John Chapo

John Chappo. Born in South Bend, Indiana, March 20th, 1957.

And who were your parents? What, what did they do?

I was born to Joe and Mary Ann Chappo. My dad was a, he was a draftsman. He never was able to go to college, so he wasn’t considered an engineer, but he was a draftsman with a big drawing board and he could design all kinds of equipment and machines and things like that. So he was, he was a draftsman and worked for a couple different positions, places in South Bend, Indiana. Mom was a stay at home mom until we got a little bit older, and then she went up to work in the Catholic school cafeteria that was just up the road from, from where, where we lived. So she became the assistant up there. Then she took over at the cafeteria and she did that, that and position. And then my dad passed away too young when he was in his late fifties and never really finished his career.

And so I was born to Joe and Maryanne. Good, good Catholic names in South Bend, Indiana.

And can you tell us a little about your childhood growing up?

Or were animals part of your life?

Oh, animals were definitely a part of my life. You know, I got really lucky ’cause South Bend, Indiana lived on the outside of town on Lucas Road, and there was a swamp across the street and a big woods right behind our house. So I just walked out the door and I was into wildlife. Okay. We always fed the birds. You never knew what would come to the feed or two regarding birds or raccoons or flying squirrels or deer and that kind of thing. But the swamp was across the street and I was in that swamp all the time, catching ta poles, turtles. We, we could sit at the dining room table and see birds come in, be it herons or, or wood ducks and things like that. Come into the swamp across the street, head onto the woods and back and see all kinds of animals.

And my brother and I, I dunno if you’re familiar with, have a heart traps. The good old have a heart traps that live catch of animals didn’t hurt the animal, but it was a live catch. Well just became very interested in what was around. And so we got some have a heart traps and would set them out, you know, in the field, field behind us for the forest behind us to see what we could catch. And we always used a can of sardines and you punch holes in it and wire that in there so the animal couldn’t take it off him. And then we made a little observation pen too, that when we caught the animal, we would put them in the observation pen for a while. And we caught everything from raccoons and skunks, possum box turtles, you know, a little bit of everything. And so, and my parents, God bless them, my, my mom in particular really loved animals.

We always had dogs. I always had beagles. I was raised by beagles. Okay. ’cause my dad was a hunter and encouraged us to have animals. So besides the dog had parakeets Guinea pigs. Okay. Then when I got a little bit older and started catching the turtles across the street in the swamp or the box turtles would come, you know, catch them and they’ll have a heart trap or on the road to save them from the car. And so, I mean, I had a pen out behind the garage that had a little pool in it, had box turtles in it, and blandings turtles and a little bit of everything. And, and then mom said, dad said I could have some more animals in the house, but no spiders or snakes. We did not have spiders or snakes in our house, you know, which was very, very typical back in the sixties and seventies.

People didn’t like spiders and snakes, you know, it sounds like a, sounds like a song. You know, I don’t like spiders or snakes. And so, especially when I was in high school, I actually acquired some tortoises. There was a animal dealer, reptile dealer in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Larry Lance and Midwest Reptile. And I would go with some friends and drive down there. And I came back with, you know, an elongated tortoise and a red foot tortoise. And, and you could, that was back in the days when you could order up baby hatchlings and just ship to you in the mail. Okay. So I had a little bit of everything, especially turtles and, or little lizards.

And my dad built me a big shelf and everything in the basement so I could keep all these animals. And, and it was just, and then when I was a young volunteer at the Awa Zoo, in about 15, they had a little Cayman, which is a South American alligator that was, that death star wasn’t doing very well. It was, it’s kind of upstairs in the bar and, and an aquarium. And the zoo director says, oh, you can have it. It’s gonna die. Anyway. Well, I took a challenge and I took home some beef heart from, from the zoo and sliced it up real small and started force feeding it down down his throat. And he grew and grew and grew. And I kept him for years. And so my folks were very, very permissive of letting me have some animals in the house.

And my mom in particular, we went to the library all the time. Once a week on Fridays. Mom would pick us up at school, head to the library, head to the library. I always headed to the zoo section. I always headed to the zoo section. And my mom said, oh, this is a fun book. It was Gerald Durrell’s Menagerie Manor, God bless Gerald Durrell. He really lit my fire when I was in about fifth or sixth grade.

And Menagerie manner was just a classic back then for people who loves Zoo was about Gerald Durrell’s building the zoo on the Isle of Jersey in, in the Channel Islands. And he had other books too that I’d read, you know, animals in My Suitcase and all kinds of fun books like that. And I just ate those up. And any other zoo book I could find in the library, I, I read and read and said, this is my career. This is what I really want. Again, my, my parents encouraged my interest in animals and go to the library and reading and getting educated. And I just kept growing my interest in working at a zoo. I have to add back up.

When you caught the skunk in the trap, how did you deal with that?

You, you very gingerly walk over and unhook the little latch that holds the door shut. Then you get a very long 10 foot clothes line pole. That was back when people hung their clothes out on clothes lines. And you had these very long aluminum poles with little fork on the end for holding the clothes line up. ’cause when you put the clothes on it, it would sag. So you needed the clothes line pole to hold, hold it up. I’d get that and hide behind the cage. So the animal couldn’t see me pro push it open, because there’s a little lever that would open the door, and then you put a brick behind it and you keep the door propped open and you leave so he can leave.

When he was ready to go. And I can even remember the neighbor down who I, I mowed their lawn. They had skunks in their backyard and they were really upset. And I set a trap to help move the animal out. I caught three baby skunks and I took that to the pet shop. And, ’cause I didn’t know what to do with these animals back then. I didn’t, she wanted me to kill ’em. And I said, I’m not gonna do that. The zoo that I eventually ran, bought them from the pet shop.

Pet shop gave me credit and I was able to get a turtle and swap for, for the skunks. But yeah, it was just kind of, I lived in the country and just thrived on it. And we’re talking about, you said you had a turtle credit for bringing the skunks and so forth. You had a fairly large turtle collection, right? Turtle tortoise, Yes, I did. I think I got up to onwards of 30 plus at one time that I had acquired different ways. People didn’t want them anymore, or I went into certain species and I had actually built a huge pen when I moved out. And this was, I acquired more once I moved out of the house. Okay. Okay. From my parents. I had a good number.

But then I grew up and I, I bought my own little house in, in, in, in South Bend, Indiana, and established a big facility in the basement. I’ve actually built pens in the basement that I could keep all my turtles and tortoises in. And, and just kept, and again, kept going on to that animal dealer that, that reptile dealer and just acquired them. Eventually though, I even moved to Nebraska as an adult for the job at, at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. And, but once sun started coming along, my wife said, we need to start making room for, for children here and not turtles. And she was absolutely right. And so actually one of my, my big Leo tortoise went to the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago back when Ray Pauley was curator. Okay. And he was excited to get this beautiful male leore tortoise.

’cause I guess there weren’t a lot in captivity then for breeding purposes. Several years later though, Ray Polly calls me up and says, hate to tell you John, but that, that that tortoise got stolen out of the exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo. So they actually walked out with a large breeding male lipper tortoise. Yeah. It was just so, and then I sent another tortoise down to the Tampa Zoo, down to Lowery Park Zoo for their exhibit and for their breeding purposes. And yeah.

Would you say you started out as a herpetologist?

Oddly, yes. Okay. And it all goes back to my freshman year in high school, I guess turtles were easy to acquire and I was very fascinated by them. And my freshman year in, in, in high school, another guy in my homeroom, John Burling, was very interested in snakes and reptiles. Okay. And we started talking. And then there was even a mini course at school that, that year that he taught. And we formed the Northern Indiana Herpetological Society. Okay. It sounds pretty fancy. And he actually got connected with a well-known herpetologist at the University of Notre Dame.

And we were able to go, and Dr. Adler, who I think just passed away not too long ago, welcomed us into, into his facility and gave us a tour and visited with us numerous times. So we had questions, but we would go see Dr. Adler at the University of Notre Dame and the herpetology department and learn more. And he’d give us lessons and things like that informally, of course. And that group of, we just kind of kept growing that group of, we all went to high school together and we were all geeks. It was a simple, you know, the, some, the, the little, the the little class. That was one week they did these things called mini courses and students could teach the mini courses in place of a class or whatever.

And we had herpetology, well, people showed up ’cause they thought it was herbology herbology. It was about plants and herbs. No, it’s about reptiles. And so it was a small cadre of geeks. Okay. And John, who formed that group, I still keep in contact with him. He’s a retired pre professional, I believe, of psychology. Okay. And he lives in Tucson. And he still has some tortoises and snakes. And he would go out every now and then in Tucson and move the rattlesnakes off the road and things like that. Yeah.

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

When I was growing up, you know, because I grew up in South Bend, Indiana, just 90 miles east of Chicago, could convince my folks to, let’s go to the Brookfield Zoo, the famous Brookfield Zoo. Okay. So almost annually we would do a summer trek to the Brookfield Zoo to see what they have, you know, at the Brookfield Zoo. And then I discovered the Lincoln Park Zoo as well, and, and toured the Lincoln Park Zoo. And I said, you know, mom and dad, we can drive up to Milwaukee, we can drive to Detroit, you know, go down to Fort Wayne. And so anytime I could convince my folks to drive someplace to see a zoo, they would do it again. Because mom loved animals and because my dad loved my mom, you know, we’d jump in the car, you know, for, for an excursion. I was, I was born very much a, a working class family though, so we always tailgate, had our sandwiches in the car and never could buy that zoo food. It was way too expensive. And it wasn’t very good back then either.

So yeah. Just all kinds of zoos. So tell me about your schooling.

Obviously, grammar school, high school, but where did you go to school for your higher education?

I went to any, the Indiana University campus at South Bend, that was literally across the street from the Potawatomi Zoo. Powan Zoo is in a park called Potawatomi Park Mis Walk Avenue. And there was Indiana University, literally across the street. So I could actually go from cage to classroom wearing my zookeeper clothes. Some people didn’t really appreciate it. Okay. In five minutes. So, I mean, with the university right across the street from me, it was very, very handy at the zoo because, you know, I started volunteering at the zoo at 15, at the Potawatomi Zoo and taking care of their reptiles. At 16, I landed the job, the first concession job they ever had. They were on those little tacky little white boots.

Concession. I landed a part-time zookeeper job when I was 18 after I finished high school. But in my first year in college, I went to college full-time and just worked on weekends at the zoo. Okay. I worked two 12 hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays when I went to school Monday through Friday at the campus across the street. Then I finished my freshman year. Then I was offered a full-time job as a zookeeper. And so I had to turn down my scholarship and I told my folks, I’ll pay for my university. Okay. I’ll pay for college. And that was back when creta was 1250, $12 and 50 cents an hour.

Okay. And so I said, it’s gonna take me longer than I’d hoped for. So it took me four years to get an associate degree in business administration. I’ve never been a scientist, never, never go to a, biology is very microbiology. It was very, very hard for me. I just, it never clicked. Okay. So it took me two years to get a four year degree, but then I went on to get a, a bachelor’s in Public Environmental Affairs with an emphasis on policy and administration. Well, to, to get that four year degree. It was a grand total of 10 years of going to school. But I was able to go to school part-time from the zoo across the street to university.

And so that’s why I’ve got a, a degree in public and environmental affairs, not sociology, not biology, but basically management with the, with a minor in sociology and accounting. Now, you mentioned that one teacher, Mr. Smith, has an influence on your life.

Did in college, did any other teacher have an effect on your life? And if so, how?

Mr. Smith was my high school biology teacher. Okay. And he just, he really liked me, even though I was one of his worst students. Again, I microbiology just, you know, it, it just D-N-A-R-N-A and you know, it’s just, it never clicked in my little brain. Things that I couldn’t see when he had to use a microscope, you know, or theoretical. It’s just, you know, I’m a mega vertebrate guy. Guy, you know, I just, I gotta see the thing. But he was very patient with me. I got horrible grades. I mean, B, C’s and D’s and, and, you know, but No, but Mr. Smith was, he was really, he was really important to me, you know, because he, he just put up with me and kept encouraging me.

And so, you know, you know, my parents, again, I, they were very, very supportive of me and really wanted me to pursue things that I, that I wanted to do. Who else was influential? It’s a smart question. You know, like I said, my predecessor at South South Bend, he was negatively influential. ’cause it’s like, I don’t want to do things the way he did things regarding animal care and welfare, it just wasn’t right. I felt. And so he was very, very, very old school and I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. So, and there I, like, I I’ve been touched by a lot of other zoo professionals, Earl Wells, you know, who he rest in peace was at the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo. He was really inspirational. But, but then people I read about, you know, I’m always been a Dr.

Seuss fan, you know, Tracy and I have four Lorax prints hanging in our bedroom. Okay. Because of the Lorax. Jim Henson with the Muppets was always an inspiration. Okay. So, and Gerald Durrell, you know, with the Jersey Wildlife Reservation Trust. So I just read a lot and got inspired by a lot of other people that way. Now we’ll go on to your zoo career.

When, when did you really decide you wanted to work at a zoo?

And did you have any aspirations about being very high up on the food chain?

Or what, what started you to say, I wanna work at a zoo?

Even if it was, as you started at Potawatomi as a volunteer in 1972, I knew in sixth grade I wanted to be a zoo guy. I knew in because of all the books I was reading and, and going to zoos and, you know, my folks would take me to a zoo and they’d go, you know, every animal here, you know, every species that it is. I mean, you can identify, you know, whatever it is. You know, because I read and read and read constantly and just wanted to get exposed to, to, to, to animals in nature. I knew in sixth grade that I wanted to be a zoo guy. Okay. It’s as simple as that. And so I wrote, you know, when I was in my early teens, like I said, 14, 15, I wrote a couple letters to the zoo director at the zoo thing. I wanna come volunteer. I wanna come volunteer.

They didn’t no volunteer program. I was annoying. I was annoying to him. He didn’t wanna put up with me in any way, shape or form. And then the Northern Indiana Herpetological Society, the guys, we convinced them to let us put a display in the window of the Lion House of some of our animals, boas and turtles. And so I had a couple of my aquariums of smaller turtles there. And I said, I’m volunteering here. Now I’m, because these are my animals taking care of them. Okay, fine, fine, fine. I wanna do other volunteer work. Well, he said, fine.

So picture the old ancient WPA zoo building Lion house stone, the cages upstairs, you know, the cage with the chimpanzee in the corner and the cage. That’s, you know, eight by eight by eight. Okay. And the concrete steps that go down past the, the chimp cage and the chimp looks at grab, grab your hair or flick fecal material at you. He took me down there. He says, here, you take care of these. He had tubs of turtles in the basement of the Lion House in these horrible conditions, just these plastic tubs. He says, here, you take care of them. I went, okay. So every Saturday I couldn’t drive.

My mom would take me to the zoo. I’d have them let me into the basement. I’d take, I changed the water and clean it all, scrub it all out and everything. And just kept doing that. He could not dissuade me from volunteering at the zoo. Okay.

He couldn’t. And I said, does you know any other volunteer work?

He says, oh yeah, you should go out and help Charlie out in the goat area right now. Well, he knew that Charlie had, pardon me, a deceased goat in one of the barns out there that he had a haul out of the barn. And he was sticking me with hauling that deceased goat out. I did that and he just couldn’t dissuade me. He couldn’t dissuade me. Then he had a couple of tegu lizards in a very large 55 gallon aquarium. Tegu, you know, these Colombian black and white tegu lizards. These were wild caught animals.

This was back in the seventies when everything was wild caught back in the seventies. Nasty, wild. Caught with big O teeth on him. And he would say, clean that out. He said, I’ve never handled that. I’m like that, figure it out. I said, okay, I’ll figure it out. So I, I mean, I’m not that tall and the aquarium was up on a stand. So I got a still to stand on and I went, John, everything you’ve learned in read, I was able to reach in, grab it just right support.

Right. You know, behind the head, support it just Right. Transfer it over into a little holding area. Did that with the other one, cleaned it out, put it all back together. And he, he was, you really are stubborn. I mean, he, he couldn’t dissuade me at all. And then, so I kept volunteering every Saturday and eventually they opened up a concession stand and he saw that I was a responsible young man and offered me the first concession job. And I was still volunteering at the zoo and getting paid a dollar an hour to work in the concessions, a dollar an hour. Then I went up to a dollar 15 hour.

Boy, I was making big money working. I got to work at the zoo. I wasn’t taking care of animals, but I was at the zoo doing concessions. And so that was so important for me to be making money and working at the zoo, even though I wasn’t doing zoo work. Well now you said that you, when you started in 72 as the volunteer Yeah.

Aside from the WPA building, what kind of zoo did you find?

Old WPA chain link boxes along that, you know, that, that Old Lion house, I mean, we’re talking chain link boxes with very heavy chain link that housed adult bears. Okay. Concrete slab chain link boxes. You just hose it down with a two inch fire hose or the monkey exhibit. That was the exact same thing. Or the, the, the, the little wolf cage that was the size of this, this room that we’re in. Very, very small. You know, hoofstock, you know, cows over here, elk pen over there, llamas over here, you know, your typical zoo of the seventies regarding hoofstock and some cats and bears and, and monkeys and cages. I mean, they even had dog kennel size cages that were like four feet by eight feet by six feet tall that they had like adult manga bees in a big, a big monkey. And, and you just host it out.

Or I had to go in with spider monkeys and clean them out and things like that. You know, it was just not very, a very impressive zoo at all. Who was the director of the zoo That at that time was Craig McCowen. And he had started as a youngster too, working in, in the park in the zoo, probably when he was around 18 years old after high school. And he just worked his way up. Yeah. And you’d mentioned you move on to concessions.

That was part-time or full-time?

Oh, that was, that was weekends. ’cause I was just a 16-year-old kid. Yeah.

And, and you were selling, what were you selling?

We had a popcorn machine, you know, and prepackaged candy and those kinds of things. Then we really went uptown and got a cotton candy machine, you know, and the, the coke dispensing machines, you know, things like that. There was this, you know, those really tacky metal concession stands that are portable. They had bolted two of those things together. And that’s what I got to work in. And it was pretty, pretty crude. And you became a zookeeper in 1975. And how did you get that job? You just applied for it.

And was that the road to your career you thought?

Yeah. You know, there was zoo really needed a weekend person. Okay. Because it is, you know, union Zoo. And they needed a union person to work 12 hour days on Saturdays and Sundays. Okay. To just basically do the afternoon work, kind of be the live body there in case there was a problem. Open the zoo and close the zoo. Okay. ’cause the zoo was free. We just swung the gates wide open and, and, but there was always afternoon feedings and you know, you hose down the bear cage in the morning, but it has fe filled with fecal material in the afternoon. So I had to go back and hose everything down again.

And so, I mean, I was the only zoo personnel on the grounds. And, you know, you gotta milk a cow every 12 hours. So the morning keeper would milk the cow at seven o’clock and then I would milk the cow at seven o’clock in the evening before I went home. And so it was those kinds of really basic things. I mean, I had the keys to the zoo. I was basically in charge. ’cause there was no other personnel there whatsoever. So if there was escape or any kind of issue or anything like that, you know, it was basically my zoo as this young 18-year-old kid greenhorn kid.

Now later you, you move up to zookeeper three.

Yep. Does that mean more responsibilities?

Yep, yep, yep. I got, I was assigned the newest building, the Clark Allison Mezo Animal Kingdom Building or something like that. Had indoor exhibits and things like that. That was my supervisory responsibility. And we had aquariums to, to take care of and things like that. It was a more complex building than any place else in the zoo. So I got moved up to, yeah, I moved up the ranks just because I was tenacious and I was gonna keep doing it.

In 1979, you become head keeper. How did that occur?

Again, just kept pushing it, kept being there, kept doing it. Keep getting more responsibility. Just, I just was very persistent. Just wanted to keep doing it. I wanted to do it better. I just wanted to keep doing things better.

So, at that time, are you starting in any way to form a philosophy about zoos?

Or you’re just happy to be there?

I, you know, a little bit of both. You know, I was just ecstatic to be there with the animals and doing that work. And I felt responsible. Doing that and being responsible was really important to me. But I, yeah, I started forming a philosophy about zoos should be breeding centers, you know, for, for endangered animals, should, you know, should not be taking things out of the wild anymore. Should be more responsible with their animals and things like that. Yeah. That, that’s, that’s, that’s a good question because that’s basically when I started forming a philosophy of that zoos needed to be more active in saving endangered species. So now in 80, 19 82, you move up to Assistant zoo director.

