no, you know, music in the background, there’s none of that. It’s really taking the public behind-the-scenes and showing them, A, how you manage them and how you train ’em in that management. And so, to me, it’s a better approach than a show. And even ambassador programs.

What would you say is the role of conservation breeding zoos relative to other conservation activities?

I think you’ve got to do both. I don’t know that there’s an equal percentage. I think it just depends on what makes the most sense for the species involved. So, you know, we don’t breed manatees basically ’cause we’re not permitted to, but we wouldn’t breed them anyway ’cause it’s the wrong environment for them. But we do a lot of conservation and rehab for ’em. So that’s an extreme example, but I think a good one where you can do a lot of conservation by rehabbing animals to get ’em back into the wild but you’re not breeding them. I think it’s really a case by case basis. I wouldn’t wanna put an absolute on either category and both are important.

What would you say was your proudest animal exhibit achievement and why?

Wow. Well, that’s a very good question. I’m trying to think. We did some, it wasn’t actually a ground-up construction, but we’ve done several renovations of elephant exhibit at ZooTampa. We did a shoebill stork habitat that was not totally ground-up but mostly ground-up. Considering the space we had to deal with, I was pretty proud of both of those accomplishments because again, we were focusing on highlighting the animal’s natural ability and qualities. In San Diego, I personally couldn’t take credit because it was a big team of people that designed, I was part of those but that whole Upper Mesa, called Monkey Trails, I was part of that and it was a lot of big challenges there because we had primates, we had two levels, we had aviaries, we had some hoofstock, we had a variety of different animals in there. And so getting all of that to work to make sense and to look right, that was a lot, a lot of challenges there.

But proud of the end results of that.

I always like to go back a year or two after something is built and see how, you know, is that what we envisioned?

Is that how it worked out?

You know, just to see. So I would say, you know, those are probably some of my prouder ones and I mean, there’s stuff that I started in San Diego that I was just there in the initial period. It’s already built, and gone now, and somebody else took over. But you know, you were there at least in the beginning to kind of set the stage. ‘Cause the philosophy we had in San Diego and what I implemented in Tampa was that, for instance, Jim and I would say, okay, just to use an example, this is elephants and this is how big we’d like to see it. And you know, we’re thinking this is Africa, so you know, Africa theme, Carmine, you got it now, you got the ball, go design the detail. Then Carmine does the next level of detail and then his staff comes in with the fine-tuning, which way the gate swings, all that kind of stuff. Where the drains need to go.

But if there’s an issue anywhere in that process, it goes back up the food chain to Jim and myself. And then we have the referee shirt on and blow the whistle. Oh, I know there’s another one, the hippo exhibit at the zoo. The underwater viewing of the hippo exhibit. And that’s an example of one where, boy, it replaced an old dilapidated hippo exhibit with underwater viewing for hippos and the water had to be pristine. That was the whole, the director said it has to be pristine. Okay. So again, Jim and I did our thing, went away, and then, my god, that exhibit turned into a monster because tell me how we filter out hippo poo for two adults, up to six animals ultimately when the exhibit is filled out.

Well, a lot of filtration people wouldn’t even touch it. But we did our best and they had to add filtration down the road because we didn’t hit the mark.

But the best one was the glass guy who said, well, so is this hippo gonna touch the glass?

We said absolutely he’s gonna touch the glass, probably gonna push off on the glass.

He goes, push off on the glass?

So the 6,000-pound hippo’s gonna push off on the glass like a swimmer does. Yeah. I don’t know how to design that. So we had to get an engineer in to help ’em figure out what the push rate’s gonna be underwater. And that certainly took the project back a bit. On opening night, the big male does exactly that. And you know, we’re all talking to the public, the hippos are back here, we’re all talking to the public and he’s out there swimming around and having a great time, and then all of a sudden you see everybody’s eyes get bigger ’cause he’s coming right up to the glass and he pushes off, and it’s like, well, it didn’t break. So I guess we’re okay.

That was the ultimate test in all of that. So, I mean there’s some things that you just have no idea and then you put an engineer on it and while you feel a little bit better, even the engineer goes, I can’t guarantee this, you know, but the glass guy’s the one who’s really nervous ’cause he’s the one that’s gonna, you know, be at fault if it doesn’t go right. But so I mean, those types of things, you know, in retrospect while you’re pulling your hair out during the time, when you do get it right or you think you get it right ’cause it didn’t fall apart, you go, yay. You know, good job.

