Oh, animal rights were very much the zoo’s agenda and on the association’s agenda. We very definitely were thrown into the animal rights arena. There were several significant animal rights demonstrations across the country at zoos. I remember at World Breeding 3 Conference in San Diego, there was a significant effort by an animal rights group to literally prevent the delegates from participating in the meeting. And that all the forces of the city of San Diego were brought the bear, including mounted policemen to keep them from interfering so that when they crash, literally crash the gate to get into the conference grounds, that the local mounted patrol, when they opened the bus doors to let the activists out, literally walk the horses up into the bus so that the activists couldn’t get out. That was repeated to city after city, I don’t remember at Lincoln Park any major confrontation. There were things from time to time that would hit at us. I remember that I particularly, during my time on the AZA board, I was not going to defer to them because we all knew that a lot of their anti-zoo sentiment and anti-zoo activities were related, not so much about the concern for animals, but rather for a way to build membership, a way to get on the front page, a way to get into the media, a way to make themselves more important than they were.