And how did that happen?

The, the assistant, the other assistant zoo director retired. And she kind of did different things. But the, the zoo director needed somebody to handle that zoological society, those rich ladies. Okay. Because we had a group of citizens who wanted to support the zoo. And the last thing he wanted to do was to work with those rich ladies, be around those rich people. He was not a people person. He just wanted to be in his office. He didn’t wanna be anywhere near them, but he knew somebody had to work with those rich ladies.

’cause they wanted to help do fundraising for the zoo. And he needed somebody to organize special events at the zoo. So, sadly, everything that I loved at the zoo got taken away from me. And I got taken away from being an hourly person to be a salaried person. And all of a sudden, when I’m assistant director, I’m creating events like Zoo Fest, which was a, a carnival at the zoo to bring people to the zoo in the summertime with elephant rides and pony rides and things like that. Even brought in a traveling circus of just acrobatic people and brought in food booths and, and, you know, other kinds of wear booths. So I created Zoo Fest. I created Zoo Tide, like yo tie, but Zoo Tide, a Christmas holiday event with lights and everything at the zoo.

I worked with the Zol Lounge ’cause design ladies, we had an event called Zari, which was a, which was the dinner in the zoo. Steaks cooked on the grill and corn on the cob. And we had carriage rides through the zoo. It was a very high end thing with the wealthy, wealthy couples in, in South Bend. I did all that because he didn’t wanna work with them. I mean, they were the rich. Hmm. But, you know, ladies. And so I created all these and started building that relationship with them to, to promote the zoo and make the zoo more successful and started raising money for the zoo. Was this the same zoo director? Yeah.

Yes it was. He didn’t wanna have anything to do with any of that. He knew it had to happen, but he didn’t wanna do it. And so, and he wanted to punish me and take me away from all the animal responsibilities. It’s like, well, I wanted to be the zoo person. I needed to learn and I needed to grow in the profession. And so I took the job as an assistant that took me away from the animals for those three years. Now in 1983, you go to the Jersey Zoo to study.

How does this come about?

You know, I had read for years about Gerald Durrell and the Jersey Zoo. Then I saw somewhere advertised that they were doing a summer school on Jersey for zoo professionals and people interested in breeding, you know, an endangered species management. So I applied and they accepted me. I had to pay for it all myself. I had to pay for the schooling. I had to, you know, take vacation time. I had to pay the transportation to fly to England, you know, and all the costs there. But I really, really wanted to do it because that was the dream.

Gerald Durrell was, he was God. Okay. And I, and this was his zoo. He wasn’t there at the time, sadly. But I got to go to the famous Jersey Wildlife Reservation Trust and learn and meet people from around the world, from Denmark and Mexico, Mauritius. There was an international gathering of people, New Zealand, all kinds of us. We all gathered there. All, all younger people, field conservationist, people who were just going to college to study herpetology and things like that. They accepted us. And we went to school at, at the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust.

Were there any people aside from you, from the United States?

There were a couple. There was a lady who had a private collection of cheetahs and was breeding cheetahs up, up in Northwest United States. A couple other students from the United States. A young man who was like 18, who was heading off to college and became a professor of herpetology, I believe went on.

So, yeah. Or was he Canadian?

But there were, there were United States people. Yeah.

What value would you say your school in New Jersey gave you?

Was it important and why?

What feeling? Oh, Well, what value would you say this professional growth gave you and why was it important and to your professional growth?

Boy, it opened the world to me. It, it, it, it told me so much that there were people like me around the world committed to making it happen. I mean, you gotta remember that, like I said, this was 1983. There was no internet. There was, you know, there’s no, there’s no social media. You know, there was, you didn’t research stuff like this very easily ’cause it was all print. Okay. I mean, it just was hard to find out what was happening in the world over 40 years ago. And so I meet these people from around the world who are excited to go back to their countries and help, help make wonderful things happen.

And I go to the Jersey, Wally Preservation Trust and go, this isn’t a fancy zoo. They’ve got spectacle bears, which are now called Andy and Andy and Bears. They had Rodriguez Fruit bats, which many years later I sent our curator from when I was a director at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. I sent our curator to Jersey to come back with 10 Rodriguez fruit bat because it was the most endangered bat in the world at the time. There only like 200 left in the world. So I, I learned that you didn’t need fancy PE facilities. You needed committed people, you needed some resources, and he needed to care. And so I just learned so much there in tho those several weeks of just being there and talking to those people and, and, and hearing what they had to share, share.

And it was just, I learned to listen very careful because of all the accents around the table during dinner and breakfast and things like that. It was just a phenomenal opening of the world to me about all these people from around the world. It’s a phenomenal world and we can make things happen. Do you still have contact with any of your classmates? No, Sadly I did for several years. Okay. Some are deceased. I mean, a good number of them actually are, are deceased now, sadly to say I’d even arranged to have some animals imported. But when I was in Lincoln and that, that fell through for a couple reasons from different countries. No, sadly, those relationships, they just went aside.

So, because Keep in mind, it was hard to communicate back then. I mean, it was all letter writing. I couldn’t make telephone call to New Zealand. Okay. Or to Mauritius. There probably wasn’t even a telephone in Mauritius. Okay. So it, that was 1983. Now in 1984, you become director of the Potawatomi Zoo.

How does this happen?

I was really young too. I was born in 57. Do the math on that one. Well, the zoo director was moved aside. He, they weren’t happy with him for some reason. And I was offered the, the position and damn right, I’m gonna take that job. I, I wanted that job. I wanted to be a zoo director for, you know, ever since I got into, when I really started growing up in the zoo world, I said I wanted to be a zoo director. ’cause I wanted to affect good change.

I want to do it right. I want to help the animals out. I want to affect good change. And so, by God and Gloria, I was gonna become a zoo director.

So the parks director, the parks superintendent, who the zoo director answered to said, you want it?

I said, you damn right. I want it. So I got the gig, boy was I stepped into it. So you stay as zoo director Yeah. For approximately one year. Yep. Which seems like a short time.

It was. And, and then you go to another zoo, which we’ll discuss, but why your stadium director’s brief. Why?

Because I was a cocky smart mouth independent guy who wasn’t gonna be told no, I, I loved the zoo and I was gonna do everything I could for the zoo. And I worked really, really hard for the zoo. And I developed lots of relationships in the community. Media loved me. Okay. Radio, tv, I did all kinds of interviews. We’d had them out to the zoo. Donors liked working with me. We kept raising funds for the zoo.

And the mayor got his nose out of Ben, got outta shape. The mayor wasn’t able to raise funds for his pet projects. But the zoo was raising money for zoo projects. Okay. When you work at a city zoo, the mayor’s your ultimate boss. Oh. But I was young and cocky and he’d tried to make some accusations, you know, against me. And I’m going, no, you’re all wrong. Those aren’t right. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re making stuff up. Okay. You’re a politician. And when you get into an argument on the front page of the newspaper with the mayor and you work for the mayor, it’s not a real smart thing to do when you’re cocky young guy.

Okay. And so I came into an agreement that I would leave the zoo. That I always wanted to run forever and grow up because it was my hometown zoo. I wanted, that was gonna be my, I was gonna retire from that zoo. But I said, I said I just had to walk away. So we had a settlement and I walked away from the zoo. But then the society hired me part-time to run their events and to work for them. Okay. Because there was nobody at the zoo helping them out do their stuff. Okay. So there I was with the support organization working at the zoo that I used to run.

Okay. And I said, I’ll give myself a year to find another zoo. You know, and if I don’t find another zoo in that year, I will find another job in South Bend, Indiana in my hometown. And I had other job offers and I did different things. I tore furnaces out of old buildings. I put up Christmas decorations. I just had to make my $185 a month mortgage payment with my little house. That’s all I had to do. And so that was a rough year for me, but it made me stronger.

Who replaced you at the zoo as director?

I’m trying to recall because it was a revolving door for many years. It, it was a revolving door for many years. I know Phil Frost, who’s retired from Baton Rouge Zoo, was there for a while. It was Johnny Martinez, who’s also retired from the Moto Zoos, was there for a while. Larry Rell, who’s retired from, from a zoo up in New York, was there for a while. Different people over the years. I think a guy who used to work at Lincoln Park Zoo in the reptile department. What was his name? Who took over for Eddie Clarence Wright.

Clarence Wright ran the zoo for a while. Yes, exactly. So it was just kind of a revolving door and ’cause it was a city zoo, there wasn’t any commitment from the city to keep the zoo thriving and going strong. I think subsequently the new gentleman there who is there today, has been making great things happen at the zoo, is my understanding. I’ve not been back to Potawatomi for years. I need to sometime. But, so I think that current gentleman is really giving it heck and doing a good job. So you moved from Potawatomi to Lincoln Children’s Zoo.

How does this happen?

You’re interviewing all over, they come to you. How does that happen?

Well, my good friend Earl Wells was the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo. He was also a zoo consultant. And he was consulting with the zoo. The Lincoln Children’s Zoo back then in 1986, was known as the Folsom Children’s Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Okay. It was incorporated originally in 1965 as the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. But upon the, the, the passing of the zoo founder, who was the volunteer and gave the original $5,000 Mr. Ar Folsom, they renamed it after him upon his death. Okay. And the zoo had some gardens, so they added them in botanical gardens to it.

Well, Earl was consulting with the zoo at that time to upgrade it and remodel it. And the zoo director left at that time in February of 86. And Earl said, here, write, write a letter to this lady. So I wrote a letter to that lady and the lady called me a correspondent and she says, here, apply to here. So I sent my resume and all this, and I was one of two people interviewed for the job. And one of the people who was the vice President of the Zoo Society of the Zoo at the time was a bit of an Anglo file. And she was very intrigued by my time in England and my history. And I, and I told them point blank.

I said, you know, it was political reasons why I lost my, I left my previous zoo and they said most of the applicants left for political reasons. It was kind of hot right then. And so that my predecessor left in February and I started in April. That they, they said, we need, so the zoos it, a zoo is very seasonal at the time. We’re opening up in May. We need you to get out here now. I mean, they literally flew me out, interviewed me, called me a couple days later and said, you got the job if you want it, can you fly out this weekend to find a place to live and get out here as fast as you can. I was single. I had a beagle and a cat and some turtles and tortoises packed it all up and Big U-Haul and drove it all out. Who did he replace? Allen Beatz.

He was, he, he I think spent like 13 years there.

And did he give you any advice or you never met him?

Never met him. Okay. I had met him previously when I was the director. When we had, I had met him in Miami at a national, A-Z-A-A-A-Z-P-A conference. I had met him, we’d had gone dinner together, but that was the only time I ever met the man.

So in this instance, what type of zoo did you find?

It was a zoo job. I really wanted a private zoo. Not a municipal zoo. ’cause I had had my fail of being a politician my 10 years at a municipal zoo. And when you’re at a municipal zoo, politics rears his ugly head so many times in your decision making that it was just getting ridiculous. So I went at a private zoo. The Lincoln Children’s Zoo is 100% private governed by board of directors. So I was very excited. And it was a zoo. Well, the zoo was kind of rough around the edges.

Okay. Hodgepodge, not a lot of thought to it. Seasonal zoo, I mean, literally it closed. Zoo Zoo was built originally to open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. And then after that, the zoo moved all its animals out there was from Labor Day to Memorial Day. Basically there were no animals on the zoo grounds for the first 10 years. Okay. But with different things changing in the seventies, the Endangered Species Act, the USD Animal Welfare Act, different things, different legislation, animal welfare, A ZA things started changing in the mid seventies. And so all of a sudden the zoo had to start housing animals on a year-round basis. But keep in mind the zoo, it’s like, it’s like a summer cottage.

Okay. Summer cottage, bare bones, maybe a light bulb or two very little, no running water to speak of just a rough little cottage. That’s basically how the Lincoln Children’s Zoo was built because it was not gonna house animals on a year round basis. So imagine moving into a cottage in Nebraska or you know, middle part of the country and living in there year round. There was only one building that kind of had heat in it. And so it was a, the animal care was not very good, especially in, in the off season. And for, for winter facilities. I mean, it was very rough. I mean, lions were left outside during the winter time and their whole shelter was a concrete culvert. This is Lincoln, Nebraska.

It gets cold in Lincoln, Nebraska. So yeah, it, the animal has been really, is pretty rough when I walked in.

And as a new zoo director, what were your priorities?

What did you want to accomplish? First I wanted to and, and improve the facility. Look at the animal welfare. And, but I asked the board chair who signed the letter, an offer and who basically hired me, Bob Nevsky, may rest in peace, a wonderful person.

I said, Bob, what are my instructions?

Okay, I’m your zoo director. What’s your expectations?

He said, John, this should guide you. Public welfare and safety is number one. Staff safety and welfare is number two. Animal safety and welfare is number three. So when I get there and I walk around the zoo and the zoo’s literally crawling with rats in the daytime. Rats running around, open to the public, going, this is all kinds of welfare here. When I discover that the drinking fountain for the public is connected to the irrigation system without a backflow preventer. So there’s a backflow and there’s water in the ground right next to the swan pool, which is where the drinking fountain was.

Then when you turned on the drinking fountain, you could theoretically be sucking up swan fecal. I said I knew what my priorities had to be to start making improvements at the zoo. And the zoo board had just had a fundraiser and had some funds set aside for capital improvements. So I took to them a list of capital improvements. You know, the water, you know, the water situation. They had to, had to do the rat. You know, extermination had some other projects there. I mean there were animals there with no shelter.

No shelter in Lincoln, Nebraska, no roof over their head. I said, I went, I need to establish some sheltering for these llamas and these animals. And I gave them my list. They approved it and we started making our improvements there. And we had, we were housing, imagine an eight by 12 room with two Clydesdale horses in it. That’s where these horses were kept. Two clydesdales, gray, big horses in this very small area. Okay. Standing there all day long.

It’s just like, it wasn’t right. There was a thing called the step in and playpens the step in and Playpens basically were a box size of a couple dining room tables with step with seats all the way around it. Flat seats. And they had Guinea pigs running in it and chicks running around in it. And the children were encouraged just to pick up the animals Okay. And step in and play with them. Legs got broken, animals got injured, killed. I ended up nicknaming them the mutilation pen. Okay. That got shut down really quickly.

So it was, animal welfare was priority, public safety. So those are my initial changes that I started that was starting to guide my, my decision making.

And the money came from where now?

From Watsu Lincoln? Yeah. The Money came from where to run the zoo. It was, the zoo has always been ever since incorporated. Completely private contributions, memberships, all earned revenue, concession stand gifts, all that has always run the zoo. When I stepped into the zoo, you know, the budget was probably $200,000 a year. $250,000 a year. Now it’s a $10 million operation. But it is either earned or contributed for all the operational dollars.

And how did you get the, what were your strategies to get the community to embrace the zoo?

You know, I wasn’t at the zoo. I stepped in on Monday and on the zoo director’s calendar was to talk to the Kiwanis Club on Friday noon. 200, 200 guys. Then it was just a men’s club. 200 guys in a big room in downtown, in a cafeteria. I had no idea where I was going. I, I was on the agenda, I was the key speaker. I started a Monday, this is Friday. I walk in and go, you know ladies, you know gentlemen.

’cause there were no ladies at the time going, I’m the new guy in town, I’ve got some ideas, I wanna hear from you. Okay. And guys came up afterwards, they said, we’re gonna make this a priority project. You gotta join this club. We’re gonna make this a priority project. Because what I, what I discovered, and that was one of the first ones I discovered, but you know, when I was in South Bend, Indiana and I would go out and talk to groups, service clubs, you know, ladies clubs and things like that.

Go, you know, who, and I would say, well, who’s been to the PA MOU lately?

And maybe a fourth of the hands would go up.

Well, when I did that in Lincoln, I’d go and talk to these groups going, who’s been to the zoo lately?

Sometimes every hand in the room would go up. And I’m going, there’s a different perception in this community about this zoo. And so I pulled out the zoo archives. The zoo had actually saved the junior league years ago, had gotten a grant to organize the founder’s papers, Mr. Arne Folsom papers. And what I discovered was Mr. Folsom, not only did he give the first $5,000, but Mr. Folsom talked to everybody to build that Lincoln Children’s Zoo, to give Lincoln a children’s zoo. If you were a kind of industry, he’d ask you for a four digit gift.

Okay? If you were a kid riding a bicycle, he’d say, go pick up some pop bottles, get them redeemed and bring me the money. He’d send thank you letters to kids who made 35 cents in pop bottles. Or he’d send the thank you letter to the guy who made thousands of dollars of contribution. Okay. But, and when I just, and this building was built by the fire department, this building was built by the police volunteers, this building it, it was just all this community work. Built the zoo, funded the zoo, put their labor in the zoo. Now it took a while to get there. Okay. The zoo incorporated in 1959, and the saying was, you’ll do the zoo in 62. Then it was, we’ll see in 63.

Well finally in July of 65, the zoo did open, but it had Mr. Folsom at scavenge lamppost from the city that they weren’t using anymore. And bricks for sidewalks. He was a great scavenger and resource developer besides the money. Okay. And the zoo opened in 1965, but the community is what built the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. And I said, that is, we need to stay connected with, and to this day, the zoo will be celebrating its 16th anniversary in 2025. The community built the zoo has taken care of the zoo, loves their zoo. The community has always stayed attached to the Lincoln Children’s Zoo.

So did you felt that you’ve served on many community boards?

Oh yeah. Did, did, did you feel then that this enhanced the community embracing the zoo?

Oh yes. Abs they, they saw that the zoo leadership was all about community and collaborating. Okay. Working with human service agencies, working with all kinds. I, I served on the Human Services Federation. I even chair the Human Services Federation. I served on the Humane Society board. You know, I served on a church board. I, the Mayor’s advisory committee, you know, water Conservation Task Force, all these right there in Lincoln. I currently wrapping up my term, Nebraska Tourism Commission are appointed by two different governors, well, three actually different governors who appointed me to serve for the Nebraska Tourism Commission.

So community service, I needed to lead that. I needed to have that face out there. I needed to collaborate with all those community stakeholders. Okay. And that was a chief drive of mine. I was a Kian, you know, working in the QAs Club, I was served as Kian for 35 years. So it was very important for me to continue that community connectivity and build that and keep that connectivity strong.

So you were also a founding member of the Nebraska Museum Association?

Yes, I was Founding member.

What do you think zoo and museums have in common?

Well, you know, the bottom line is we all curate collections. You know, I don’t care if it’s a quilt museum, I don’t care if it’s a children’s zoo, I don’t care. You know, Nebraska has rich history and so many communities have the mom and pop museum from the area, you know, broken Bow, broken Bow. Nebraska has its own county museum, and it’s the history of its county. Things that had been in that county since it incorporated back in the 18 hundreds and things like that. So there’s all kinds of little museums across Nebraska, arboreta, you know, as a statewide arboretum network in Nebraska. And so there’s just all kinds of collections. Union Pacific had its own museum, the big railroad. Okay.

So we got together to, to build connectivity, develop professionalism, and develop tourism more in the state of Nebraska, collaborate because it was, again, it was all about collaborating and helping each other become stronger.

And, and while you were at the zoo, you had a unique experience to go to the White House. How did that happen?

It was quite a lucky experience. It was back when George W. Bush was in the White House. Laura was very, very supportive of museums and libraries. Mrs. Bush was herself a professional museum professional, okay. And when the Bushes were in Dallas, Mrs. Bush sat on the Dallas Zoo Board of Directors. So Mrs. Bush really knew, but the Institute of Museum, the Institute of Museum and Library Services is one state was is a federal agency that’s out there to help museums and libraries improve their collections, their management, their their, their strategic planning, all sorts of things like that. So they had different initiatives of funding to help move conservation projects forward. If it’s conserving textiles, conserving living collections, whatever it was.

But because the zoo world is a museum, okay, because we curate zoos are part of that, just like botanical gardens are, you know, and nature centers and all kinds of historical museum and natural history museums and art museums. But there was a thing, there’s a competition during, during her, her, her, her presence in the White House by the Institute, museum of Armed Services regarding community service awards. And so every year they would choose three museums and three libraries. And I think the Art Train was one that selected that year. But the Lincoln Children’s Zoo got selected to take the top honors in the country. We were the only zoo there. I believe the Shed Aquarium was there. At the same time, there’s only three zoos in the country, to my knowledge as of to this day, has ever received the top award in this country from the White House.