You have mentioned it says, many newer, younger, aquarium professionals might be called computer curators, with little knowledge of the precepts of Heger, or Crandall, or Conway, or knowledge, or resources of books like the “International Zoo Yearbook”, how important for the future of zoos is it to keep this link with the past?

How do they say that?

If you don’t know your past, you will not be able to manage your future. You’ve gotta know, you gotta know these basics. And yes, you can say, oh, well, those were old dilapidated exhibit designs. But the fundamentals are what you’ve gotta learn.

You know, why was that exhibit built like that?

Why did they do that?

Why is it that you don’t have water in gorilla exhibits?

It’d be beautiful to have water in gorilla exhibits, but you don’t have water moats in gorilla exhibits ’cause they’ll drown. If I picked up the phone right now and called five curators in five different zoos, I wonder how many people could answer that question correctly. So my fear would be that somebody builds a gorilla exhibit and decides, God, the water moat would look beautiful, and it would, it’ll look spectacular. It’s a death trap. So without knowing that, without reading that, without understanding how, you know, our forefounders discovered that you could step into it all over again.

And then who’s to blame?

You gotta blame somebody. You can’t blame the gorilla. And we have to blame ourselves for not educating enough. So it’s vitally important.

You know what?

If they don’t know everything they wrote, please understand how important those gentlemen were in our industry. And when you say the name, don’t give me the deer in the headlight look. ‘Cause it’s a dead giveaway that you don’t know who I’m talking about. I made it a practice to have books available in my office and the curator’s office and hand the book to the curator and say, here, read this chapter. Okay, that’ll answer most of your questions. And then come back and we’ll talk. And I want ’em to see that name Crandall and Lydekker. And I want them to know what that means.

I mean, if you want to go back in the computer and pull it up later because it’s easier to access your article, okay, fine. But don’t gimme that deer in the headlight look like you don’t know who Lydekker was and all of that stuff. So it’s vital, to me it’s vital and it will always be vital because they paved the road and solved problems. And I use the gorilla example because it would not surprise me one bit if I had picked up the newspaper tomorrow and found out that somebody built a water moat for a gorilla. And it scares me, that to me is inexcusable in every sense of the word. You’ve been involved with rhinoceros.

Can you tell us the story, maybe as a cautionary tale about the northern white rhinoceros?

Yeah. You know, legitimate subspecies, I think a million and a half years ago, it evolved and unfortunately, we had too few animals, got our hands on ’em too late to save it. There was certainly talk about, I think it’s 16 generations, we could have bred 16 different or bred 16 white rhino females to get mostly pure northern white calf out of it. Nobody’s gonna survive that. That’s way too long a breeding cycle for a female rhino. So too little, too late. I found ’em to be very interesting. I’m so happy I had the opportunity to touch one and enjoy it at the wild animal park.

We tried to save it. We worked very hard, brought ’em in from the Czech Republic and they’re getting wiped out in the wild, like there’s none left, I’m sure now, I’m sure they’re all gone. There was only 12 or 15 left 10 years ago. So I’m certain they’ve wiped ’em out completely. But you put them side by side to a southern white and northern white and you can really see the difference. The first one I saw was at the London Zoo. They didn’t know they had a northern white. They finally realized they did.

But there was just something about the animals, he said that’s not a southern white rhino. Even though, you know, you might, at a quick glance, you might say that’s a southern white, it was not. So, you know, just a shame, again, you saw a species disappear in your career. Don’t know that we could have saved it with all the pressure in the wild. Those insurgents were coming in with machine guns and just playing hell on ’em. So, you know. But you had a big meeting in White Oak regarding that. I had a huge meeting in White Oak.

All paid by White Oak to bring all factions together, the captive and the wild population. And basically, the folks in Africa didn’t want any part of it. They didn’t want to take the gauntlet that was handed to them and move the animals out of that intense gorilla activity area to a safe zone in South Africa. They didn’t want any part of it. And it was this, hey, I’m gonna lose them out of my country and they’re gonna go to South Africa. Well, then you’re gonna lose them all together. So you do this now, you’re heroes. You wait, they’re gonna all die out.

And then what have you got?

