When I started in the zoo profession, it was a different world. Getting animals for a zoo was not a problem, not a necessary skillset. Knowing something about the global situation of wild animals was really not part of the skillset. If you’re going to be a zoo director in the 20th century, the 21st century, you had better understand wildlife globally. You’d better understand what’s left. The skillset for being a director today demands that you realize that 90% of the global biomass, weight, of all vertebrates is human or domestic animals. That leaves 10% for all the wild vertebrates, from whales to elephants, mice to hummingbirds. So you’re now dealing with wild animals at a level of rarity we never thought about when I entered the zoo field.