And that’ll be the Bronx Zoo and in New York City, the, the, the San Diego Zoo in San Diego and the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. And so I got to go to the White House after lots of security checks, take along a coworker and board members, and we were welcome into the White House. Had breakfast in the state dining room right underneath the picture of Abraham Lincoln, where dignitaries from around the world had dined, got ushered into one of the other rooms. I think it was the green Room where we met Mrs. Bush. Mrs. Bush welcomed us in and she wanted to keep chatting about zoos because she was on the zoo board of directors in Dallas, at the Dallas Zoo. So she wanted to talk more with us about that and everything, and congratulated us on being recognized because of our huge, the zoo was very proud of its community service. And we were doing interpretations in different languages and things like that, reaching out into our community, doing all sorts of diverse work in our community, getting people to the zoo, all kinds of different things. Having the, working with Lincoln Public Schools and having them on the zoo grounds.

And so she was all excited for us. And then we were ushered into the East Room. The east room where all kinds of big stuff is announced right there by the president. And there we were called up and there’s the first lady presenting us with the recognition, the highest recognition, the medal for the country. So it was just, it was really Wow. You know, to be in the White House and recognize. Yeah. Now you had mentioned that Lincoln Children’s Zoo is what we call a medium zoo size zoo. Yeah. – And you’re near a very large zoo in Omaha.

Right. What was your relationship when you were director with the Omaha Zoo?

We did some collection assistance with each other. Okay. Up, up, up and down. We, we, we didn’t collaborate properly as much as we should have. Okay. Early on there was a little bit sense of competition and probably part of it was my fault too. ’cause I was a cocky kid and, you know, that kind of thing. But, but we then started collaborating more. They got involved with the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle Conservation Project as well. Started doing, you know, more things together and respecting each other, you know, more and more. So it, it was, I, I wish it was stronger at the time, to be honest with you, but it, it has grown.

And you mentioned something about when you were at Lincoln Children’s Zoo, did the zoo have pony rides?

Yes, it did. And what do you think is the benefit of pony rides and what was your philosophy about them?

You know, point it’s in, in Nebraska, people still ride horses. Okay. There are equestrian trails. I mean, in Lincoln itself, there are horse trails in Lincoln. And so, you know, there’s, there are a lot of people in interested in, in the equestrian world. And to me, the pony rides were a quintessential zoo. Enriching lives through firsthand interaction with living things. ’cause many kids, you know, Lincoln has become a city. So many of the kids now, they’re, they’re a generation or two away from the farm.

I mean, Nebraska’s a very rural state, very agricultural state. It’s our largest economy is agriculture. Okay. But so many people and so many kids have left the farm. Left the ranch, and are are city kids now that I thought it was very important to connect the kids still with riding ponies. It was a very safe operation. Gave them, I mean, give some kids some really great satisfaction of, wow, I’m actually riding this animal. ’cause they’ve never been on a horse or a pony before. So it was, to me, very, very important, a great opportunity for kids to have a very rich experience, intimate experience.

Yes. It took a lot of work. It took very good people to work the pony rights. Absolutely. It took certain kind of ponies. You could just, couldn’t have any kind of pony there. But it was, to me it was very important. Very much a part of the rich experience of enriching ha of enriching lives through firsthand interaction with living things.

How, how did the zoo prepare you?

You’re in Nebraska for natural weather disasters?

Ooh, that’s, that’s, that’s a very good question. We, we, everything that has been built subsequently is concrete, concrete block. Okay. With redundancy locking systems and things like that. Monitoring the zookeepers in particular, monitoring the weather on a 24 hour basis, you know, for, for storms and things like that. We very, we would have backup generators, backup heaters and things such like that in case of damage. And my entire time at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, there was only one time when the power was out for 12 hours because the zoo is right on a main arterial. It’s not arterial distribution or line for Lincoln, Lincoln Electric system. So we always had power at the zoo.

So much of our power wa was electric, you know, heat and things like that. So only in all my years, there’s only, like I said, one 12 hour period when a huge snowstorm came through on October 25th. And on October 25th, there’s still lots of leaves on the trees in Lincoln, Nebraska. Very heavy snow. And it waited, it destroyed Lincoln. I mean, absolutely dis Lincoln was shut down for probably at least a week. There were places in town that didn’t have power for two weeks because of all the power, all the, all the line damage, you know, that, that kind of thing. But that storm was the worst. And we had to, we had to be closed for at least a week.

I had to cancel our, our our Halloween event and everything. The mayor actually canceled Halloween for the city of, city of Lincoln. And, but our power was only out for 12 hours. And so, but we had backup systems, you know, especially for the aquarium, things like that where we could plug in generators and like I said, portable heaters and design buildings that were structurally sound concrete and things like that. We had some underground stuff where we could take members of the public. We had basements that we could take the public into, which several times I did have to evacuate the zoo into the basements because of tornado warnings.

Had, have any of your conservation programs had difficulties getting off the ground?

Oh yeah. And why?

Oh yeah. You know, funding, you know, and sometimes you got a great conservation program going, but then the person spearheading it leaves for another opportunity. And if that person was the spearhead and did 90% of the heavy lifting for their project, it, it would do a huge damage to the project. Okay. Because, you know, the, we didn’t have, we don’t have a huge zoo staff there. So you had a major commitment by, you know, one or two staff members, especially only one staff member doing a project. That person will leave for another opportunity. It would very much hurt our hurt, hurt our con conservation program. But, you know, we developed other programs with other safeguards so that, that’s not the case.

When you were developing new exhibits for the zoo, what was your philosophy about what staff should be included?

Oh, we tried to involve as much staff as possible. You know, it’s, and again, you know, you come up, management may come up with a concept, but it’s gotta go through all the filters and all the different layers of everybody going.

Is this really going to work?

And I think I mentioned earlier that we had hired an independent person to go out and do research measure exhibits. He was independent and he went to at least a dozen differences across the country working on tiger and giraffe habitats, doing research, getting all the facts, talking to the keeper, the curator and the director. And again, getting their opinions, what was good and what was bad. And bringing all that information together to help us make our design decisions. Because once you build it, you’ve, you’ve done it good things and bad things about it. So you really gotta get as many people involved as possible. But the biggest challenge is if you’re bringing in a new species and nobody at your, at your institution has worked at that species before, then you really gotta do a lot of outside research. You know, Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska never had giraffe.

Okay. So we sent people out, staff out across the country, taking lots of pictures, talking to lots of people, bringing back lots of information. We actually took, when we were designing, we actually, our contractor, we took his private jet and flew to a couple of zoos and actually toured with architects, contractors, senior staff members on design. So we didn’t make those errors and did it the right way. You talked about before visitor amenities.

What, what are, what visitor amenities do you think are important and why?

I think, you know, visitor amenities, oh, everything from, you know, the parking lot to make sure the parking is convenient for people. Make sure you’ve got obviously all the right handicapped accessibility issues. We also are a, we work with, I think it’s called culture club regarding people who get overstimulated very easily. So we have headphones available, weighted cloths available, fidget things available, quiet zones available. I think it’s really important to listen to your community and talk to parents, find out what the needs are. And so we have more restrooms per capita, I think, than anybody else. Nursing rooms, changing rooms, family restrooms, very, very important. And so we, wheelchairs all sorts of accessibility things are, are, are very important I think, at the zoo.

And so, you know, like I said, well here’s an interesting fact. If you’re wearing a cochlear, IM implant for hearing. You cannot go down a plastic slide. The, the, and I don’t understand it, but, but, but the plastic slide affects the cochlear implant some way. And so we put in a little slide, a little metal slide in one place. We found this out by happenstance. We put in this little metal slide in this one little play area and we had a couple parents come to us, go, thank you. Going, they said every slide in town is plastic and my child can’t use it because of the cochlear implant.

I said, you’re kidding me. So when we developed a couple of new areas with large spiral slides, we spent a lot of money to import ’em from Europe because the big spiral slides are all plastic made in the United States. So to get a big stainless steel slide, you gotta get it from across the water. But we made that investment. Again, that’s listening to your constituents and providing them with the right thing, giving the right amenities to your guests.

What would you say some of your more frustrating, challenging times were as director?

Well, it was usually staff or money. You know, I had one period I, during my directorship, I had, what do you call it when someone wants to take over the ship, mutiny of some, some leadership. Okay. Because they weren’t always agreeing with my leadership decisions ’cause they were hard decisions to make. So I had a couple stuff kind of attempt mutiny, telling the board things. And it’s like, be honest with them when you talk to the board, don’t lie. Okay. And so that was a rough period for me, but I survived that, that mutiny. I had one period when I had a zoo board chair that kept threatening me with my position. Okay. And I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but this person was kind of a power monger and wanted to threaten me.

And I don’t know why that person really wanted to do that. I could make some comments, but I’d rather not. And there were sometimes when we had recession and rough financial times when had to cut back on the budget, cut back on staffing, reduce hours, things like that. I mean, there were several times that I took no pay increase, but gave my increase to my coworkers, unbeknownst to them, to keep them in a job. Because when I would create a new position and hire them, I was making commitment to always pay that salary, always have the position. Now, when it’s a city or municipal zoo, you can put it in the budget and, and create it as a permanent thing. But when I would add a position that meant that I had to go out and raise the money and earn the money to pay for that position. So every time I added a personnel, the person to it, that made more work for me.

Okay. But that was the right thing to do. And so, you know, it’s people in dollars. The biggest challenges, honestly.

So, two questions. Can you describe your management style?

Oh boy. Can I describe my management style?

I guess I always believed in my coworkers, especially those that I had a lot, a lot of faith in who demonstrated their ability and their knowledge. Okay. And I really wanted to listen to them and their influence and their recommendations because they’re the pros. You know, as a zoo director, I can’t be an expert in everything. Not at all. I can’t be an expert in this species. I can’t be an expert in knowing what’s gonna sell in the gift shop. I can’t be an expert on developing the best curricula for education classes. I’ve gotta depend on great qualified coworkers who are very driven to do it. Right. Okay. And so I think empowering my coworkers and giving them not only the authority, but the responsibility.

Quite often people are given responsibility, but not the authority to go with it. But I really worked hard to give them the authority to go with the responsibility of moving things forward and being leaders. So I think part of it was really believing in, in my coworkers listening, you gotta listen, gotta listen, you gotta listen to everybody. And I’m a talker and I’d rather do the talking. But I really had to learn to start listening better. I don’t care if it was my coworkers, board members, donors, the community, kids, you know, I had to listen. And what’s interesting is you should listen to everybody on your team. Not just the leadership, but to the folks at the different levels.

Okay. The frontline fighters gotta listen to them too and hear what they’re saying, hear what they’re saying. Now what’s, words are coming outta their mouth, but what, what are they really saying regarding this situation or whatever. So I try to be a really inclusive listening door wide open leader. Now, when your door’s open all the time and you got dozens of people working for you, it could, it could distract you and take you away from things. But I needed to be distracted. I mean, my door was open. So, and I had designed the administration area, everybody in the offices, one common office, one common building. It was five feet from the zookeeper headquarters into separate building. You had to go outside into another one.

But I could see, I could see the commissary right outside of my office. I could see the zookeepers working right outside my office. They could see me up in my office. Okay. Facilities maintenance was just beyond that, along with horticulture. So we were always, I wanted to keep everybody tight. So communication, communication was always taking place on all different levels in all different areas. So that’s my style.

So on the reverse of that, how would your staff, do you think, describe your management style?

Pollyanna. They’d call me Pollyanna because I’m soft. Okay. I’m not a good confronter. Okay. To be very honest with you, confronting a bad situation, I got better at it. But a dysfunctional employee, I, it was hard for me to confront it and to repair it. And sometimes I let it linger too long because I’m a softie. I know the person too long or whatever. So I think Pollyanna, a non confronter would probably be the largest negative they would say about me. But I think my coworkers would feel that I valued them, listened to them, cared about them, welcomed them, you know, and was happy that they were part of the team.

And was there any one exhibit that you really championed that we gotta get it going?

One, the biggest thing that I championed was we had this horrible exhibit of a Kodiak bear and basically a bear pit. It was built originally as a sea lion pool. When they put the sea lions in, in seventies. They bailed up very shortly after being there. My predecessor did everything, tried to, I mean, even threw a pygmy mar pygmy a hippopotamus in it for a while. Horrible. Horrible. And then they eventually built this steel and concrete structure around this pool and put a Kodiak bear in it with horrible shifting facilities and just horrible situation. And when that bear passed away privately, I was elated because the zoo had a horrible situation. I tried for, I had finally found a zoo in Europe that I was gonna take the bear.

Okay. ’cause nobody wanted this big maladjusted male Kodiak bear because nobody needed it for logical reasons. But when he passed away, I said, we’re taking that down. And we made it into a beautiful little seal harbor seal exhibit. And then eventually we made it into a penguin exhibit I, so I championed everything Tortoise trek, where we got Galapagos tortoises for the first time. That and championed all the other remodelings. I remodeled the entire zoo in the course of my, my time championed planting trees. Every year we planted trees on the zoo grounds, always adding trees because Nebraska, the only forest are rip perian forests, you know, along the rivers. And in Nebraska it’s all prairie.

But the Lincoln Children’s Zoo is situated on very rich Antelope Creek silt. So very rich soil and a bit recessed from the cold, harsh desiccating, sublimating winter winds. And so we had a very, the plant collection at the zoo is more diverse and more valuable than the animal collection.

How, how important is, was professional growth for your staff?

I always try to encourage and encourage and encourage it. Try to provide funds to go off to conferences, try to grow, try to grow, try it is very, very important. Very important to me. I always try to get people off the conferences and, and to, and to develop.

We had keepers who took, what do you call it?

A correspondence course and zookeeping and things like that. But I really was, I was fortunate. I always had to pay for my own stuff when I was a keeper, assistant director and director. I had to pay for my own stuff. And so I knew how expensive that was and how important it was to go off to conferences and meet colleagues and peers.

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

Oh, very much so. You know, my first week there I was serving snow cones in the concession stand. ’cause the zoo opened up shortly after I got there. And I used to run the concession stand back at the other zoo. So I knew how to make snow cones. I knew how to cook hot dogs on their rotisserie. I knew I did concession stands for the first couple years I was there. I also did a bit a, did a big faux pond. I married a zookeeper. Okay.

I got there in April of 86 and we got married in March of 88. But before we had children, Tracy and I would give all the zookeepers, all the staff Christmas off and we would take care of the animals. She was the head zookeeper and she told me how to prepare food and whatever. So we took care of all the animals on Christmas so all the staff could have Christmas off. So I can remember taking a sledgehammer and tearing down old horrible facilities and, and doing things. I was very much a hands-on guy for my first several years. And I still liked being able. As a matter of fact, even after I retired, I went and volunteered putting up holiday lights for the big zoo lights event for, that was the biggest fundraiser a year at, for the zoo.

I draw 70,000 people in, in a month.

And the team called up and said, would you help?

’cause you put those lights up last year, you know how to do it. So I volunteered putting up place at the zoo even after I retired. What would you say? You said you had changed the zoo and built a lot of stuff.

Did you have a master plan?

Not early on, because so much of it, I needed to get a master plan, but that wasn’t cost money. So it took a while to get, get a, a, a master plan and all early on I could raise funds to redevelop different areas, but I could never redevelop the entire zoo. It just couldn’t raise those kind of funds. The first thing we did though, when I got there, was we did do a public bond since we sit on city land and got infrastructure replaced, sewer lines and water lines, and built a new parking lot and a new entrance facility. Okay. Because what we had was all horrible. And I also put in some offices and a gift shop and a food area. I kind of stretched the resources. So that was the very first thing we did.

And we opened that in 1991. I got there in, in 86 and we, we opened that plaza and everything in 1991. ’cause I said, ’cause my, my, my plan was, okay, here’s this plan for this. We have to get this done before we can raise private dollars to improve exhibits. So once we got that done, I said Okay. We were able to expand into a little area to the south that had all brand new exhibits. And we developed a master plan for that. And my research said, you won’t be able to do another fundraising campaign for 10 years.

So whatever you can raise, it’s gotta be your top priority. So that’s what my research is telling me. ’cause I did some real serious research. So we redeveloped the south end, put in a veterinary facility. Okay. ’cause I needed a, we needed a veterinary. We had only one small room for veterinary facility. And so those were our priorities. And then we did smaller remodelings after that.

Tortoise track, seals, penguins, different eagle experience, different things like that in the historic zoo. And then we did a big major campaign in 2016 to expand the zoo. And that was a big strategic plan.

Do you think a shelf zoo master plan has a shelf life?

Yeah, absolutely. I think people who come up with 20 and 30 year plans, what you discover is, gee, that species doesn’t need management anymore. You know, because for some reason or other, I, I, I really think master plans do have a, a a a shelf life. I, I think a strategic principle needs to guide you more than physical design work can, can, can guide you. Because again, maybe that species doesn’t need collaboration anymore. Maybe you’re changing your priority on species. You know, I can remember one zoo that built a facility that, you know, they had three exhibits for this one species. And it was really a great idea ’cause that species really needed management, but in time it didn’t need management.

And then that exhibit just was, was outta date. Okay. So, you know, we, I tried to build facilities that had flexibility so that if it could hold a small, medium cat, it could also hold a primate. You know, those sorts of things. My little zoo needed flexibility on, on its habitats. Okay. And so it was relatively easy to switch from Harbor Seals that we discovered we couldn’t do Harbor Seal hubs very well. So it was easy to go to Humboldt Penguins. And, and so that, that was kind of my, that’s why I don’t really believe in huge multi-year master plans because I think we discover quickly needs change, needs change, circumstances change, guests change, species change things are different.

When you retired, did you give the news new zoo director any advice? Did they ask?

Nope. Nope. ’cause I was lucky. My successor got handpicked before he, 12 years earlier. He came in as the COO, as the assistant director. And because he brought in all the talents I didn’t have, we were a perfect yin and yang. Okay. The zoo board and our strategic discussions said, John, we need to take you out of the zoo and put you more in the community. ’cause we need to keep growing the zoo. And that’s what I told the board too. I, I realized a long time ago that I wanted to retire in my mid sixties, but I had a lot of work.

I had to get done. I had to get the zoo remodeled physically with great animal exhibits and husbandry. I had to get great education programs going. I had to get financially stable at the zoo. I had to get an increase in conservation. I had to expand the zoo. I had, I had this long list of things that I had to get done before I retired that I knew it was gonna take at least 10 years to do.

And the board said, yeah, and you know, who’s gonna do that?

You’re gonna do that. You’re gonna go out and be the face of the zoo more than you are now. We’re gonna take you out of the day-to-day operation.

I said, do you mean you’re taking my zoo away from me?

I love the operations of the zoo. Once I calmed down and thought about it and discussed it more with the zoo board leadership and going, you’re right. They had tried to have the same conversation with me four or five years earlier, but I was too cocky too. And I didn’t wanna give away my zoo, which I never really did. Okay. But it was all perception to me. So we found a gentleman who was great at branding and financial management and, and planning and just, we brought in the gentleman who, he was the number two person at the Children’s museum. He had done education programs at a strategic air and plant, air and space museum, some really great knowledge. Okay. And he says, we need to, you need to do a better job of communicating with the public regarding just the public perception you needed to brand the zoo, yada, yada, yada.

And he and I had many cups of coffee together feeling each other out, okay.

Going, is this gonna be a plan?

And Evan Colleen is the zoo’s CEO now. And we had more discussions. And I said to the zoo board, this is the man that we want and this is the man who will be my successor. And Evan came in 14 years ago, 15 years we overlapped. And every year he took more operations. Okay. And I became unnecessary for daily operations years ago. Okay. And because I was doing all the radio, I was doing all the tv, I was doing all the other community relationship building, I was doing all the fundraising. And that team of Evan and John is what made the zoo very, very successful.

Very, very successful. So yeah. So I didn’t have to tell my successor at all what to do. He’d been there forever. He became a zoo guy. Okay. Over his years of experience and step, we just switched titles. He stayed in his office, I stayed in my office. He all of a sudden, just one day became the CEOI became emeritus. You know? Yeah. You said you were the face of zoo.

Did you have, you had good relationships with the press.

How did you nurture that?

By always being honest with them. Okay. I mean, I knew editors, news anchors, news people, radio personalities. I mean, I was, I did at least four radio interviews every week. At least two or three TV live appearances every week. Okay. So I was out there constantly connected. You know, they let me in the back door into the newsroom instead of coming through the front door of the building ’cause oh, it’s chappo. Okay. So I was always talking to them. Every now and then I take an animal in, or we take some, or they’d come and get footage at the zoo.