You got nothing to talk about. And basically, they didn’t want anything to do with it. And, you know, we tried and it was I think three or four days of heavy negotiations. I mean, this was shuttle diplomacy, I call it. You know, they’re in one room, and we’re in another room, and there’s two guys going back and forth, multilingual guys going back and forth trying to talk about. You know, we threw money on the table that we were like, well, okay, we’ll do it. But that’s a lot of money. They didn’t wanna do it, didn’t make any difference how much the money was.

And that was, to me, a disappointment all the way around. That individuals could basically stop what was going to be an agreed-upon process to save those animals. And just because they didn’t want to do it and lose the animal from their country, they thought it was an iconic species that, you know, it was important to their country. They just couldn’t get it. They could not understand. Their logic was not right. Yeah.

Well, we can’t force ’em to do it, you know?

So left with great disappointment. The White Oak staff said well, we tried. That’s all we can say. We tried and we failed. So yeah, just watched it disappear. Watched the animal disappear off the face of the earth. You have said all animals contribute to our way of life. If we dig deep, we can see the connection of each animal to each other and to us.

What did you mean?

Well, everything is connected in our biological world. There’s a reason we have rhinos, there’s a reason we have Inca terns, there’s a reason we have shoebill storks. There’s a reason for all that.

‘Cause I heard for so many years like, well, why is that?

You know, you lose that animal, who cares?

It’s just one species. Yeah. But it’s all part of the web, as they say. And it’s all part of our being. I don’t know how else to say it, it’s a quality-of-life issue. They all play a role for us. We have to be careful that we’re just not saying, oh, we can do away with that one. We don’t need it anymore.

We can do away with this one, we don’t need it anymore. Now, we’ve done that, we’ve lost a lot of species on the face of the earth.

And are we still here?

Yeah. Yeah, we’re not going anywhere. But exponentially, every time we make these kinds of decisions in a negative way, we take that much more of the slice of our culture and being off of the face of the earth, you gonna eventually end up with nothing.

You know, if the last of the rhinos is, you know, one rhino species still on the face of the earth, is the world gonna stop turning?

Absolutely not. But boy, what a failure on our part as the supposedly most intelligent species walking on the face of the earth. Nobody should be able to make those kinds of decisions. I mean, that’s not ours to make. If they fail because they can’t thrive, that’s a whole different deal. But we as humans exacerbate that, whether it be through overhunting, habitat management or lack of management, so on, and so forth. Those are our choices. We’ve made those choices and put those animals under pressure.

It’s just important to me that we don’t think we are better than those animals. And that our job is to make sure we still got ’em. Because eventually, not in our lifetime, but who knows how many generations down the road.

What do you have left?

You got nothing left. Well, Africa’s like got nothing in it anymore. Wow.

Would that be a shocker?

You know, oh, we just hunted 10 more, just hunted 20 more, you know, but times how many more before that?

So again, not our decision to make, our job is to be as responsible as we can and then let the cards fall as they want. So to me, it’s, you know, you go to China and you see what they did during a cultural revolution when Mao said kill all the birds, truckloads of birds were shot and dumped in landfills. You still today have areas of China, and I’ve been through China a lot, there’s no bird life. And there should be, there’s trees and all the habitats there to support birds. There’s no birds. They haven’t come back yet. And that’s relatively a short time ago. So those kinds of stochastic events that that we’ve done as a human race have had huge, huge impact.

I think China’s probably the most dramatic example of that. I know there’s others throughout the world, but I mean, shoot every bird, you’ll get paid to shoot every bird that you see and bring it, get rid of them all. Just craziness like that, that has such long-term effect. But when one of the trips that Jim and I were on in China, I mean, there’s trees, and habitat, and rivers, and streams. There’s not a bird around. They should be loaded with birds. But that’s kind of the fallout from all that. So to me that plays into our quality of life and why it’s important to have all this stuff around.

Talk about the community.

How did you get the community to embrace ZooTampa, to embrace the zoo, did you have strategies?

Kind of loose strategies, but we took every opportunity. I think our biggest strategy is we took every opportunity to talk to community groups. I don’t care who they were. There was no group too small, too big. And we would send people out. I went on many of them, we did slide presentations and talked about the zoo. All positive, upbeat, you know, fun things. Just getting the awareness out there.

