Charlie and I and a couple of others on the staff, we had always, were interested in acquiring some other property because we were limited as to what we could do within our own, you know, part of Forest Park. And we went and looked at quite a number of different parcels of property, places that, there was one place that they were willing to lease us their property for a dollar a year, you know, for a long period of time. There was another one that was, we looked at a number of them, and because of my experience in owning my own farm and that, I said, “Charlie you know,” the land at this one was very nice, but I said that, “You know, we’re gonna have, our infrastructure that we’re gonna have to put in there is much more expensive than the land itself.” I said, “We don’t wanna be on leased property forever, you know, and put in all this money. We wanna own the whole thing, if we’re gonna do that.” We eventually did get a 350-acre breeding farm donated to the zoo by Mrs. Layman, and that one is still owned by the zoo. Initially about all we did was get the perimeter fence in, and really explored a lot of, whether we brought that about or not. Now it is being used by Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Wild Kingdom Center for Mexican wolves. And so it’s being used as a breeding facility for Mexican wolves, that will potentially be released back into the wild.