You know, I couldn’t take a penguin into the studio, but they could come to the zoo. And then I’d go and we’d talk about the penguin footage that they had and things like that. Or the tiger footage that they had. And always bringing them up to date on what’s happening at the zoo. Babies and things like events and things like that. So the media, they all knew me so, so well, and we had, I had a great working relationship with them. And I could share with them very confidentially, please don’t share this, this is off the record. And they always listened to me because they knew that I was going to give them something really good.

But they res we respected each other very much. It was a lot of work.

How would you say the new technology now can assist in promoting zoos, Twitter, Facebook, remote cameras to draw attention to wildlife relationships?

You’re talking to an old man who doesn’t do Facebook any social media, but I know the value of it. And that’s what my successor brought into it years ago, was the connectivity that way through social media and communicating through social media. And the zoo does a very great job of it. I never knew I would get the email, the e-blast and go, oh, okay, that’s what’s going on. You know, this is what we’re announcing. Again, I don’t do anything on Facebook. But the team saw the value of it, and they knew how to work with it. And again, like I said, you empower the people with the knowledge and the ability, and you don’t micromanage them.

You, you, you give them the authority to go with the responsibility. And they did that and they ran with it. And I, I think it’s, I think it’s a double-edged sword, to be honest with you. I never wanted to replace the actual experience of the zoo. I don’t want a TikTok video that people think, oh, look at the cute little animal on TikTok. No, I’d rather they come to the zoo and see it and smell it and hear it and, and experience it. Personally. I don’t ever wanna social media to, we become too distant. Okay. You know, when you see four people at the same table all with their phones and they’re talking to each other on the phone, it’s like, that’s really sad.

That’s, that’s really, really, and again, I’m an old person. Okay. And my wife is definitely a leadite. And, but I do texts, but that’s about all I do. You, you were Lincoln, the Children’s was in the state capitol. Yeah.

How Did that work with the politicians?

Oh, you know, how many times have I testified before the politicians in hearing rooms and things like that?

I know the capitol well, it worked really well, especially in my role as a tourism commissioner for the last 13 years. You get to know the senators, you know, I’ve been in governor’s, I’ve been in governor’s offices how many times talking to them about either foster care or, you know, the zoo or, or tourism and things like that. You know, it helped when the governor had covid resources and the governor said, we’ll give you these funds to help the zu. ’cause the governor, you know, when you have his chief of staff’s telephone number in your phone, you know, and you can get ahold of the governor really quickly and things like that. It helped greatly. Those relationships helped greatly. You know, again, I’ve got the mayor’s cell phone number. Okay. You never abuse those relationships. You only use them to benefit the zoo and to communicate the right things.

You gotta be very, very judicious in your communications with politicians. But I was just in my senator’s office just a couple weeks ago talking and asking for this help and the support on this and being in the capital is very, very beneficial. It’s very, very beneficial because you also then have, you know, the Chamber of Commerce, I said in the Chamber of Commerce board, you know, you have lot of the big employers there as well, who are good community supporters and good community leaders. And that’s been very beneficial to help the zoo. Yeah.

Do you have a favorite zoo animal?

You know, it is kind of a, I’ve always loved elephants. Okay. I think they’re remarkable creature creatures. My nickname was Turtle John. I love Galapagos tortoises. I love the giant tortoises. They, they’re just so, I’m so impressive. They’ve been around for so long and they lived for so long. But, you know, when the zoo finished, its remodeling its expansion, I should say. Several years ago we brought in giraffe the first time.

I still love going in and feeding giraffe and meeting the giraffe one-on-one. ’cause they’re such remarkable kid. You know, when you’ve been doing zoo work for as long as I have, that’s just, I still am amazed. I don’t care what animal is, you know, feeding a penguin every time I experienced an animal, it’s, its, I feel like a kid again. It’s just so, I should have a favorite. You know, I hit some of my highlights, but they, they still don’t amaze me.

What animal species would you consider the most significant that you acquired in your career?

Giraffe. The gi, I mean, talk about a logistics and talk about complicated and talk about charismatic and talk about iconic, which we needed those things to help boost the zoo. Make the zoo more year round rich experience with giraffe. We really needed to have something iconic at the zoo to hang our hat on. And that was a huge, huge, huge step for the zoo. And the community got behind us and made it happen.

And keep making it happen. So that, How did you prepare for escapes?

Oh, lots of drills. Lots of drills. Drills, drills, drills, drills, drills, drills, drills. Lots of drills. You know, you, you got the emergency escape team, you know, just in case something happens, you always have the right person on staff just in case something happens present on the zoo grounds. Lots and lots and lots of drills and experience. And lots of discussions. And lots of planning. Yeah.

Any escapes ever occur?

Nothing of significance. You know, we had a red pan to get out 30 plus. He was 34 years ago or so. He just went right up the wall. We had no idea he could climb up a wall like that. Other escapes, we had prairie dogs get out once, had high racks too, run up the wall. And again, this was like 36 years ago. But no, no, we’ve been very, very fortunate.

Very, very fortunate.

Do you have any favorite animal stories? One or two?

Well, kinda one of favorite animal stories. But you know, when I was the youngster in the zoo world, we did all kinds of stupid things. Absolutely stupid. I called the Wild, wild West Days of Zookeeping back in the seventies and early eighties. You know, when if you needed to catch an aad, a barberry sheep, you just went in and grabbed them by the horns. He went for a ride until you could get him down and throw down. I mean, I went for rides on horns of sheep. I just, that’s just what you did. I went in with wolves, leopards, you know, stupid things, monkeys that could really hurt you and bite you.

But probably one of the stupidest things we did, it was back at like, I was probably 19 years old at the Powan MOU in South Bend, Indiana. We had just built a brand new large tiger habitat for what we then called Siberian Tigers, which are now called AM Tigers. Okay. The great big 500 pounders. And we needed to move the tigers from their old nasty WPA cage all the way around the zoo, down the service drive into their new habitat. So we did it on a cool October morning when the zoo was closed. Nobody’s around. And at that time a zoo veterinarian was very, very, very rare. I mean, we were lucky. We had one veterinarian in Lincoln who had come out when we called him.

And he was a very nice man. And he tranquilized the tiger. Well, we had no crates to put the animal in. We didn’t train animals to go into crates. We just, so we just put Ivan on the tarp, lifted the tarp, put in the back of a pickup truck, put a big heavy tarp on top of him, keep his body heat in. Okay. Because he’s sleeping, laying in the back of the pickup truck. Okay. Two guys are in the cab. Another zookeeper and I were sitting in the back of the pickup truck, you know, on right there by the wheel wells. I’m sitting on one side, he’s sitting on the other side.

Ivan is sound asleep between us. Okay?

And we keep him covered except for his head. And so this, we start, Dr guys starts driving the truck around the zoo. It’s October and there’s some cool air, cool breezes hitting the tiger’s face.

The tiger shook his head going, what’s going on?

Then the tiger decided to get up on his front legs. So this is a tiger sitting like that in the bed of the pickup truck right at my feet and the other guy’s feet. And there’s a tiger right there.

I look to the other guy on the other side going, what do we do?

This is a 500 pound Siberian AM tiger.

Okay, Ivan sitting up, he went, I dunno, what did I do?

I swung my leg over, put his head right there between my legs and put all my 180 pounds on top of him. And he went o And I used some expletive words to the driver about getting that vehicle moving really, really quickly. ’cause there I was sitting on top of a tiger because keeping it from moving, this was really stupid. Okay. He hurried, we carried him in, put him in his new, new holding area, locked him up. Three minutes later he was up and walking around. We were stupid. He really, really, really, really stupid. You know? And, but probably my, one of my most wonderful stories that I need to tell, it’s not an animal story, but my very first day walking around the Lincoln Children’s Zoo as the new zoo director going, I want to go see my do new domain and go see my new zoo and meet the staff. I’m out and I’m walking around and this tall female zookeeper walks up to me, looks down, puts her hands on her hips, looks down at me.

’cause I’m five nine and she’s six foot one. She says, you don’t remember me. This is how she introduced herself. You don’t remember me, but you turned me down for a job three years ago. And I said, Ms. Benton, I do remember you. I wanted to hire you. But the zoo director there at that time, I was the assistant director, said, we have no funds, we’re not gonna hire you. Okay. And she just kind of, hmm. Less than two years later we were married.

And we’ve been married. We got married in 1988 and have three phenomenal sons who are grown men today. And all because of the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, because I turned her down for a job at the Potawatomi Zoo in 1983. Well, on another deck.

In your career, how have you seen zoo exhibits change during your career?

You know, some changes have been good, some changes have been bad. You know, I think so many, if they have the resources they go to make them so immersive and to to, to change and make people feel like they’re been whisked away to another part of the world. I see so many resources going into that. You know, I see Zeus struggling with collections and getting animals. I mean, in the old days, animals were pretty easy to get a hold of. But now that what 95, 90 6% of animals in captivity are captive born. You know, it’s, it’s hard to get, I mean, we don’t go out in the wild and bring them back alive like the old days anymore. So we, we’ve seen some zoos have the same animals as the other zoos around them.

That’s good. So you have some genetic diversity. So, you know, and I’ve seen bars disappear, which is good. And sometimes it’s just whitewashed to remove the bars. ’cause sometimes you take off the bars and you put the fancy expensive stainless steel mesh in its place. It’s still a cage. Okay. But we don’t call it a cage anymore. We call it a habitat. And that’s good. You know, because the public’s perception, we have to worry about public perception.

That’s the biggest change anymore, is we have to worry about the public, the public perception and what the public is thinking about. About your institution and your collection.

Is there one animal species that you always wanted to work with but didn’t Do?

You know, I think a really phenomenal creature is the Komodo dragon. And I would love to have seen Komodos come to the zoo. Never made it happen. You know, and that’s okay. But I, I, I got to see so many things come and such a diversity of things come to Lincoln, Nebraska and serve the community that I’ve been really, really lucky. What I got galaga dos. I always wanted to go out toes. And so we acquired those numerous years ago.

How important do you think it is for a zoo director to travel to other zoos and, and see things Vitally important?

The zoo director, zoo staff, to go see how other zoos are doing it, be it good or be it bad to talk to peers. You know, quite often I would go to the zoo and not tell my peer I was coming. I just wanted to sneak around being a member of the public to see, ’cause you know, otherwise you tell ’em you’re coming. They give you a good dog and pony show. Okay. I mean, we’re, we’re, we’re very proud. We’re very egotistical. We wanna show the best for to our coworkers. And there’s nothing wrong with that to, I mean, to our, to our, you know, cohorts and to our, our peers. But sometimes I just wanna go and see how they’re really, really doing it to the general John Q.

So going to other institutions is vitally important. Vitally important for all levels. I don’t care if you’re guest services. I don’t care if you’re animal keepers. I don’t care if you’re facilities, I don’t care if you’re horticulture. I don’t care if you’re management. You need to go and see other institutions, good and bad, big and small, everything in between. ’cause you can always bring something away. Always bring something away when you go back to your institution.

So the, the controversy of who should lead a zoo, what’s your position on good animal man or a businessman?

Oh, and that’s and why?

And, and, and you know, and, and we’ve seen it all happen. We, we’ve seen people who ran corporations take over zoos. We’ve seen retail people take over zoos. We’ve seen researchers take animal researchers take over zoos. We, we’ve seen a little bit of it all. I guess it all depends on the strategic priorities of the institution.

Is is the, you know, what is the mission of the institution?

What’s the resources of the institution?

What are the institution’s needs?

’cause you gotta remember, I don’t know what the, the typical tenure is anymore for a zoo director. In the old days, it was like me, I had 30, well, I think we had 36 or 7 37 years. ’cause some of those were his president emeritus. You know, you put in a lifetime at a zoo. I mean it old silverbacks. We were there forever. But I think turnover is happening more and more in, in, in zoo director positions.

And so are you there for five years, 10 years?

You know, and I think everybody brings in a little bit different talent and different priority.

And so it’s hard to say, do you need the business person or do you need the animal person?

And I think that’s where I’m really lucky. ’cause I had both, I was, you know, I was an animal guy. ’cause I started in the ditches, you know, in the trenches taking care of animals. And I, and I worked my way up, you know, in, in retail and at the zoo and my business degree and things like that. You, you can’t, you can’t draw a line. You can’t say which is which, because a big chunk of it is personality and the essence of that person. If that person is able to put their ego aside and listen and grow, listen to peers in the industry, listen to coworkers in the industry, and be analytical and listen to their community and be very analytical and put it together. They can listen Well.

It doesn’t matter what your expertise is. If you’re a good listener, a good collaborator and can prioritize that makes a good zoo director. You’re director emeritus of the Lincoln Nebraska Children’s Zoo.

What do you think made you a good director?

Well, I think what made me a good director was years of experience. I mean, coming up through the ranks, I mean, from the volunteers, the teenager, and doing a little bit of everything at, at the zoo, from concessions to zoo, keeping to education, to man, you know, management. Working long times, you know, you know, working, being in the trenches as I call it. But I think what also made me a, a, a good manager and a and a good supervisor was respecting your coworkers. Listen, truly listening, hearing what they said and what their concerns were regarding the, you know, the collection regarding facilities, regarding anything, regarding their opinions and things like that. But listening sincerely and, and, and working together to, to solve an issue, to confront an issue. I, I think, and I always try to know all my coworkers, the person from the custodian, oh, I mean, I was a custodian at one time too, cleaning the restrooms. Okay. That wonderful job to, to everybody, to at all levels and, and get guest services, animal keepers.

I think it’s really important that they know that they’re appreciated. And they’re, and volunteers too. You know, we had, we had hundreds of volunteers at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. But, but people like to be acknowledged that they’re doing a good job and they’re part of a team and they’re making great things happen. And that, that I felt was one of my chief responsibilities, was keeping the encouragement, the positive flow going of us all working together, no matter what you’re doing to make the zoo a success. And, and they, my coworkers are always there to support me and I always acknowledge ’em. Yeah. Be do a radio or TV interview and say, I like to acknowledge these zookeepers who this animal is because of, because of this or this kind of effort. It is just acknowledging and celebrating together and listening and just being a part of a team equal.

Do you feel that you were able to convey to everyone what the mission was? Did they all know it?

They, I I think they, they all knew it. You know, that’s kind of hard when the person’s selling snow cones. Okay. But because we talk so much about the mission, the mission was stated, you know, in our break rooms and, you know, behind the scenes area for all the team, they knew we were there to serve and connect people with nature and, you know, kids and, and have that really sense of awe. And the mission enriching lives through firsthand interaction with living things. That’s a very short and sweet kind of thing. On the back of my business card, had a picture of my son as a child when he was about five or six years old, with a butterfly on his nose, taken by National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore. Okay. And on that was our mission, post-it. And people knew the mission.

I mean, they knew that we were there to serve, to connect, to make great things happen in Lincoln, Nebraska.

What kind of skillset do you think a zoo director needs today as compared to when you started?

When I started, you needed to be an animal guy. You know, you needed to be an animal professional because the complexities of animal collections, and they, they haven’t lost their complexity, but how zoos, especially the zoo, Lincoln Children’s Zoo is a completely private zoo receiving no tax dollars, had to become a business person. Okay. I mean, had to build the zoo’s reputation, had to understand branding, okay, I’m an animal guy, but I gotta understand the brand. And so I, I think the skills you need to be, you need to have a little of, a bit of politician. You need to be a great manager and listener of people. You need to convey the zoo’s mission. And you need to have great trust. And they need to have great trust, you know, in the zoo.

You need to be a collaborator, a partner. You need to be a great listener. You need to really work aggressively with your community to, to, to build it, to, to, to make that mission a success and to, and to make that institution a success. So, you know, my later years working at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, I was out a lot. I was out connecting and building the relationship with our community from politicians to schools and everything in between, donors, foundations. And so I got to meet lots of people in Lincoln. A lot people got to meet me and I became the face of the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. And, but, so it’s a whole different skill set today.

It, it really, really is.

And people go, well, what’s your degrees in John?

I’m going public environmental affairs with the major and policy administration with a minor in accounting. Okay. I’m not a zoologist, I’m not a biologist. I am not a scientist at all. But I think that that academic background helped me out greatly. There are small zoos, medium zoos, and very, very large zoos.

How would you categorize Lincoln Children’s Zoo?

And once you do, what, what can a small or medium sized municipal zoo or private zoo do today to be involved in wildlife conservation, either nationally or internationally?

Well, I, I think the Lincoln Children’s Zoo is probably a medium sized zoo now. It’s pushing a $10 million year operating budget. It’s, it’s 18 acres in size. Millions and millions and millions of dollars have gone into rebuilding it, remodeling it, updating it, and upgrading it. And so I would say it’s medium. At one time it was very small at one time. There was no zoo during the wintertime. All the animals were moved out. Okay.

It was very much a seasonal zoo, as many zoos that were the children’s zoo time built in the fifties and sixties. Okay. So it’s, it’s a medium-sized zoo. And you know, I think being involved in conservation is, is really easy for an institution. Once you really put your thought to it, what put your mind to it. You know, collaboration, every small and medium zoo is asking the same question. Let’s work together. Find, talk to your peers.

What projects are they interested in?

You know, what species are, are, are, are you targeting in, you know, in, in your zoo. You know, the Lincoln Children’s Zoo is known for its machi tree, kangaroo reproduction. We’re the leading zoo in the, in the world as far as machi tree kangaroo reproduction and documenting development and things like that. And so we’ve got a phenomenal zookeeper at, at that Lincoln Children’s Zoo. I mean, she’s traveled the world and done symposium about patri kangaroo. She’s gone to Germany, she’s gone Papua New Guinea. You know, sharing the knowledge. It’s very easy to do that. We’ve sent team coworkers off to the field, South Africa, you know, Botswana, we’ve sent just coworkers off to the field to assist other research projects, you know, in the wild.

It’s, you know, all you have to do is commit three weeks of an employee’s time and their, their travel budget and send them out. It’s not that much money anymore. Okay. It, so it’s very easy to be involved in international conservation. It’s very, very easy. Especially like I said, if you collaborate and wanna wanna be a partner. So many people go, well what, you know, conservation doesn’t only have to be field work. I mean, conservation is everything from resource conservation. I mean, so you can do local conservation, you can do regional conservation, you can do international conservation, the Lincoln children’s zoos, then conservation work in Nebraska with bighorn sheep, you know, and, and things like that.

So, so we’ve done all kinds of conservation work, South Africa with giraffe. And you just, you just have to make that commitment to do it. And, and carve out a little bit of your budget too. It doesn’t have to be that expensive, especially if you collaborate with other institutions. We talked about the finances.

So for a medium size zoo with limited financial resources available to them, what do you think should be the focus of the collection?

Is it North American? Is it the western hemisphere?

Is it endangered? Is it just species people like, I, I think what’s real key to the success of an institution in a community is listening to that community, talk to people. And it not like they get a, a vote and I want orcas or I want elephants.

’cause you know, you obviously, you asked the question, what, what’s the top five animals you wanted to zoo?

Zoo? I mean, if you just ask a child or ask, ask a parent in the community, of course, you know, the list is they want elephants and they want lions and all the typical megavertebrates. Okay, well though that’s important to hear, but you also have to do more ferreting out regarding what people are looking for. Especially like in Lincoln, Nebraska. You know, just down the road in Omaha is the world famous Omaha, you know, it’s the Henry Doley Zoo. Phenomenal collection, ginormous, extensive collection. The last thing the Lincoln Children’s Zoo should be is a small Omaha Henry Doley Zoo. That’s, that’s not our niche. Okay. Our niche is connecting, being enrich opportunities for people to be engaged with nature and discover about nature and wildlife and animals and plants and the environment.

Okay. So, and that’s what the mission of the, that that’s why this children’s zoo was created in 1965. Our founder, Mr. Arnold Folsom, wanted kids to be connected with nature. You know, now in 1965, they did a little bit differently. You could sit on a Galapagos tortoise and do those inappropriate animal relations, shall we say. But he wanted to enrich lives through firsthand interaction with living things, which is with the Lincoln Children’s Zoo’s mission has been all these many, many years. And so, you know, listening to the public and making commitment, but at the same time, making commitment to cooperating with other zoos regarding species survival plans, other animals that need help and conservation work, field work, and things such as that. Y you know, a good diversity of species. So it doesn’t have to be all North American, especially kinda Lincoln.