I don’t know if they do as much of that anymore, but they do have a lecture series that they put on every once in a while, free to the public, come on in, listen to our expert on the following. So they may not be going to sites as much as they’re doing it onsite. But yeah, we’ve done all of that. And that’s proven to be successful. I, you know, just outta curiosity for, this will be my fourth tour coming up in March with Marriott Corporate Managers. They have a meeting here in Tampa once a year. It’s all their top performers. And they set up a tour to come out to the zoo to learn about it.

These are the men and women that you will see behind the desk that are making the decisions for your stay there, encouraging you to go X, Y, Z. Many of ’em aren’t from Tampa, but they’re from other communities just to show how important zoos are. So that’s another way we do it.

What role, if any, did politicians play in the success of the zoo in Tampa?

A lot. Politicians are important in our small community, whether it be for legislative purposes, funding purposes, or just getting community support. And we’ve got a great support base with our politicians and we bring them out to the zoo frequently, they’ll come by, will have their families out, behind-the-scenes tours ’cause they’re in Tallahassee, you know, where legislation is being written. And you know, we want to know that when we’re not in the room, if something comes up pertinent to zoos that they know about us. That’s the way we’re looking at that.

When we are not in the room, are they talking about us in a positive way?

Well, if you don’t have ’em out, you don’t have ’em looking. You’ll never know. And we’ve never, I mean they’ve all come away going, man, this is fantastic. I love every part of it. So, you know, might be one of the reasons we’re getting grants and state funding approved because they know about us now.

We’re not this like Tampa, who’s that?

The second time we went up to Tallahassee to get funding for manatees, we finally knew that we had broken through when a couple of the representatives says, we knew you’d be back, ’cause you said you were gonna be back, we said yeah, we’re back. ‘Cause we need more funding. We said we did. And it really has kept up the pace that they know us now. They know that we’ve performed, like we said we were, that we’ve spent the taxpayer’s money wisely. And so it’s great. We’re reaping the benefits of all that. But that starts with the guy in your local community that goes, yeah, man, I was at the zoo with my family.

It was cool. Yeah.

How did you nurture the relationship with the press?

Well, there was some rough road, as I said during the period of distraction. We were in the newspaper every other day it seemed like. I think our approach, I don’t think, I know our approach has been, we’ve been open and honest. And I know that sounds like maybe a cliche but we’ve admitted when we were wrong, when we made a mistake. And we have showed them the good sides of the zoo and what we’re doing. And I think they appreciate it now. I don’t feel the bitterness that I did when I first got there. Like, we had one station who liked us and a couple stations didn’t like us.

It’s not like that anymore. And I think our vice president of marketing and public relations, Sandra, has done a fantastic job nurturing that behavior. You know, calling them out when they do a misquote or misidentification or something. But also then giving them opportunities to see things, you know, before it’s open to the public type of stuff. And they love that stuff. So yeah, it’s a very positive atmosphere right now.

How do you see these new technologies, Instagram, Facebook, nest cameras, helping the zoo and helping wildlife?

Yeah, it’s the way we have to communicate with this generation. That’s the way we communicate with this generation. They want to see that. You know, the cameras, doing “Secrets of the Zoo” with Nat Geo and I mean their GoPro inventory is incredible. I mean, they got cameras for everything and anything, getting shots that were totally impossible, I thought before, it’s like, ah, we can deal with that, no problem. You know, not disturbing the animal, but being able to get right up to the animal. It’s just fantastic stuff. But that’s the way this generation communicates.

And so we’ve gotta be right there in step with ’em communicating that way. Otherwise, we’re not on their radar. And again, that’s a tough group. As I said before, it’s a really tough group. So whatever we can do to get into their media stream is incumbent upon us.

Were you as director involved in fundraising?

Yeah. Yeah.

To what extent?

I didn’t do the ask. I was, you know, the color guy in a lot of cases, giving all the background information and letting our development department do the ask. But again, as we talked, it’s all about relationships. And so, you know, ask to be part of this tour, but maybe not another tour because they have a special relationship with one individual over another. Not that that other person isn’t important, but there’s a better person for that relationship. But again, I have to say, I cannot remember a case, at least, I can’t remember a case in ZooTampa where, when we asked a person, we delivered on what we said we were gonna deliver on. Like the rendition, this is always the trip wire. It doesn’t look anything like the rendition.

What happened?

