Well, the basic job of the curator is to supervise keepers and make sure animal care is right and work with veterinarians and maintain the collection, decide which animals you’re gonna breed, which animals you’re not and to find suitable homes for animals that are surplus to the population and bring new animals in. I think that’s still the basic job of a curator. But now curators need to be, I think, at least in Milwaukee, we tend to discuss if we’re doing conservation programs or keepers are going to go out to do conservation programs, I think the most, at least in Milwaukee, the most important thing is to make sure that they’re long-term commitments. I mean, if you go, you know, you’re gonna go into Peru or something and work with whatever, you know, you don’t go there for two years and just leave. I mean, Roberta Wallace’s penguin project went on for over 10 years. I mean, we’ve supported Lisa Dabek with a tree-kangaroo project in Papua New Guinea over 25 years. So I think that if you’re going to have a conservation program, it’s got to, I mean, it may have an end, but you need to know what the end is and just make sure that you’re not in for something flashy to put in the magazine.