We have pioneers Park Nature Center, which has native Nebraska fauna in Florida. So we shouldn’t be redundant. Okay. A community of 350,000. You don’t wanna have a redundant collection that’s, you know, five mile, five miles away from your institution. So you try to be respectful of what’s in the area and what the best collaboration is and what’s, what’s, what’s best and what and what can you do with your team. I mean, you have to be very analytical regarding your physical plant, how much land you have, financial resources that you can raise to perpetually take care of a species if you’re making a perpetual commitment to that. So, I mean, resources are very much a part of it. And it’s human resources, it’s physical resources, financial resources, you know, it’s all those resources to make happen. So you have to be very analytical and very pragmatic as to what species you can bring in.

The Lincoln Children’s Zoo, I mean, 18 acres, that’s 18 acres is good for a small herd of elephant. Okay? We’re not gonna have just an elephant, you know, herd at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, that kind of thing. So I think it’s, it’s what’s really important is listening to the public, knowing your, your resources, what, what you’re capable of, having a good diversity. ’cause I think it’s really important to have a good diversity. So it’s not always just the mega vertebrates, the great big animals, you know, the big you, you need to share. But our guests went enriching opportunities. They want to be engaged, they want to learn, they want to have, have those kinds of closeup encounters. And so that was, that was, that’s the Lincoln Children’s Zoo’s focus And, and a little bit different subject.

Your, you talked about your guests, but do you feel today zoos are afraid or seem afraid to confront animal welfare and rights groups that are against zoos?

Even sometimes people in the profession in are, are in top positions, are have opinions.

But could you give us your thoughts on how best to deal with these anti zoo groups?

You know, there will always be anti zoo groups. Okay. It is just, and that it is just always gonna be, and you can try and rationalize with them and explain in great detail. It is just like on political spectrums, you know, there’s, there’s extremes and there’s moderates, you know, on, on all sides. And extremes on both on either side will never get together. It is just, it’s just not gonna happen. So you, you have to be very honest regarding your animal welfare. You have to be willing to open the doors and share and be very honest with your animal welfare, your successes and your failures. Okay? And you, you have to deal with them with honesty and integrity.

And again, when your coworkers, when your team is committed and dedicated, do the very best I mean, zookeepers, those animals, pardon me, quite often are their children, okay?

And they want the very best for their animals. You know, they wouldn’t manage it to make certain that they’re providing the right food and the right conditions and everything like that. And so your zookeepers are your most aggressive advocates for the welfare of, of your animals, because they’re the ones who are in the trenches with them every day, and they’re the ones who really, really care. And so, you know, like I said, you’ll never make every animal rights group happy. It’s just as simple as that. But I, if you try to educate and inform the masses to get them to understand what the mission is of a modern zoo regarding conservation propagation education, you know, you just have to keep getting out there and telling the story, and telling the story and why you are what you’re accomplishing. You know, those, those important successes.

So, you know, how do you confront them?

Honestly, sometimes they don’t like to hear what you have to say. Well, and sometimes they’ll, they’ll try to contort your words. And that happens in the media a lot when people get their words contorted. And, and, you know, social media’s not always a friend, you know, know regarding any one of us. Okay. But I think just being honest, getting the information out there, it, I, I’m, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s hard. It, it, it really is hard regarding these extremists because as I said, sometimes you just don’t make an extremist happy and you’re not going to, and you, you know, you know, doctor, it hurts when I do this. Well, don’t do it. And quite often that’s what it is, just hitting your head against the wall and you’re just not gonna make any progress.

Have you had to deal with this at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo?

Sure. Everybody does. And, And how did you approach her?

Everybody does. You know, it was Lee Simmons years ago who said Lee Simmons, who’s the retired director from the oma Henry Doley Zoo. You know, there, there are more cattle than there are people in Nebraska.

Nebraskans eat animals. Okay?

Some people tease that PETTA stands for people eating tasty animals. Okay? And so we’re lucky that we’re not coastal. We’re not a major metropolitan area, so we don’t get a lot of animal rights. I can still remember one of the most aggressive animal rights public showings was probably 25 years ago. The Lincoln Children’s Zoo had the Wiener Mobile, and we had a competition for, they were looking for the new kid that says My below. And he has the first name, you remember the little boy who would sing the, the, the song. And they were doing a national campaign to find the new kid to advertise for Oscar Meyer.

So the, we got the Wiener mobile at the zoo. Okay? Why?

In our marketing guy was all excited about having the Wiener mobile. Well, PETA of course, heard about that. So what did peda do? They contacted the local media. When the media showed up, a person in a pig costume came out, three people with placards came out, stood in front of the zoo, and the media was there focused on those three, four people. Okay? Media left. They left, they were just there for the flash in the pan to get that profile. And they weren’t there anymore during any of the Oscar Meyer things. They just, they, they were fake. They were ies.

They were just front people, you know?

And so, yes, we’ve, we’ve had that, and yes, we’ve had people go, you know, complain to the USDA and like, well, that eagle hasn’t got water. No, the eagle has got water. You just don’t see it from the public perspective. So, you know, you contact those people and, and you bring them in. So this is really what we, and they’re going, oh, okay.

Rarely do they say they were wrong. Okay?

But once you tell them the inside story, oh, and people go, why do you have the great American bald eagle in captivity?

He should be out flying. Well, it’s missing a wing.

It’s a rehab bird. Okay?

The only option for that eagle is here, or euthanasia, because it can’t live in the wild anymore, because they ran into a power liner. So by shot it, okay. So, but once you explain that to people, some people start figuring it out. Okay. You were talking about your team at the zoo. Sometimes we hear zoo directors say that there’s not a lot of good curators out there.

Is that an issue at all?

Or what’s your opinion about curators and how they should be trained today and what’s expected of that?

That’s a great question. You know, the curator gig is probably one of the most challenging positions at a zoo, because, you know, the zoo director, CEO, whatever you wanna call the, the top dog knows their mission is to raise funds, build the community relationships, you know, set the, be the strategic thinker, be the keeper of the dream. Okay? That’s, that’s, that’s the role that I kept for years, was the keeper of the dream. And this is the, all your coworkers who are, you know, especially the animal keepers who are in the trenches doing the day-to-day, the scout work, the, you know, the hard work, the, the connectivity.

And then that poor curator in the middle. Okay?

And, you know, the curators today is much like the zoo director today. It, they’re so much different. You know, the poor curator of today not only has to know how to take care of a baby animal, but they have to know how to do a spreadsheet too.

How to be a budgeter. Okay?

How many people, how many good animal people, you know, are really good financial management people?

It’s not their talent, it’s not their gift. Okay?

How many good numbers people do you know, are really great animal care people?

Again, tho those talents are kind of diametrically opposed. So trying to find somebody who can manage a budget, manage Chanel, manage a collection, being able also be able to assist in the daily care of the collection. Good. What a spectrum of talent. Okay. And so many of those people who are curators, one of the several things happen to them. They either wanna go back in the directions and be a zookeeper again, and get away from the management aspect of it. They have aspirations to be become a zoo director, or they get out because they get burned out because it is such, you know, management says, you gotta get this done, and these are your resources. The frontline fighters are going, we can do it, but we need more resources. You don’t get any more. We need more.

You don’t get any more. We need more that. So there, you’re in the middle, you’re in no one position. So in every curator at every institution, the responsibilities are different. Some of them never do anything with animals. All they do is manage personnel, manage resources, manage schedules, you know, that kind of thing. Others are more animal keepers. And don’t, don’t do that because HR does all that, or, or, or whatever. And so it, it’s so individualistic and, and I don’t think the zoo world does good training for, for, for these poor people who are squeezed in the middle.

To be very honest with you, there’s not a curator training school that I’m aware of. Okay. Who to make sure that they understand how a budget works. Especially, you know, a private zoo budget and a municipal zoo budget.

They’re nothing alike. Okay?

A municipal zoo budget is established by the mayor and the city council, and the zoo director gets their funds, and they may get one thing that says zoo, and then the director breaks it out. Or in the private world, it’s, it’s done completely different. Established by a private governing board of directors. And, and so management is completely different. You know, in the private world, you have to earn the funds and get them donated. So maybe a curator’s being called out to go visit with a donor along with, you know, the director or along with the development team. So now this person has to be a fundraiser besides being animal person, besides being a financial manager, besides being an HR person. So it is just the, it is all over the board regarding the expectations.

And quite often it’s hard to explain to somebody who’s interviewing for the job, what they’re gonna be doing, and once they’re in the trenches. So I, I think the zoo world should aggressively work on training middle management much, much more. Because I, I don’t, I don’t think there’s a good school out there that, that actually does it. You know, the, the zoo world. A ZA is trying to develop the, the next leaders. That’s all good and well, but they’re not that I’m aware of working really aggressively or training both that, that middle management at zoological institutions.

So in your curator training school, what would you be focusing on?

Smart question again, mark. I think everything from knowing what animal resources are out there, you know, regarding the most current SSPs and things such as that, and Stu books and all, what the, where those resources are and how to tap them, and people that you would recommend who are great resources, financial management, bookkeeping, accounting, you know, HR policies and things such as that conservation work that’s going on in the world too, and things like that. So I think it needs to be a very broad curriculum Okay. Of, of diverse subjects. Very diverse subjects. Because, and quite often that curator has to be an HR person. They also have to be humanitarian because they need to listen. You know, so they need some techniques on how to work with people. Just because you’re supervising them doesn’t mean that you, you can be hardcore all the time.

So they need to learn how to listen. They need to know how to understand people. They need, how to cooperate with people. They know how to schedule people, how to figure out finances, how to understand the animal world. It’s complex. So that curriculum would probably be at least a month long. I mean, you’d have to send your curator away or do it annually. You know, this year, you know, it’s, it’s personnel management this year, it’s financial management.

This year it’s, you know, and, and keep building that. And so you actually get, get a certificate after several years of, of, you know, for curatorial school. And you mentioned obviously a zoo is about the visitors that come.

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

Visitor attitudes have changed a lot over the years. Absolutely. They have. And they haven’t, you know, people come to a zoo or an aquarium 80% of the time as a family, as a family thing to do together, recreational time together. And a lot of those families want the kids to do a little learning to, you know, when, when they come to the zoo, you know, I think people’s expectations of animal welfare has just skyrocketed. Okay. You know, when I started out working at the WPA facility in South Bend, Indiana, I mean, literally chain leak boxes on concrete slabs for bears, lions, you know, just monkeys, just nasty little things. That was fine. You know, 50 years ago, that was absolutely fine. ’cause people could throw their hamburger buns, their marshmallows in and, you know, feed the bears. Okay, well, heck, we’ve fed bread to the bears as a zookeeper. Okay? We’d milked the cow, put the, put six loaves of bread in a bucket, pork cow’s milk over, and throw a couple apples in there, and then that would, would feed the bear.

Okay? That was their balanced diet. And so, but that was public behavior too back then. Like I said, throwing marshmallows. I can remember I was a kid 60 years ago, you know, going to the zoo and going to the duck pond and taking along our old cereal Cheerios and Frosted Flakes, and oh, it was good for the animals. Right? Right. You know, so, but so today people are expecting much stronger animal welfare. They’re expecting a commitment, they’re expecting to learn things. I mean, they’re expecting a commitment of the zoo as is doing a great job of animal welfare, but also helping some conservation work as well.

You know, and they wanna, they, and today’s generations, they want experiences. You know, they, they want to discover things, you know, and that’s where historically, what I call most zoos are walking gaw zoos where you walk and you stop and you gawk at the animal for 30 seconds. Then you walk, you stop, and you gaw again. And so the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, I never wanted it to be a walk-in Glock Zoo. I wanted it to be a zoo that where you could stop, get engaged with one of the Great Zoo team members and learn about, visit with them, ask them questions about the animals. Okay. Learn about the animals, watch a demonstration about an animal. I think that’s what’s really important, you know, is observe an animal and, and be more participatory with the animal. So that’s why I think the children’s Zoo has evolved.

And I think that’s what the expectation is today of our visitors, is high animal welfare. Great engagement for them, you know, great time, safety, time for your family. You know, the Lincoln Children’s Zoo today has family restrooms, rooms for mothers to nurse or, or, or, or, or to pump breast milk. We have a, a restroom now that has a very large table for if an adult needs to have some personal hygiene addressed because the person’s disabled. And then the bed can go up and down and raise. So if you need to get somebody out of a wheelchair and straighten, you know, lay them out for a while, we provide that. The Lincoln Children’s Zoo, you know, that’s not what you had to worry about all those years ago. So, visitor amenities, visitor experiences, listening to the visitor and a good diversity of, of, of specimens as well.

What issues caused you the most concern during your zoo career, and how do you see the future regarding those concerns?

You know, I think I’m really concerned, I’ll be very honest with you about the perception of zoos in, in, in, in, in the masses in the public, because I think the popularity of zoos is on a decline with current pop with the, the perception out there in our communities and in the nation. Okay? Be honest with you. The a ZA at the director retreats, director policy retreat, they used to bring in, oops, they used to bring in a, a researcher who would, who is researching nationally regarding the perceptions of different generations and their, their attitudes and perceptions of zoos and aquaria. And every year it would drop a percentage point or two or three over continuing. But I don’t think the A ZA does that research anymore. I mean, it, I, it was fascinating research and I think the, the, the company who was doing the research was finding out very, very basic facts about the perception of zoos to the general public republic, and that they’re not relevant. And so that’s very much a concern. And that’s why a zoological institution has to be very relevant to its community and to its constituency regarding providing what their expectations are.

You still have to have your standards, your animal welfare standards, you know, and your care and your, your professionalism of being a zoo professional and professional and zoological institution. But you have to listen to what your community and what your constituents are and what their concerns are regarding your institutions. Regarding re regarding the, the industry on a whole. I mean, there’s a couple of zoo professionals who hate the term industry ’cause it refers to production or whatever, whatever. But, you know, the zoo world is an industry, just like other industries. There are. But, so that’s a huge concern of mine, is that the masses attitudes about zoos is, is declining and their support of zoos and the mission of zoos, that, that they’re outdated. So I’ve seen a huge, you know, I’ve been in the zoo world 50 years, and I’ve seen it, you know, I’ve seen that. I, I I’ve witnessed that.

Now, fortunately, the Lincoln Children’s Zoo has a, has a huge support and endorsement of, of, of its community and its constituents. Okay. And again, it’s because we worked very aggressively to be connected with our community. I served on all kinds of boards of directors, the Humane Society Human Services Federation. We did, you know, we cooperate with dozens and dozens of nonprofits providing free admissions to low income and at risk children’s and families, okay. To make certain that everybody in Lincoln Nebraska can afford, because the Lincoln Children’s Zoo is completely private, receives no tax dollars for operating support. So it’s make money in the old fashioned way, we earn it. So if it’s not con contribution supporting the zoo, it’s gotta be earned. It’s gotta be through gate concessions, you know, camps, gifts, shopping, revenue like that.

And so it costs the zoo money to give away free tickets. But thinking Children’s always wanted to serve every child, every family in the, in the community. I mean, when Lincoln, beautiful Lincoln, Nebraska, 45 to 50% of the children going to school get free and reduced lunch. It’s like, there, there are people without resources in Lincoln, Nebraska where they have to decide between food and transportation. The Lincoln Children Zoo is great for families, it’s great for children. Research has shown that when families go to a zoo, they’re going as families, blood pressure go down, goes down, happiness goes up. So zoos can be healing great for, for families. And that’s why our mission is so important.

And that’s why we have to stay connected and that’s why we have to be there. But I’m concerned nationally about the opinion of people regarding zoos, that, that the perception and support of zoos and their missions is declining nationally. Would you say, when I ask what major direction must zoos be taking for their future, would that be one of ’em or anything else? I, No, I think connecting with your community. I think zoos being committed to conservation work and conservation, you know, again, doesn’t have to be just saving animals. It’s saving the environment. It’s, it’s, it’s educating the masses better about how we are all connected. Okay? All the species, all the habitats, all the people. We are all connected.

And, and the more of us and utilizing natural resources, we need to be conserving those resources more and more so that they’re there for future generations. So I think trying to be a holistic educator is very, very important to, and you know, the old saying is you don’t love something unless you really know about it. And so that’s why connecting kids, I mean, when I would walk through the zoo and see a child for the first time, pet a bunny rabbit is so powerful. I mean, their, their excitement in their eyes and they’re getting, you know, their, they’re, because a lot of people don’t have animals or don’t have pets who just have the dog. Okay? I can still remember the story of taking some animals to a nursing home. And our education team took money, rabbits and doves, you know, things like that. And they put a dove on a gentleman’s finger, sorry. The gentleman had, he hadn’t spoken in the longest time.

They put the lve on his finger and he started talking. His daughters there going, dad, you know, the power of nature. A dove, a simple ring, neck, dove pulling that out, that, man, that’s powerful. That’s what connectivity is all about. And the more we can do that, the more important zoo are. And that’s, that’s our mission. When you talk about animals, there are private breeders who do some very excellent work.

Okay. How do you think private readers can be partners with zoos?

I think it’s vital. Zoos have very limited resources. I mean, you, you add all the acreages together, you add all the re all the, all the operating dollars together. It’s not that big of a number. Those aren’t big numbers. Okay? There are people out there with private collections because they are multimillion and billionaires and, you know, that guy’s got more rhinos than collectively than all the zoos, than the United States together.

Do you think he should be a bit of a vital player in it?

Because we’re looking for some genetic diversity?

I think so. I mean, there are people, I mean, let’s face it, we animal people are odd. Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just that we’re, I’ve known that ever since I was a kid. I was a geek. Okay. I had turtles for over 50 years. I had turtles under my bed as a kid. Okay. So animal people are odd, but there’s a lot of animal people out there who have their private collections and they wanna save species from extinction. Save species from extinction.

Gee, is that part of our mission as professional zoological institutions?

I think so. So yes, they can collaborate, they can partner. And they’re probably as hard to, to cooperate with as some of the other zoos in this country are to collaborate with. ’cause there’s some zoos who don’t like to partner very well. Okay. But there’s some great collectors out there and there’s some great private collectors out there that we can work together. And I think we need to collect work together. And, and, and speaking about working together, I’m not sure if you are familiar with the adopt a national Park concept where zoos would adopt a national park, which kind of hasn’t, seems like it’d be a natural, but seems like it hasn’t really taken over. And the same thing with sister zoos.

Do sister zoos have a place in the big picture of animal keeping where you’re adopting another zoo from another country, as have you done it?

No, we’ve not done that. You know, we, we, we’ve not, we’ve not done that. You know, so much of that is in the political realm. It’s like the giant panda political realm. Okay.

Is it, is it really helping the species?

Is it grandstanding? It, it’s a more for political recognition than it is for, you know, for, for success of the species. I don’t know. You know, I think any kind of partnership that can, you can move saving species together, forward is a successful relationship. Sometimes tho those are expensive. Sometimes they’re just political jaunts for people O okay to go travel, shake hands and have pictures taken.

Does that really accomplish anything?

Well, if it helps save the species, sure. If, if it’s increasing the awareness for the protection of a species, sure, that’s successful. But no, we’ve, we’ve not done that partnership, I think, I think because resources and zoos are so tight, the more collaboration that you can do, absolutely. The better. I’m, I’m a huge collaborator. Okay. I just believe in, in putting resources together because you just get more momentum and there’s just more successes. I’m a huge, the problem is a lot of people don’t wanna collaborate. It’s ’cause ego. Okay, it’s gotta be mine. I gotta be in charge. I’ve gotta have control of this.

And, and quite often in the zoo world, it’s hard to find collaborators. I’ll be very honest with you. And it, and it’s kind of frustrating because we’re all fighting, fighting limited res resources. We’re all trying to accomplish the same thing. But quite often we don’t want to, we don’t want to collaborate or collaboration ends when the zoo director moves on to, to something else. And that, that relationship doesn’t continue with the other zoo. You know, I by all means, I think increasing collaboration with private other countries, whatever, if it really does move conservation forward and, you know, propagation forward of endangered species, I’m all for it.

What, what was the most difficult, what do you think was the most difficult concept for zoos to understand and implement regarding the relationship to conservation?

You know, I think, I, I think what’s really challenging for a lot of Zeus is they think conservation means that you have to have a field biologist in some far away country, 24 7 working to save a species. And I think that idea is just so crippling to, to zoos that have limited resources. They’re going, we’re never gonna be able to have a field biologist, we’re never gonna be able to have a researcher doing, we’re never gonna be able to do something like that. Okay. And so I think, I think that’s very frightening to zoos to think about how they can do it. And, and that’s why I think it’s really important regarding conservation efforts. You know, it’s locally, it’s water conservation, recycling, you know, educating the masses, accomplishing that energy conservation. Okay. Using solar, using, you know, LEDs and things like that. Using, being energy conscious.