We’ve never had that comment. It’s like, well, great. Love it, love it to death. So the donor thing, as you know, is highly personable and a lot of time and a lot of effort spent with donors. Our biggest donor was a wonderful, wonderful woman who has since passed away. But her foundation is still there supporting us. And she was just a champion. And you know, she would come out to the zoo at any time.

You know what?

When she showed up, you made time for her, it might not have been the most convenient time in your schedule, but you made time for her. And whether it was just, Jackie, you know, loves seeing you, you got 15 or 20 minutes, let’s walk around a little bit. She may have wanted to spend longer, that’s okay. But that 15 or 20 minutes was valuable. She knew you were busy, she knew you had other things to do that you weren’t just waiting at the phone for her to call up. But it was such a good and positive environment for her. It was a release for her. She was able to get outside and enjoy it.

Not in the middle of summer in Tampa but every other part of the year. But she just knew that she was loved at the zoo. And when the security guard at the back gate calls her out by name when she comes in to drop off her recycle stuff, she loves that. Absolutely loves it. And she’d dress you down if she didn’t like something. So it was a good relationship, but one that has benefited the zoo greatly and will continue to benefit through her foundation. Little on conservation. The adopt a national park concept seems like a natural for zoos to assist the wild.

Why do you think zoos have not picked up the challenge in more numbers?

Financial?

Is it still viable?

Yeah, I think it’s viable in certain countries where the National Park System is more established and more reliable. ‘Cause a lot of countries it’s not, you know, I’m speaking specifically of Africa right now where, you know, it’s pretty loose.

You know, if we select that national park, where’s our money going is always the question, is it really gonna go there?

How do we know it’s going there?

When we established a relationship with Swaziland and paid them over a 10-year period, we said you’ve gotta give us yearly reports, pictures, written report. And they did that reliably and we knew where the money was going. And they offered, they said, if you wanna see our bank account, we’re happy to, no, we don’t need to see the bank account. We know what we sent you. And so it was that relationship. But that’s an established national park system they’ve got. So, you know, we knew it wasn’t going for other purposes. So I think that might be the biggest tripwire for institutions.

You know, if I’m gonna send you X amount of dollars, how do I know it’s gonna get to there?

And you gotta be able to prove that to me. So I think it’s still a viable concept. I think the weakness might be in the foreign country as far as reliability goes.

Is there a wild out there or have the majority of wild spaces been turned into potentially managed wild zoos?

Yeah, I think so for the most part. I mean, you got Antarctic and the Arctic and yeah, you can say those are limitless spaces, but you know, having been to Africa as many times as I have and around, it’s like, nope, they’re just big, big, big managed pieces of land. There’s a fence somewhere, you know, there’s a fence somewhere. And that’s why when these arguments surface, especially from the animal rights community about, oh, they all need to go back to the wild. I said there is no wild, you’re just kidding yourself. Yeah, maybe 150,000 acres, that’s a lot of land. But it’s not the wild, you know, especially when you talk about species that migrate, wildebeest being one of those, they run into fences and they’re gonna continue to run into fences forever because those lands are divided up somewhere and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s the way it is.

The animals have to figure out how to get around it or over it, in the process, you’re gonna lose a certain percentage. Those losses are tolerable. So nobody gets too excited about wildebeest. But I mean, look at Wyoming and the pronghorn, you know, some of ’em figured out how to get under and over the fences. They just figured it out. But there’s fences because somebody owns that property or the federal government controls it or whatever it may be. So yeah, I would say in the purest sense of the word, no wild left, unless you’re talking Antarctica or Antarctica, it’s just, there isn’t, it’s not there.

Do you think animals need to earn their keep in a zoo?

No, I’ve always battled that. I don’t like it because, first of all, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that. I think that comes from the business side of the equation. But it’s not possible. I mean, you know, the interesting argument is like we had a philosophical discussion many years ago at ZooTampa.

It’s like, if I wanted another elephant, let’s say I had to pay, I don’t know, a hundred thousand dollars for that elephant, then the CFO jumped in and said, and where’s that money coming from?

That mean I need to increase the gate to pay for it?

Well, maybe. Maybe there’s a combination of ways we pay for that. But, you know, I understand it. What we set up in ZooTampa was the forage manager, for instance, has the entire collection what everything costs to feed, down to the nickel. Animals come and go. Well, she knows that. So you minus out the ones that left, you plus the ones that came in, the births, there’s a little bit of drag time if they’re nursing and then they’re added to the list. So we can look at our forage budget and go, okay, we’ve had a $50,000 swing, you know, in the last 60 days.

That way if the budget starts to get wonky, we know what’s going on with it. Or we can anticipate problems with the budget if there’s been a lot of collection movement. Now, one elephant’s gonna make a big impact, you know, but 10 finches, you’re barely gonna see it. But you start looking at this and it started off at the beginning to be a very laborious process, but now she’s got it pretty well dialed down. And it’s great to look at it ’cause you just to the bottom line and you see what that movement has cost the zoo. Or maybe it hasn’t cost us anything. Maybe we actually saved some money last month in animal moves. So when it comes to making ’em pay for themselves, that’s about as close as I want to get to it.

It’s just understanding that we have impact coming one way or the other, positive or negative, it’s okay.

Does space continue to be a problem for zoos and aquariums?

Yeah, yeah. Big time. We need ancillary facilities. We need remote facilities to help support our collection, breeding philosophies and actions. We need land, you know, it’s a hospital with a lot of beds in it and they’re all full. So we need to have that space available to us. And I know it’s in the long-term plans for ZooTampa. Have a facility outside the city somewhere.

Not open to the public, but just a breeding facility. Busch Gardens has one just outside Dade City. They’ve had there for years, you know, so it’s kind of the safety valve. You can send stuff out there, hold it, you know what, because it’s about collection sustainability. And the last thing you want to have is like, oh, my last male whatever, just died, old age, whatever. And I gotta start looking for another male X and I can’t find one. And you lose a couple of breeding seasons because of it. You should have something in reserve to have that.

That’s where the wild animal park was so important. Because not only did it have a collection out there that could support the zoo in some cases and the zoo could support the wild animal park, but we had off-holding as well where we had animals that weren’t on exhibit, but they were backup herds for things. So rarely did we miss a beat when it came to a breeding season, ’cause we had animals to fill the gap.

Why do you think zoos didn’t implement a major elephant national breeding program?

I don’t know if I know all the details of that.

Is that a recent?

No.

Why didn’t they do it?

Oh, why didn’t they do it?

Oh. You know, as much collaborative work as we do, sometimes we’re just very stubborn about wanting to collaborate. And I think it’s as simple as that. People just had a hard time wanting to collaborate on this and it just floors me because it’s not difficult. We should be able to collaborate on all these fronts. I don’t care what it is, an elephant or an elephant shrew, we should be able to do that. And I think, in my estimation, I think it’s as simple as that. You know, I think they made it a bigger issue than it needed to be.

It shouldn’t be that hard to do.

What do you think has been the greatest area of development in the way zoos have interpreted their collections to their visitors?

I think these close-up encounters, having keepers standing in front of exhibits, talking about what they do has been a nice positive change for the public to learn more. I used to do, I’ve actually called it a grab-and-go and I was told, don’t call it that anymore. It’s not good. But during my rounds, I would see somebody in the zoo and I would come up to ’em and say, hey, I’m doing my rounds.

Do you wanna join me?

And most of ’em were like, how much does that cost?

I said does it cost a thing?

Costs 20 minutes of your time.

And, you know, they’d join me, and walked behind-the-scenes, and well, what, looking at?

and whatcha talking about doing that?

And they enjoyed it. Then I would take ’em out another gate and exit ’em and say, thank you very much. They said wow, that was so cool. I did have one bad episode with it. And so I had to kind of take it down a little bit. I had husband, and wife, and a teenage daughter. And I came up to ’em, they said oh, that would be great. Well, the husband was talking to me and the wife and the daughter walked away, and he kept yelling at ’em, hey, Mary, and she’s not paying attention.

Hey, Mary. And then he’s like, screaming at her, Mary. And then she’s turned around.

What are you yelling about?

Why are you yelling at me?

And I said I’ll see you later. There’s something else going on here. I don’t need to be in the middle of it. I thought to myself, man, I gotta be careful here when I ask somebody, but I tell you, most people just loved it.

You know?

It was anything, I didn’t walk out going, okay, today I’m gonna do that.

The place was like, hey, wanna join me for a few minutes?

And wow.

But always the first question is, what’s this cost?

I was like, it doesn’t cost you anything.