That’s conservation right away. Okay. That’s local conservation work. Teaming up with the, with your state game and parks or natural resources folks. Lincoln Children’s Zoo for years has been working with the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle.

You ever heard of the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle?

I bet you haven’t. It’s a little bug. Okay. The Salt Creek Tiger Beetle is only found in the salt marshes north of Lincoln, Nebraska. Very limited range. Okay. Little bug like that. At one time, the United States consider it the rarest insect in the United States. Okay. Because they were down to, I think, fewer than 200 tiny, tiny bug Lincoln Children’s. So we’re gonna partner with Nebraska Game and Parks gonna partner with the University of Nebraska. We’re gonna conserve and save this little tiny bug. And to this date, we have repatriated thousands of nymphs, the youngsters that we’ve developed that, that were emerged in captivity that we then release out in the salt marshes.

We set land aside. And so we’ve now, there are thousands and thousands of these in this habitat because the Lincoln Children’s Zoo got involved with saving this teeny tiny bug. Okay. That’s local conservation. That’s huge conservation, okay. You don’t have to, I’ll go to, yes, we’ve sent people to South Africa zoo’s veterinarian in particular, who works a lot with conserving vultures in, in, in Africa. Okay. So she’s very aggressive working. So that was part of the understanding when she joined the team, we let her go for a month, don’t go off to Africa and help work on vulture conservation. So anybody, any zoo can really do it, do conservation.

Again, very locally, nationally, with their, with their stage if they make, make their, make a commitment for it.

Do you think with commitment, does space continue to be a problem for Zeus Aquariums?

Space? Space? Oh yes. You know, it’s, of course it is. I mean, every more space you acquire is more overhead, more personnel, more energy, more maintenance. And you’re making a perpetual commitment to that, that more space. Okay. I mean, when you build that new exhibit building, you gotta heat it. You gotta cool, you gotta take care of it. You got superstructure to worry about in perpetuity, you gotta staff it. So space is always an issue. Absolutely.

And so you have to be so, so conscious of, of that space. And, and that’s why the more we can collaborate with other countries, other places to help expand our abilities and our power and our cooperation, we’re all gonna have very limited, limited space. I mean, the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, again, it’s about 18 acres. Oddly, we’re one of the leading giraffe propagators in the country. Red panda, machus tree kangaroo. But we’re holding species like Sumatra and Tiger White handed given we’re, we’re, we’re holding those species, you know, keeping for the genetic diversity to, to help out the, the breeding pool. We’re not breeding everything, but we’ve made a select commitment to, to certain, to a handful of species. So space always will be an issue.

It’s just as simple as that. And that’s why the need, as we discussed earlier, to cooperate with private who have a lot more space than than zoos do in the United States.

Do you feel animals need to earn their keep in the zoo?

Do animals need to earn their keep?

I think, I think an institution needs to earn its keep as an important institution and part of the framework of their community. Just like fire and police protection in schools are part of that infrastructure of a successful community. I think a zoological institution that has great program and great diversity, you know, is is is just as much a part of that community. So do animals have to earn their, earn it as much as the professional staff has to earn, you know, the respect and earn the resources. Lincoln Children’s, like I said, it’s completely private. We have to be vital in our community to get the resources to operate to, to, and keep improving facilities so that we do take care of animals in proper way. We need the contributions of the public, we need the support of the public. We need that. So our animals earning their way. Sure.

You know, I think your pet dog earns its way. I mean, veterinary care and food isn’t cheap anymore. Okay. But they’re earning their living by being there for you, crawling on your lap and cuddling with you. And it costs you money, costs you money.

Is there a wild out there or do you think the majority of wild species spaces have turned into maybe managed wild zoos?

National parks are managed zoos. I mean, national parks have limited space. When the bison walk out of their territory, out of the park, they’re fair game. Okay. Elk, Africa, same thing. When animals leave the national parks, you know, and the population is starting to really squeeze in on the parks. Serengeti is, is is getting squeezed by populations of people. So, you know, I think national parks, I think there are very few places in the places in the world, you know, even Antarctica, you know, the, the pressures. I, I think the world, because the population is getting so large, I think national parks and natural areas are becoming large managed spaces.

I think it’s a reality. And I think we have to be smart about how we manage those, those spaces and how we take care of those species. And how we, I mean we’re, we’re moving animals from one, from one national park to another because there’s a low population of, and there’s too many here, you know, I mean, Swaziland years ago calling elephants, I mean literally calling elephants. But so some zoos swept, you know, said we’re gonna save this herd and move them into captivity for breeding programs. So yeah, they’re all managed land. It’s, they’re big, they’re big zoos. You’ve been in the profession a while.

Why do you feel zoos did not implement a major elephant?

National breeding program?

Resources. It, it always comes down. I mean, they aren’t cheap to work with.

And I think there’s still a lot of debate regarding can elephants really be managed in captivity properly?

Their smart species, their social hierarchy, their, their physical needs. The, the, the challenges of really taking good care of elephants is just, it’s, it’s, it’s herculean And I, I think, and I think it involved so few zoos. I think what zoos today, elephants are only in 30% of a ZA zoos. I, they’re not in a majority of zoos. I mean, out of the three accredited zoos in, in Nebraska, only one of them has, has elephants. A huge commitment in Omaha. But so many zoos, like in Kansas, very few of the 13 zoos down there, that they all don’t have elephants. So, you know, I, I think, and I think the perception of elephants in captivity is waning.

I think people don’t really, I think the, the masses, again, are, are, are, are against that. And so I think it was because of public pressure, because of na, because of resources, because of a collaborative commitment. It just, it, it never took off. It just never happened. And I don’t know if it will happen.

How successful do you think zoos or aquariums have been in achieving reintroduction of species back into the wild?

There have been successes, like I said, Lincoln Children’s Zoo, salt Creek, tiger Beetle, little bug. Okay. So that’s a very successful program. Do other zoos across the country know anything about it? No. Okay. You know, yeah. There’s some big mega of animals. You know, obviously the bison, the North American bison, California condor, people considering that a success, you know, simar horned orx. There, there are, oh, black-footed ferret. Okay. So there are some successes. Will we continue with those successes? I don’t know.

You know, can we really be successful?

Because, I mean, California condors were released in Arizona at the Grand Canyon, not in California because habitat loss.

So are we moving things?

Are we reintroducing things back into areas that never had them to begin with?

Because then their natural area has been destroyed, has been overcome by man. ’cause it’s not there anymore. Okay. You know, bison herds, there used to be a lot of those in Nebraska, now they’re just managed herds. Okay. And yes, people sell them meat and things like that.

So will we ever really be successful reintroducing?

And again, it’s so political.

I mean, how many countries are at war?

You know, the o capi, you know, alone, it’s just, it’s, it’s range is so limited, you know, and it’s, and the war torn country and how many they’re in captivity.

I don’t know. Will we be able to save it?

Will we be able to reintroduce it?

He can reintroduce it, but it might get slaughtered because, because of, of, of, of the war happening in the country. So I think that’s one of the biggest problems is political unrest. Resources. I think there’s so many nations that are fighting to feed their people and take care of their people that, you know, the wild areas, they’re secondary. ’cause they gotta worry about feeding their people and housing their people. It’s more important than I understand that.

What would you say has been the greatest area of development in the way zoos have interpreted their collection to their visitors?

The biggest development, you know, zoos have made a real strong commitment about education programs and really trying to connect.

And the phrase that one more time, please Mark, What has been the greatest areas of development in the way zoos have interpreted their collection to their visitors?

You know, I think a lot of zoos have spent a lot of money on what I call eye wash. Immersive experiences are so important to some zoos. You have, you know, you’re just, you’re, you’re now entering the tropics of whatever, or you’re entering this country or entering this habitat. Some zoos have spent hundreds of millions of dollars of replicating nature.

Did that, has that really been successful with connecting as much as it is doing an organized program with the kids to really learn more about, you know, gorillas, about any species as opposed to the expensive habitat that’s supposed to be resembling the wild?

You know, I don’t, I don’t think zoos analyze their successes and their failures enough. Because zoos don’t fail. Zoo directors don’t fail. When we do it, we do it right. Okay. And don’t tell me I did it wrong because I just spent millions and millions of dollars doing that. And we did it right. Well, maybe we didn’t do it right. Okay. And we’re very hesitant to tell other zoos that we didn’t do it right. Now, just several years ago, we built one of the most wonderful giraffe facilities in the country. We sent a zuo person out to many zoos intentionally sent the zuo person out to talk to keepers, curators and directors about other giraffe facilities.

And it’s amazing the different stories you hear at the same institution, from the keeper to the director to the curator regarding their facilities. They all have different opinions. They all have, oh, this is very successful. And the keeper says, no, it’s not. So, and we did a huge spreadsheet on what everybody said and what we should do. And we did a real good job when we built that facility. And, you know, but now four or five years later, we didn’t do a great job. Okay? We’re finding out more things that we probably should have listened to and that, that we did wrong.

And a lot of zoos are coming in and going, oh, we wanna see your facility. It’s so great going, yeah, it’s wonderful. But let’s, let us also be honest with you and tell you what we would do all over again. Problem is we have a lot of zoos, have a lot of ego and we don’t, didn’t, we didn’t do anything wrong.

You know, and I’m not being critical, okay?

It’s just, I’m being very honest. None of us wanna say we failed. We all wanna be successful. Especially when it considers you spent millions of dollars doing it and you made donors happy and politic, politicians happy and the community happy. But behind the scenes we should say we could have done it better. And so I think that’s what’s really important, is to be very honest in, in building those facilities. And I may have gone off topic on that question. I apologize if I did. No, it’s fine.

What do you feel about visitor?

You’ve mentioned experiences, visitors want, experience.

What do you feel about visitor experiences?

Some pluses and minuses in your opinion about when you pay to be a keeper for a day keeper, that kind of experience.

Did the Lincoln Children’s Zoo do any of that kind of thing? What’s your opinion?

You know, we do have camps for kids. We have done those, you know, occasional, you know, be a zookeeper for a day. But what we try to do is organize those things more from an educational perspective. Just like the Lincoln Children’s Zoo for over 25 years has had the science focus program on the zoo grounds. It’s a high school, 80 to a hundred students come there every day. There are two science teachers, math teacher, language arts teacher and social studies teacher. And they utilize the zoo as a living laboratory. And they do internships.

And some of the, you know, students actually go with the keepers and learn. And so while what they’re doing, some of them help take care of the animals. Some are work with our horticultures to learn about, about plant care and plant management, you know, as well. Some work with marketing and advertising. They’re more creative. So I, I think letting people come in and discover more about what it takes to take care of an animal is very, very important. So we’ve always tried to, and even with our, with our summer camps and our, in our off season camps, kids come in and they’re zookeeper for a day, whatever. They, they learn the trenches.

They come in and help pick up manure, you know, help observe the animals. I mean, you know, we have students who go and observe their primates and, and record behavior as, you know, part of their, their, their classwork at school. And, and so that gives them a whole different perspective of the zoo world. So I think, I think zoo collections, I think a zoo is a living laboratory. I hate to use the term laboratory, ’cause laboratory has a bad word, but it’s a living collection where research observation, you know, utilize the animal. I mean, that giraffe walking around that habitat, living the habitat as important as opening a book and reading about giraffe. Okay? Because you’re, you’re going, you’re, you’re watching how they walk. You’re watching how they move.

You’re watching, you know, gosh, they’re just like a cow.

You know, they, they’ve got the bulls going up and down in their throat, you know?

’cause they, why is that? Gee, how’s an animal that long?

How does the blood get up to its brain? You know?

It’s just, and so they asked the keepers different things. They learn different things about, you know, the seven neck bones, the same number of neck bones you and I have a giraffe has. But those neck bones are a little bit different. They can rotate a little bit differently. So the collection is a living laboratory as far as I’m concerned, for students of, of all ages.

How when you were building exhibits, how did you try and achieve a wow impact when you were looking at exhibit design?

And that’s one thing you’ll see at the Lincoln Children Zoo. We didn’t build the big gunite walls of Yes, we, we have, we have utilized a little bit of it, but the wow is, look at that animal. My gosh. When you’re standing on, when you’re standing 10 feet away from a giraffe on the same ground, and you’re going and you’re a kid who’s three feet tall, it’s like, that’s wow. Okay. Or when you even get to go up and feed a giraffe and have that tongue come out and go, oh my gosh. You know that wow. It’s so part. Well, like I said earlier, the little child petting that bunny rabbit Okay. Or seeing that snake for the first time, watching that tongue. Those are all wow moments.

We as adults have higher expectations of Oh wow. Because we see too many stupid movies. Okay. And we need to be impacted right away. Children have a whole different perspective of Oh wow. Even though they’re very connected electronically. You give us some great experiences at the children at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, you can climb 20 feet up in with the Spider monkeys. No, you’re not in the Spider Monkey habitat. The spider monkeys have their habitat, but there’s just panes of glass between you and the spider monkeys.

And you can climb up just like the spider monkeys 20 feet up in the air Okay. And be nose to nose with the spider monkey. ’cause the spider monkeys very interested in you and is just absolutely wonderful. So you’re climbing up, they’re climbing up. Okay. That’s, oh wow. That is that and especially and Oh wow. For a child is so much different than Oh wow. For, for an adult. So you just, you just try to give them those rich experiences of, of encounters.

And, you know, if we bring out an animal on, on the stage and show them how the serv could jump 10 feet in the air and hit the feathers that we have dangling about it going, oh wow, okay. It’s, it’s not out in its habitat. They’re just seeing the animal for the amazing creature that it is. The adaptations that, that has the spots, the necks, you know, the, the power, whatever. So, oh wow. It’s pretty easy. You know, we’ve had flying squirrels, cute little flying squirrels. Lady holds it up, the squirrel comes flying across the room, you know, lands in her pocket. Okay. Oh wow.

It doesn’t have to be a gorilla, you know, right there, it can be a little bit of everything. ’cause that Oh wow. Experience You have taken in your career a number of trips to Africa with people.

How important do you think tourism in Africa, per se, is to protecting species long term?

I think it’s really important, to be honest with you. You know, some people would, would, would criticize that, oh yeah, you’re going over there and you know, you’re disturbing them in their natural habitat. Well, as we discussed earlier, Serengeti Masai Mara, they are big zoos. They are big managed areas of wildlife. I think it’s really, really important to connect people. And not everybody can afford to go. The Lincoln Children’s Zoo is also, we’ve done travel for adults, but we’ve also done those for, for teens. We have taken teens to South Africa, Australia, Costa Rica, they’ve done some conservation work like in the Galapagos Islands.

They’ll, they’ll work at, at the breeding center there for the, for the tortoises. They’ll go on an island and help wipe out invasive plant material on islands. Okay. The Galapagos Islands that they’re trying to get back to the natural habitat. So we’ve taken youth to, and we’ve taken them down, you know, down off of the Florida coast and done some marine biology things and they take the animals back, they’ll go and capture the animal, take it to the lab, but then they take it back to where it was. So we’ve done that with, with teens for many, many years. Our, our adventure programs and kids have gone on become marine biologists and zoo professionals and things like that. But it, I think it’s a very successful program to, to give people that ability to really understand. And every one of those, I would say that 80% of the people that I have taken on these international trips have turned into zoo supporters and ’cause they really believe in what the zoo is accomplishing and they want to help more with the conservation work.

And did that tourism or you taking people to Africa ever work out that people appreciated the zoo more and wanted to give money?

Oh yes, absolutely. Abs abso positivity. It definitely, they go, that’s really amazing that we got to experience in the wild. But it’s also amazing that the Lincoln Children’s Zoo is making that commitment as well to help save species. Absolutely. You know, you, you know, when you’re in the Serengeti in the middle of the, the wilderness, the, the wildebeest migration, it’s like, that’s, that’s really pretty impressive. We don’t have wildebeests at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. They don’t need management. Okay. Obviously. But it is just a wonderful, rich experience that people come back and they talk about it and they tell other people about it, about how amazing Africa is. And I’ve had people support projects, you know, I’ve had people actually support an orphanage in Tanzania because they saw how poor people were in Tanzania, how they need, how they need resources.

And so I’ve had some of our travelers actually give funds back to the countries they visited to help the peoples and help the species in those countries. You indicated you’re an animal guy, but you were pulled away a lot as director to, to do other things.

How important do you feel it is for the zoo director to make rounds?

Oh, I, I, my wife love my wife dearly. I married a zookeeper. She used to always chastises me when I got home. You make it around the zoo today, you make it around the zoo today. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t make it. Every day. I’m very, and even with the smaller zoo that the Lincoln Children’s Zoo is, it’s not a ginormous zoo, but quite often other things call you away. You know, when you gotta be in the t in the radio, the TV station at six o’clock in the morning, and you gotta be in the radio station at eight o’clock in the morning when you gotta be with the donor, you know, for lunch or to dinner or in the evening, you’re giving a special ex. You know, sometimes it’s really, really hard to do that.

But I think the more a director, because again, the, the director is the keeper of the dream, and the dream is that institution, are we doing it right?

The way I got energy, if I was having a real grumpy day in my office, I would go out into the zoo and watch those kids go, wow, that is why I got up every morning is to, is to see those happy faces, the oh wow. Experiences when the kid for the first time, you know, is seeing that giraffe again. Seeing that bunny rabbit climbing with the spider monkeys feeding a camel. You know, when you get that giggly, oh wow, that is what gave me energy every day. And that is what put a smile on my face and knew that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. That’s why I am the keeper of the dream. Many zoos or some have feeding programs for animals, draft feeding.

What is the message you feel this should convey?

You know, it’s, some zoos are very critical of that. I think the, the message that it’s conveying is looking at the adaptation the animal has. I don’t think there’s, if the animals are conditioned for it, and it’s not negative, if it’s good animal welfare, I mean, the more a giraffe uses its tongue and swallows, the more saliva that’s generated. Okay. That’s what they need to do to help swallow their food. I mean, we’ve done research to make certain that even on the busiest days when the giraffe are eating a lot, it doesn’t impact them negatively in any way, shape or form. It actually stimulates them. It’s enriching to them, okay. Instead of just standing there, it’s giving them something to do. They’re engaging with the public.

So they’re, you know, you have to be careful with what you’re doing. You have to be selective with what you’re doing. But it’s been very successful at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, you know, and you don’t always touch the animal you’re feeding. I mean, and it is just like feeding the goats. I can still remember as a kid, when I went to the Storyland Zoo 60 years ago, I wanted to buy the ice cream cone with the animal pallets in it so I could go feed the sheep, feed the cow, you know, sorry, that was over 60 years ago. And I still remember that that was part of what helped pull me into the zoo world, was feeding them con it’s about connectivity. And if you haven’t got connectivity, you don’t have passion, you don’t, you don’t have people interested. And the more we can get people connected with wildlife, I don’t care if it’s a graf’s tongue coming out, I don’t care if it’s feeding a goat.

I don’t care what that connectivity is to get them thinking about animals, thinking about nature. That’s our mission. And hopefully they’ll keep growing that connectivity, keep that connectivity for their entire life, and care about animals and their habitat and care about animals. Back to conservation a bit, many zoos seems to be giving lip service to using money for conservation purposes.

Is the conservation issue so big that’s unreasonable request to ask of zoos?

No, I don’t, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to ask zoos to do conservation work. I, I, I don’t think it’s unreasonable. I, I think it’s unreasonable if somebody does a specific, well, x percentage needs to be committed. I think that’s an outsider telling you how to operate your business. Okay. And I think making a commitment is, is important. And again, the Salt Creek Tiger Bureau, I keep going back to that, the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, we actually got students working on it, volunteers working on it, besides staff working on it. Okay. You know, science focus program students, some of their parents were volunteering on it. So it, it’s, it’s a program that you can utilize with volunteers and staff, you know, and students and, and make a conservation commitment period.

You can do that. So, but don’t be an outside place and tell me that I’ve gotta make a 10% commitment of my budget for conservation. I can make my conservation work. It’s just make a commitment.

What do you feel about Susan Aquariums having the need to be more involved with animal welfare?

Well, I think animal welfare is a complicated term. Okay. I think animal, I’m sorry. Let’s, let’s just pause that again. You just put that right in front of the lens. Oh, well, Well, that’s a bad location. Sure. What do you think? Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. Could we start that again, John? I’m Sorry. Sure. Ask the question again so I tee it up. So please. Animal welfare. Okay.

Zoos need to be involved with animal welfare. Animal welfare is a very broad def defining animal welfare is complicated. Okay. But I think zoos should have always been committed to animal welfare. Doing what is right for the, for the animals in your care is animal welfare. Okay. I think, I think some policies nationally have gone overboard regarding animal welfare. Just like, okay, most zoos evaluate their animal welfare. They, they do well welfare evaluations, enrichment evaluations of, of their collections to make certain that zoos are, that the animals being enriched, that they’re being taken care of properly. That’s very important. Okay.

But when I, when a zoo is told, you have to worry about enriching and the animal welfare of your worms or your crickets, you know, that you’re feeding to other animals, I think that’s going a little bit overboard. You know, you get mealworms in once a week, you take care of them, you feed them for a week and you feed them out over the course of that week. Okay. Worrying about the welfare of that mealworm is silly. When you should be worrying about the welfare of your Galapagos tortoises, your giraffe, your tree kangaroos, your fruit bats. Okay. So I think animal welfare is a constant, absolutely a constant. Okay. And you should always be looking at animal, the zoo director should be looking at the animal welfare, the, the zookeeper, the curator, everybody should be looking at animal welfare to, to do what, what is the best that we can do for this animal. So, yes. But again, the definition is so broad and so, I I, I think the term is overused to be very honest with you, you know, in the zoo world, just do the best you can with the resources you got and be critical of what you’re doing. Be honestly critical of what you’re doing or not doing.

Do you feel in, in Zeus today, is there a way that people need to deal with elected officials and municipal bureaucracies in order to manage their zoo?

Oh, absolutely. You know, thinking Children’s Zoo is even a private zoo. We sit on city park land, but we have a 50 year lease with the city park. Okay. With, with the city. And there are details in there regarding the relationship. Okay. It, but a politician is like, a donor is like a member of the public, except you gotta keep them, you gotta keep them informed. You gotta keep them connected. And you have to work more aggressively with keeping the politicians connected and informed than you do of the general masses. Because yes, their decisions can impact you regarding the resources going by you.

You know, so, oh, oh, we can close that street off. Okay. But that’s where the zoo parking lot is, those, those kinds of things, you know, staying connected with the politicos of your community and your state and, and it is, it is vital. I mean, it has grown a lot. You know, I think especially those zoos that are municipal zoos, county zoos, city zoos. When it’s those elected officials who are deciding on your budget, oh, you better keep them real connected. You better, they better understand. And that was even, even at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo being completely private, but it’s still governed by a board of directors. And whenever the new team of board of directors, the board of 30, when the new group would come on in January, their orientation session, that was always emphasized, you and your significant other or your family get a special behind the scenes tour for as long as you want to learn about the zoo.

Because the governing board is just like politicos. They have to understand the complexity of a zoo. You know, when you’re on a board of directors for the Humane Society or you know, spousal abuse or you know, those kinds of things, you’re, you’re looking more at, you know, at issues. But zoos have physical plants, complicated physical plants. The way you take care of a draft is a lot different than the way you take care of a penguin. They have to the veterinary care, the, the commissary and the food preparation. My goodness. When you show them the animal commissary, they’re going, I could eat in here. That’s right. We have very high standards regarding food preparation for our animals.

They have to see the insides and they have to learn, oh, animal rights, animal rights issues. These are very real issues that all zoo have to con. So you have to inform and educate. I don’t care if it’s your governing board of directors or the politicos. They need to understand the complexity of a living collection that is a living collection. It’s an educational institution, it’s a public service institution as well. It’s a huge economic development item. It’s a tourist attraction in your community.

It’s all these things. Okay?

It’s education, it’s research it. Zoos are such a complex organization. It takes a while for politicals and boards to actually learn, my gosh, this is a complicated, fascinating asset in our community.

Would you say education is doing a good job, particularly in boosting the image of zoos among the public in the face of anti zoo groups?

You want an honest answer to that? One would hope. I think sadly, zoos and aquarium have failed in their education of the public over decades. I think if zoos and aquarium were more successful, controversial topics and issues would not be a reality in the political world. I think we would have different political officials. I think we would have different laws and policies nationally if zoos and Aquaria really educated the public better regarding wildlife, wildlife habitats, the relationships, natural resources, natural habitats, natural environments, I don’t think we’ve done a great job, because I think in the political world, we would have different leaders who care about natural worlds, who care about natural resources, who care about the relationships of groundwater, fresh water, clean air, wild places. I’m, I hate to say it, as a person who worked for decades or 50 years trying to connect people, and we need to do it better. We haven’t been successful.

Is there any advice you’d give to the Neophyte Zoo director about the importance of marketing the zoo?

And what do you feel are the most important aspects of marketing?

Oh, you gotta market. You know, you, it’s, it’s really easy to say, we’re a zoo. Everybody’s gonna come see us. No, that’s not true. You, you, you know, in the term marketing, go, Ooh, that’s a bad word. We’re a zoo. We’re a scientific institution. We’re, we’re a conservation institution. If people don’t know you’re there, you aren’t gonna get the support. To me, marketing is getting your community, knowing how important your institution is to the vitality of your community.

That you are an important asset, that you are a gem of the community, that you provide education, that you provide recreation, that you are economic development, that you’re providing all these resources to a community that you, you’re, you’re making your city more livable and more enjoyable. That is vitally, vitally important regarding that connectivity. And so we have to, you have to market. You gotta get the word out. And that’s why I was always making many presentations on tv, radio, community groups. The Kiwanis gives you a call, the rotary gives you a call, you know, I got tired of the rubber chicken circuit. Okay. But you have to be, that’s marketing. That is reminding your community about the great resource that you are and that everybody needs to enjoy it.

And, and, and, and front of mind. It’s all about front of mind. You know, it is easy to forget about. So yeah, marketing’s very, very important. But not, not compromising your principles. Okay. Not, not being sensational, not doing it wrong, but doing it right and getting the word out.

What were some of the most exciting or meaningful marketing ideas that you came up with that worked?

Oh, most exciting. I think when we had the billboards out that said, next year, N-E-C-K-S next year. And we have a giraff on it. I think that was like, come to the Lincoln Children’s Zoo next year. You know, I think that that was really, really popular boy, most popular campaigns, I can tell you something that really fell on their face, which I’d rather not do again, it is just, boy, those popular campaigns. That’s a very smart question. I’m, I’m, I’m fishing for a good black and white answer. I’m, I, I, sorry. That’s, that’s a good question.

You were talking about teenagers and, and, and some trips and stuff.

How do you think zoos can improve the connection with kids and teenagers to heighten their zeal, their awareness about the national natural world?

You’re never gonna connect ’em all. There are just some who don’t wanna be connected to the natural world. Okay. But there are some who are just craving to be connected with the natural world. And so you gotta just keep offering those up and keep trying to reach out to those kids. Trying to serve those kids more and more through very unique programs, you know, and the Lincoln Children Zoo, we’ve actually started with what we call Tots internals. It’s, it’s for preschool, it’s for little children, two and three years old who aren’t going to school yet to come with a parent. Or if parents are working, which is very frequent, come with grandparents or caregiver and getting them connected at the zoo. Then they start doing our summer camps up through elementary school, then become a zoo crew member, a volunteer at the zoo as a teenager.

And there’s different levels of zoo crew volunteer, you know, before you know it, after you’re doing your fourth year being a zoo crew member, you get to go help clean up after the giraffe and go in into the giraffe habitat. That’s really pretty cool when you’re a 15-year-old kid.

Then when you turn, turn 16, gee, we know you so well, how would you like to do guest services?

How would you like to work at the zoo?

Get paid for coming to the zoo. Okay. And so you, you keep building those relationships and you keep trying to pull those kids in and give them rich opportunities. And it’s not easy. Like I said, you’re not gonna draw every kid in. It’s just as simple. It’s just as simple as that. Some would rather stick their head, you know, under the hood of a car. Well, like, it’s kind of complicated now, but, you know, some are more mechanical, but keep giving, keep giving opportunities to have great experiences.

What was one of the main things you wanted the families and their kids to feel about the zoo when they came there?

I wanted them to go, I wanted them to have a great family time together. Because going to the zoo several years ago, we used to have grief groups come to the zoo. Ch families who had lost a child. Okay. But had it still had other children, they would come to the zoo instead of just meeting someplace like at a park. They discovered coming to the zoo was healing ’cause it was a place of life and interacting with life. And that’s what zoos are filled with life. We all crave life. We all crave, crave joy and experiences like that.

And so I think that’s what zoos are really great at, is building family time healing. Zoos can be healing for people. Animals can be healing for people.

Why do you think people love to have their cat on their lap or snuggle their dogs?

’cause the animals are healing. Okay. They’re, it’s good for the soul, it’s good for the essence. That’s what you can get when it comes to the Lincoln Children Zoo, family time, healing time, great time for children and adults. That’s what I want people to do when they come to the zoo, is have rich experiences of fun, joy, and happiness. So, and that’s the beautiful thing about the Lincoln Children’s Zoo is you can spend a half hour or a half a day, it’s your choice. Whereas some zoos are so large, you’re taking the kid out exhausted. Okay? And they’re grumpy because I’m so tired and here too long. ’cause the zoo is too much.

But when and at the children’s zoo, our zoo is so great, parents frequently come in the, come in the entrance, then they follow the kids. ’cause the kids know the zoo. I’m wanna go climb with the spider monkeys. I wanna go see the drab. I wanna go sit in the tiger Jeep. You know, I wanna go down a critter outpost, you know, I wanna go play in the splash dream. Okay. And parents then follow their children. That’s the experience, that’s the joy, that’s the family time. That’s what I want families to do when they come to Lincoln Children Zoo.

Do you think zoos have a place in helping governments protect land masses?

Sure. No, I think I, I, if the zoo can work with their government to help set land aside, you know, it can be for a while. You know, the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle, that little bug is pretty controversial because the Salt Creek marshes aren’t prime development land. Just north of town, just north of the interstate, prime development land. Some people weren’t really buggy about the Lincoln Children’s Zoo being involved with saving this little critter and reintroducing them. But the NRD natural resource people, they purchased the land, set it aside because it was just an endangered species. Okay. And that, that issue is, is years past now. Okay. We’re living around that issue. It’s not an issue anymore. So we can talk more about the Salt Creek Tiger Be Know Propagation program that we’ve been doing for 15, 16, 17, 18 years.

What issues, and you’ve mentioned some, what issues would you like to see National International Zoo Aquarium issue associations be addressing?

There’s the A ZA, American Zoo Association, the WAZA, the World Zoo Association, waza, there’s the Zoological Association of America.

What do you think they should be all addressing?

I think they also should be addressing collaboratively and collectively doing a better job of educating the masses about the natural world, natural habitats, species in those habitats.

What is, what, what are the threats to all of that?

I think we’re doing, again, I don’t think we’re doing a good job. And I think we all have a different mission, different message. I think, you know, the A ZA is wanting to get more regulatory with its members regarding accreditation and the expectations. I think they’re going to become more regulatory. I think the ZAA is trying to help zoos do a better job of species propagation than species management. Okay. To work that way. You know, waza, I think sometimes they, they speak wonderfully, but I think sometimes it’s just the big boys club because they’re kind of selective on their membership and they have expectations of you to travel around the world to attend their meetings and things like that. We’re not working together. We’re in our own little silos ignoring each other’s programs and our cooperations.

And, you know, it is just, we’re not, we don’t have a joint mission. And the joint mission should be touching everybody’s heart regarding, again, regarding the natural world, regarding what’s going on. So again, if we do a better job all collectively, we would have a lot different politicians and we would have a lot better environment and a better world.

And we mentioned too, in the United States, the American Zoo Association and the Zoological Association of America, two professional zoo organization, is there room for both of them?

Absolutely. Abs ab abs of positivity. You know, there’s also the A A ZK, the American Association of Zookeepers, there’s an American Association of Zoo Horticulturists. So the International Association of Zoo Educators. Okay. There’s room for all of them. But again, they’re kind of in their own silos. They’re not working together because different groups have different attitudes. We’re better than you, or you don’t do it the way we do it. You know, things like that. It’s like, there aren’t enough of us out there for Pete’s sakes.

Okay. We need to be more collaborative and we need to work together.

We need to lower our, our ego some and go, what’s our real mission here?

What is our real mission?

You know, so many national associations change their focus every couple of years, you know, and it’s like, well, we change horses again. You know? And it’s kind of embarrassing. It is just, it, yes, there’s definitely room for, but what’s more important is work together to accomplish a similar goal.

What, to what extent do you continue to be active, if at all, in the zoological field or the conservation field?

You know, I, the zoo that I retired from, Lincoln Children’s Zoo, the, the team still calls on me every now and then for institutional knowledge and my opinion, you know, and things like that. And I go and visit with them and, you know, help them, you know, figure out where they’re going and things like that. Oh, if they ask me, I’ll go share. I am involved with the zoo, the photo arc, the Joe Sartor photo arc. I’m on the Photo Arc Foundation, trying to move that forward, you know, into the future. I still am currently a Nebraska tourism commissioner, trying to promote tourism in Nebraska as well, the zoological world. But I’m retired and, you know, I, I do some other volunteer work in our community now and serving kids. ’cause that, that’s more of my focus right now.

I’ve, you know, If you could go back in time, anything you would’ve done differently, your chance?

I would go back in time. You know, I was pretty mouthy as a young zoo director in South Bend, Indiana. And it’s part of the reason I left South Bend, Indiana. ’cause I was kind of a young cocky zoo director. I was one of the young zoo directors in the country, and I was pretty pompous in south, you know, I was pretty arrogant and self-righteous, and I knew better, but I guess I wouldn’t go back because that forced me to move on and go to Lincoln, Nebraska and find a phenomenal woman and marry her and, and start a career and a great family in Lincoln, Nebraska. So I don’t regret that at all.

Moving obvious to Lincoln, Nebraska, I was only to in Lincoln, Nebraska going, why Lincoln, Nebraska?

I, I, if I could do it all over again, you know, I think I would try to stay more focused on conservation work and, and building resources for conservation. But again, it’s, it’s so hard when you’re struggling just to pay the bills to feed the animals and keep the power on. It’s hard to decide, okay, do I need to, can I really afford to give resources to a project in Africa or Costa Rica or some other, you know, some Asian country It, like I said, I got to worry about the collection here first and foremost.

So, do I have any big regrets?

No, I would, I would walk around the institution more. Okay. I would, I would learn more too sooner about politics and those relationships. I would do more reading on animal management. I would do more time researching if I really had the time to do that and try to get better informed. But when you’re so busy, just trying to take care of the day to day, or sometimes you’re overwhelmed and you don’t wanna do that reading when you go home, you wanna pick up a comic book or do a crossword puzzle. I have no big regrets. You know, I’m a very lucky man. I had 50 phenomenal years of zoo work. Met some wonderful people, accomplished some wonderful things.

I don’t really have any big regrets.

Are there programs or exhibits that you would’ve implemented during your tenure that didn’t happen?

There’s an old facility at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo that when I walked in there in 86, it was considered the, it was considered the new building. It was built in the, the late seventies. It was outdated when it was built. It was called the Animal Kingdom building. It was your typical, you know, the WPA back in the thirties built what I call the postage stamp zoos. You know, here’s this 10 by 10 cage for this animal right next to us, this other cage, you know, that’s, you know, the old postage stamp collection. Well, the animal kingdom building built in the seventies was postage stamp collection this four by five or whatever. There’s this whole series of little cubicles for animals, for servos and holler monkeys and all kinds of animals.

Just horrible little boxes. I wish I would’ve stayed there long enough to demolish that building. It was horrible. When I inherited it, I kept, I had retrofitted that thing a dozen times. Okay. Improving the, the animal care and the animal management in that facilities through many, many dollars, hadn’t improved it, but it never got bulldozed like it really should have. That’s the one regret I have.

What’s your proudest accomplishment as you think back?

Can I say several? Sure. You know, I’m really, really proud of the photo arc being launched at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, Joe Sartor in the photo arc. And its documentation of currently over 16, getting close to 17,000 species. Many of them before they went intis, he’s now, he has now documented animals that have become extinct. His mission, I mean, the message has gone out around the world. Nine books have been published. He, he does speaking, he, he, he, he named the country he’s been to, to try to document animals and to get the word out about the vanishing species of this world. So when you see that photograph of that monkey staring you in the eyes and it really pulls you in, or that elephant, maybe that fish or that snake looking at you, it goes, it really pulls you in.

So I’m very, very proud of the photo arc, the beautiful photo arc that launched at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo with the naked Molera. That was our very first animal. Very proud of the photo arc. I’m very, very proud of the science focus program, our collaboration with the Lincoln Public Schools. For 25 years, students, high school students have been coming to the zoo using the zoo as a living laboratory. We gave them actual space at the zoo. We built a brand new science building for them that’s got three science laboratories, four classrooms, big meeting spaces, student spaces, outdoor gardens, you know, beehives in all kinds of great natural things for students to use as a living laboratory besides the zoo. So students come to the zoo every day from all the high schools in Lincoln. And that program has launched physicists, veterinarians, medical doctors, researchers, organic gardeners, all kinds of great people have been launched from the science focus program.

Very, very proud of that. There’s even something that we did many, many years ago back really before digitization digitized and things got able, we did a thing called Zari with label the carry with Larry, the cable guy, Larry, the cable guy is kind of a odd comedian that some people may be aware of, but he’s a local guy. He is a local Nebraskan. And Larry and I, we went around the zoo and we did all these three to five minute little blurbs about animals, the Humboldt Penguins or the monitor lizard or the, or the porcupine. And we recorded these and we put them on disc and we sent them out to all the children’s hospitals and children’s rehab facilities in Canada and the United States. Over 400 went out. That was before you could, that was before you could, you know, go things online and get YouTubey kind of things. So we actually sent these disc out and we did two of these videos and we actually received all kinds of letters from people around the country going, thank you for this. Great for our children who are in the hospital spending some time because now they get to learn.

Some animals have a fun thing. So, you know, the photo arc science photos, poker program, zoo Ari. But what I’m probably also proudest of is that the zoo has launched some really wonderful people in the zoo world. We’ve launched zoo directors, zookeepers teachers, some phenomenal people got inspired at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo to go on and do wonderful things. I’m very proud of those relationships and that we helped launch some wonderful people to do some field research, is to do some really wonderful things to help make this a better world. Gimme more information about the photo arc.

How did it start and what was your relationship with its start?

Okay. Joe Sartore, national Geographic photographer, decades, came to me many years ago, over about 20 years ago, and said, and he lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. He lives just a couple minutes from my house. Couple minutes from the zoo. Joe said, Chappo, I need to talk to you. I got an idea. He came in, we sat down and he says, my wife Kathy is going through chemo. Okay? She’s got cancer. So she’s going through chemo treatments here. And I can’t leave. I’m an Astro Geographic photographer, photographing wildlife around the world. I’m stationed in Lincoln for months now.

I’m gonna go steer crazy. I love my wife, I’m gonna be here for her, but I’m gonna go steer crazy if I’ve got something creative to do. I wanna do portraits of animals.

I said, what do you mean portraits?

I said, you travel the world. You get pictures of these animals in their natural habitat. You’ve got grizzly bears.

You know, you’ve, you’ve been in the water swimming, taking, taking all kinds of phenomenal pictures and have you sacrificed your health going out around the world?

He says he, he was inspired, I forget who the artist was ’cause I want an animal on a white background or a black background. So all you do is focus on that animal. You just see that animal directly. He said, I what animals? He says, all animals. I’m going, okay Joe, sure. We’ll try this. So the very first thing we did, I said, so I went to our curator, Randy, great, great guy, and he says, let’s start out with the naked mole rat, naked mole rats. I call ’em, brought worse with teeth. You know, there’s funny looking little things.

And we put the naked mo rat went in the commissary, the diet kitchen at the zoo on the white chopping block and put the naked mo rat there. And Joel came in with his cameras and his lighting and, and he says, let’s do another species. So we kept talking and we documented every animal at the zoo that we could. He developed processes on how to take care of, take a great picture of an animal without harming the animal. Animal welfare, had to be respected at all times to take the portrait. You know, he may have a cloth box that he, that we can put an animal in. So the animal bounces around a little bit. They’re just hitting the cloth, but it’s all white.

And he’s got his lens in through the little front there, taking the, the photo or we painted, if it’s a holding area, like for a tiger, you paint the holding area all black or all white, and you floodlight it from outside, obviously cut a little hole in the mesh so he can get his camera in there. So when the tiger comes into the holding area and walks in and looks, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, he’s taking pictures. So if you go to photo arc and look at, he’s documented over 16,000 species in captivity. He got launched at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, then he got connected. He says, Chapo connect me with other zoos. So we started connecting him, you know, with other a z zoos and sanctuaries all around the world. And it’s, his goal is to document at least 25,000 species before they become extinct. And he has taken pictures of species that are now extinct.

So I’m very, very proud of the photo arc that the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, we said yes. We said yes. And he has got that message out now internationally, Lincoln Children’s Zoo animals have been, have been projected on the Vatican, the Hague, the UN building in New York, all around the world. He’s getting the message out about, these animals are disappearing, their habitats are being destroyed. We need to be concerned, we need to do something about this. He has got the message going real strong. And the, and the images. The images are so powerful of the animals that I, he we’re getting the message out. That’s what I mean. Zoos can be a great educator.

We can be great at getting the word out about saving the natural world. Mention zoos.

Are there zoos in the world that you particularly admire?

Why do you, why and where are they?

You know, years and years and years and years ago, back in the early eighties, part of my inspiration to get into the zoo world was one, Gerald Durrell, who built the Jersey Zoo on the allo jersey in the English Channel. Okay. It became a Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust. I got to go there for a summer school. I got selected when I was assistant director. And I flew to England, flew into the English Channel and went to Jersey. And what I discovered about the Jersey Zoo, it’s not a big fancy place. It was built with the idea, a propagating species and a wonderful welfare situation, taking care of the animals. Okay. It wasn’t fancy exhibits, it wasn’t fancy habitat, it was a commitment of doing it right and propagating species to save them from extinction.

The simple little zoo. It was such an inspiration for me as a young zoo manager, that going, gosh, you don’t have to build big multi-billion dollar areas. You can select species, help save them, utilizing the resources. It doesn’t have to be great big, you can still engage the public, you can still educate the public and you can still breed endangered species. So Jersey, Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, I think maybe its current name is Jersey Zoo. It was an inspiration for me. Yeah, I’ve seen probably a couple hundred zoos around, you know, the world and, you know, there was a zoo, there’s a zoo up in Battle Creek, Michigan called the Binder Park Zoo. It’s kind of a combination nature center in zoo, some really great big wildlife habitats, you know, and zoo world. So, you know, there’s some really good places.

I think the Lincoln Children’s Zoo does a pretty good job too.

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

Career, years and years and years ago, I think it was at the Children’s Zoo Symposium in Philadelphia, probably 30, 35 years ago when somebody said, an interpreter said, as the zoo director, you’re the keeper of the dream. I went, the keeper of the dream keeper, the dream for the children’s zoo.

What is the dream for the children’s zoo into the future?

What are we trying to do today and what do we wanna do tomorrow?

I’m the, because the zoo was founded by a very wonderful person, aren’t it Folsom, who, who had a dream of creating a wonderful place to engage children in the natural world. And then I became a successor of that dream in 1986, and it was my responsibility to carry that dream forward. And so being the keeper of the dream was, was really, really important. I think another wise zoo director made your west rest in peace. Earl well said John, as far as zoo ideas from other zoos, he says, steal the good stuff, don’t steal the crap. Okay. Because there are a lot of great habitats, not great ideas out there. Steal that. And Jim Anderson, retired zoo director from Fort Wayne, also in, in Indiana. He says, John, you know, we’re only two bad decisions away from losing our job, so be careful in your decisions as a professional.

And, and he, he was right. You know, be really, really smart about it. But, you know, but I think the biggest was that as the zoo guy, the zoo director, I was the keeper of the dream. Now you’ve had, in, in your career, you’ve had mentors.

What lessons did you take away from some of them?

Oh, Who were your Mentors?

Well, Earl Wells, may he rest in peace was one of my mentors. He also helped lend me the gig in, in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was a wonderful mentor. You know, he was probably the most impactful mentor that I had. My biology teacher in high school, Mr. Smith, may he rest in peace, was a, a mentor of mine. And he encouraged me my entire adult career. And I even went back to him when we were designing some new habit habitats at, at the Lincoln, at, at the zoo in South Bend, Indiana where I started. And he was a teacher in South Bend. I, I turned to him and said, I need some help on some ideas for some interpretation and things like that.

And, you know, he considered me one of his heroes, but he was one of my heroes, Mr. Smith, my heroes in peace, you know, and a negative kind of thing is the guy who was the zoo director before me in Indiana, I kind of learned what not to do. Okay. This, he did some things that I said, I’m not gonna do that if I ever become a zoo director. I will never do that if I become a zoo director. And I made certain that I never did that when I became a zoo director.

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

And why would you?

Absolutely. I would like to visit with that young person a little bit more, though, to make certain that their focus, that it would be a satisfying career or satisfying opportunity for them. Some folks interested in fish and wildlife careers, maybe wanna more, do more field work, wanna do more frontline work in the field, maybe want to be more of an academic, you know, it’s, it’s not always a good application. And just like I’ve told several people who I’ve talked to, I said, a future in the zoo world is people who understand opera conditioning and training of animals, because that helps with the animal welfare and the animal management. And so you don’t have to be a, a strong scientist or zoologists or biologists and or veterinarian, but that’s an opportunity. So I would recommend it only after visiting with folks, because I think it’s a wonderful career.

But one of my first things I ask them is, are you interested in money?

Zoom world is not a profitable, profitable place to work.

Okay. And I’m going, did you want my job being a zoo director?

Because I think somebody once told me that there were more astronauts than zoo directors in the United States. So it’s a rare gig to land a zoo directors. And I was kind of the odd duck out when I landed and one at an early age in my twenties. Okay. So if you, and if you really like doing that kinda work, if you really think you’re getting into being a zoo director, don’t do it because you don’t understand what being a zoo director really is at your early age. But absolutely investigate the, investigate the field, take a shot at it. You know, sadly, I think there’s a high turnover in the zookeeper world. ’cause I think a lot of zookeepers get in and I think burnout or dissatisfaction hits them after three to five years. And they discover that it’s kind of something different.

And especially some of them discover it’s a physically taxing profession when you’re a zookeeper and you have strange hours and you know, strange work weeks and things like that and expectations. So, but you know, I’m delighted that I got into it all those many, many years ago when I was a sixth grader. I still wanted to be the zoo person. And, you know, 68, I’m still darn proud that I did. So. Yeah. But with a lot of caveats, I would recommend it.

What do you believe can or should the US zoos or aquariums do to help upgrade developing countries with their zoos?

You know, I think we have such great resources here in the United States. We have such great knowledge that I think it’d be very, very easy, excuse me, to, to share that, that knowledge and those resources, I mean, quite often all they need is just knowledge and drive. And I mean, I don’t know if years and years and years ago, there was a person by the name of Sharon Mottola who found a zoo in Baylee, I think it was the Bay Zoo. And she was Native animals of Baylee. And she was a hard driving, I think, from the United States. And she wanted to establish a zoo down there. She just used native wood. I mean, there wasn’t anything fancy about it.

’cause her goal was to serve the locals, to show them what animals lived in their neighborhood, in their country of bays. And she just, you know, she came to the United States, asked to help raise money, you know, have volunteers go down and help her build it. And she just used the local materials and local resources and it was very successful at, so it’s not like, you know, in the United States, we love to build things in the zoo world. Big structures. You know, I think a lot of zoo directors like to stand back and go, look what I built. Okay, that big multi-billion dollar complex, so many country, you don’t need to do that. Especially to help, help them in their country, especially establishes zoo that maybe features the, the local fauna in flora to help educate and inform the locals. So they’re passionate about protecting and saving the wildlife. ’cause as we all know, quite often you don’t realize what’s outside your back door.

You know, no matter where you live in the world. So I think, I think zoos do, the United States zoos do have that opportunity. And, and I would recommend pursuing it and helping out those zoos, those those countries that really want to build, build a collection.

Can we talk about the euthanizing of endangered species?

The sur for surplus or genetic issues et still pose a political problem they do for zoos?

They do. And Aquariums It does. I mean, I mean, it’s very easy to get the word out these days. It’s, it’s very hard to hide true information, you know, of, of euthanizing an animal or something like that. I actually understand why euthanasia, it can be used properly as a management tool. But I think the more scientific and proper management tool is preventing unwanted conceptions, unwanted births, you know, pregnancies and things like that. I think we should know the science well enough that we can, can prevent that. And I think destroying an animal just because it’s old, well, if it is, if the quality of life is horrible, by all means, just like people determine the quality of life for their own pets.

I mean, when, you know, when Fido hits us starts and, and I, certain issues, and I think every zoo needs to have its system of analysis regarding is euthanasia appropriate regarding the quality of life, regarding the staff?

You know, that that has to be great internal discussion for everybody to come to a consensus that euthanasia may be is the proper thing because of the quality of life that the animals is existing in. I don’t personally believe that you just euthanized because we don’t need it anymore. Again, that’s a personal thought. I understand why some zoos do, but I think it’s more responsible to prevent that from occurring. Does that seem to be a little political issue, even if scientifically it’s okay. You know, the mark, I hate to say it, but the public doesn’t always understand science and good science makes good decisions, but it’s very, very hard to explain good science in a, in a posting on the internet in, in, in a Facebook response when somebody says, you euthanized or killed sparky. You know, my favorite zebra at the zoo. Well, good science says that sparky’s quality of life, you know, had had all kinds of arthritis issues and, and was off its food and just was dwindling away.

And the humane thing to do after great analysis and discussion and physical examinations, all kinds of, you know, tests on the animal, good science said the proper thing would be to euthanize because of the health of an animal. That’s very hard to explain to people who are emotional and don’t understand and just have a little bit of knowledge. So that’s the biggest challenge, is sharing the proper knowledge for, to explain why the decision was made. So, you know, again, good science is good science, but it’s not always easy to explain to everybody.

So how does zoos deal with the surplus animal issue?

I, I think you make a commitment to, I believe in taking care of an animal to its natural death or until proper because of the quality of life issue. You design spaces, you make a commitment to a species or you make a commitment to individual animals. Okay? You make that commitment and that’s our responsibility. I mean, at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, we’ve set age records with a machi tree. Kangaroos. Yes. Ted was past reproductive age. Yes. Ted was gonna be used as a breeder anymore. Yes. Ted was well into his teens. Okay. But we held onto him because it was the ethical thing to do.

Just because he was surplus doesn’t mean that we don’t want Ted anymore. And so, I mean, we had to provide resources and space for ’em, but you do that to the best of your ability and you actually plan on that. And if you can’t really manage a species properly, maybe you shouldn’t be managing it, maybe you shouldn’t hurry off and go, we’re gonna breed that. And then several years later you go, oh, you need to be critically analytical of what you can do, what your resources are not only today, but tomorrow regarding proper management.

What would you say is the role of conservation, breeding or breeding for conservation purposes in zoos relative to other conservation activities?

You know, I think, I think a a zoological institution needs to make a, a limited commitment to a number of species that they can do. Okay. I think zoos can do a better job of educating about conservation and informing about conservation and doing some field conservation. And I think zoos that want to breed, a lot of animals are asking for trouble or they don’t put a lot of thought and a lot of planning to it. So I think, and, and maybe a smaller species, maybe it is a, a, a frog species, maybe it is a turtle species, you know, it’s, it doesn’t always have to be the great big megavertebrates or great big large animals. Maybe it’s a smaller bird species that you can make a commitment to. But you should, with great analysis and resource analysis, some strategic planning, decide what you can commit to and know what you can’t commit to. Excuse me.

Do you think we have any, or do we need any charismatic committed heroes to help shift public opinion regarding conservation?

My examples certainly are Jacque Sau or Jane Goodall, et cetera.

Do we have any of those type of people now that you’re aware of?

We need heroes. We absolutely need high profile heroes who are advocating, you know, Attenborough, you know, those kinds of wonderful people who are out there advocating for the earth for its diversity to protect it.

Yes. You know, Jane, obviously Jane’s getting quite on an age, you know, do we have any of those right now?

I don’t know. You know, the, the biggest challenge is when Jacque Gau, I remember Jacque Gusteau because the undersea world of Jacque Gusteau, there were three networks at the time. Okay? It wasn’t YouTube, there wasn’t social media. It was e everybody would talk about Ee world of Jacque Csau because they didn’t have many other choices, you know, it was all in the family of Jacque Csau or whatever. And so it was much easier then to have those champions, you know, Marlon Perkins, you know, Sunday Night Mutual, Omahas Wild Kingdom, always right before the wonderful world at Disney. Everybody back then, when I was young, 50, 60 years ago, that’s what it was all about. But now it’s much harder to find those champions unless there’s of such a high level, it, it would be lovely to, to, to have to have several of those champions. I’m not really certain that I know of any of those champions. Do we need ’em? Absolutely.

Mother Earth and her residents need a huge champion. We talked about exhibits. When a zoo spends multimillions of dollars on a gorilla or an elephant or a tiger exhibit, and critics ask why this money, which is usually in the multimillions, is not used to help the animals in the wild.

And you say what?

Say it’s a balance. Okay. It, it’s a balance. We wanted to bring this mega, this species to this city to help inform and help educate. And we wanted to do it humanely with great animal welfare in place that requires this amount of space. Okay. And we decided to either make a, a conservation breeding commitment or a conservation holding of genetic material commitment, just like the Lincoln Children’s Zoo built, built a lovely tiger facility, but we did not build it large enough to breed to have any offspring and hold onto that offspring for many, for several years. We wouldn’t have the space. We knew that, okay. But we knew that we could properly held house one or two animals in a great exhibit and have proper behind the scenes holding facilities, indoor and outdoor holding facilities behind the scenes. So, you know, we could have tripled the tiger budget and, and done that. But then, but, so we went a little bit smaller so then we could afford that field, those field conservation dollars and things like that.

It’s all a balance. It’s a balance of what mission are you trying to accomplish locally regarding education, informing and sharing what your constituents, what they would like and enjoy from an educational and exhibit perspective. And also having resources available to work in the field. Yes, we can overbuild absolutely my friend, we can definitely overbuild and, but it’s, it’s always a balance. It’s always a balance. And zoos need to be honestly reflective of not only today, but tomorrow. And, and what focus are they gonna look at.

Are you concerned about Zeus and aquarium staying viable and pertinent in the next 25 years?

Relevant? What direction do you think will help ’em stay relevant?

Very concerned, absolutely completely concerned about them staying relevant in this day and age, because this day and age is so much different from when I was young or even middle age, regarding what people’s expectations are regarding entertainment and engagement. And, and they have so many choices with their spending dollars and, and their recreational time. I mean, youth sports and activities such as that has so bitten into family recreational time together. I mean, in the old days, Saturdays pile in the car and drive down to the zoo or go to the lake and do that kind of thing. Now, Saturdays, before they crack a dawn, they’re taking kids off to the soccer field or to some other sports competition, or they’re driving outta town for the weekend because there’s a sports competition or something like that. And so recreational time is becoming rarer and rarer and rarer and very harder for families to spend time at the zoo. So yes, society is changing. I think keeping zoos relevant is very, very important.

And so that’s where that connectivity with your constituents, listening to your constituents, visiting with your constituents, you know, when you go to remodel or expand your facility, you need to engage not only donors and the politicos, you need to involve your membership who do have memberships at the zoo. You need to ask the questions of the general public in the community to find out what their expectations are today and tomorrow for your institution to keep it relevant.

You know, what do you want regarding exhibitry regarding programming?

You know, you, they’re hard questions to ask and it takes time and it takes resources to ask these questions, but you have to be relevant and you have to be pertinent. You have to be a part of the community to make it happen and to keep it alive. If you don’t, you’re, you’re, you’re sitting on the branch sawing off the limb on the wrong side. You know, you can’t, the Z director can’t say, I know what’s best. I’m going to build an o capi exhibit. 99% of the people out there do not know what no cappi is. And just go, well, that’s a funky looking animal.

And walk at golf at it and walk on. Okay?

No, you have to involve your community and ask them and get involved and find out what they really, really, really desire and what, what, what they would enjoy and what is true surface to them.

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

Will they survive the length of time municipal zoos have?

That’s a, a good question mark, because, you know, we all know private zoos. It’s the creation of a well-healed individual or couple, and nobody lives forever. Communities live forever. You know, that well-heeled individual who created that.

What’s their long-term plan? Who is their successor?

Are they willing it to aborted directors?

Are they willing it to a community?

Have they found the new leadership?

You know, there is a so logical institution in Kansas, and it was founded by a very, very wealthy multimillionaire. It’s a big, big collection. And that multimillionaire willed his estate and when he passed, all of his resources are poured into an endowment fund. I believe the endowment’s like $40 million of which are the cheap operating dollars, I believe, for that institution to help pay its pay its bills. So I mean, he was thinking beyond tomorrow, beyond today, re regarding his legacy and keeping that institution alive and, and, and thriving because so, you know, we’ve, we’ve seen in our zoo world where people have had their private collections, they pass away and then it just, it just windows that does happen. Somebody who’s really committed to it and wanting to do it right, if they’ve got the resources they need to make that commitment in the long term so that their dream, that service, that facility can, can stay viable into the future. What do you know about the profession that you devoted so many years of your life to Do I know about the profession? Yeah, Yeah. I know it’s a damn challenging, complicated profession.

I know it’s not for everybody because you are constantly squeezed. You know, if you’re speaking of the zoo director’s position, you’re constantly squeezed between everybody and you never get it right.

You’re always wrong. Okay?

You, you know, if you make the politicals happy, you might not make a donor happy. If you make the donor happy, you may not make the zookeepers happy. If you make the zoo happy, happy, zookeepers happy, you may not make vest services happy. It’s, it is so challenging because we’re talking about life, we’re talking about, we’re talking about people being engaged in a diversity of life, you know, those animals. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s very, very hard, very hard work. And if you’re soft skin, you shouldn’t do it. If you’re big hearted, you know, do it. But understand what you’re getting into, really understand, I would do it all over again.

I got so lucky in my career and with some great opportunities to, to do some awesome things and to learn so much, I would do it all over again.

But there’s so many caveats that when I’ve talked to younger people, when they, they’re thinking about the career in the field and whatever, and saying, have you thought about this?

Have you thought about that? And they go, no, I hadn’t. You know, because life and death is a daily situation in a zoo world, you know, I mean, you get into the zoo world because you wanna help save endangered species, you wanna help breed things, you wanna make good, positive things happen, but it almost die. You know, you’ve done it with the euthanasia call or diced naturally, or gets injured or something, or develops, develops an, an illness that you have no control over.

Cancer and things like that, you know?

So it’s, you know, I’ve had some really rough times in animals that I’ve known since they were youngsters and had to make with euthanasia call. It’s like, this really stinks. It really, really stinks.

So what have I learned?

I’ve, I’ve learned about people in so many ways too, and the way people react to different things. I’ve learned about politicians, I’ve learned about fundraising, you know, I’ve learned about supervising people. Well, I’ve, I’ve just learned to be a listener. I’ve just, it’s a, as I always said, I as a zoo person, I learn something new every day. Absolutely. Regarding, I don’t care if it’s regarding an animal, regarding people, regarding the community, regarding resources. I was constantly learning. And if you’re not into learning and listening to what you’re learning, don’t get into the business. I mean, if you’re set on your way, if you’re set on your way walking into the zoo world, don’t into it because there’s nothing more dynamic than the zoo world.

How would you like to be remembered your legacy?

I’d like to be remembered, oh boy. That he was a good fellow. He did something really good for our community. He did something great for families. He did something great for animal care. He did something good for his coworkers. You know, I think what’s important is that, I don’t wanna say you leave a legacy and people don’t have to, I mean, 20 years after I die, my family’s gonna be the only ones who really know who John Chappo was. Okay. And that, and that’s fine.

It’s just like, what’s the old saying?

You know, you die 30 days later, they got somebody else in your job and they’re moving on. You know, it’s just, and it’s very true. My legacy, I just hope that I’ve touched lives in those lives, are going forward with things that the zoo touched them some way positive. And they’re moving forward with, with that, with whatever they were, however, they were touched at the zoo, and they’re moving forward and they’re gonna leave a legacy as well. Because if something that started to snowball, that started at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, it rolled in many directions. And they’re gonna start their snowballs. And I’ll never know.