Not very, because again, we were always totally private, so we didn’t get any money from local politicians. And we were in two cities. That caused all kinds of problems because the cities hated each other, and therefore they occasionally would use us as a ping pong ball. And one… Read More
And this was mandated, the signing, just as a quick follow-up, this was mandated by the Indian Wells?… Read More
I mean, we went just all kinds of places and I didn’t, I just let them, I didn’t make it like, “You’re coming here to see this.” I just, we’re just going and we’d be walking around and we’d just start looking at things and I’d go, and notice how… Read More
Now, speaking of people on the train, how is the development portion of Living Desert handled today?… Read More
Is it still a one person operation or do you have a team that was- There was a team by the time I left. We were very much because of my nature, and I tried to hire people that fit that mold and if they didn’t fit the mold, they… Read More
So, if you can get your development staff to really care about the institution, they don’t even have to beat development people. They just have to be people who care about their jobs and care about what we do and are willing to talk to people about it and follow… Read More
I was involved in selection only because I was the stud bookkeeper and I was one of the folks that knew how to run the software at that time to do in breeding coefficients and all that sort of stuff and so, but it was certainly an exciting time in… Read More
What was your role after this committee was put together?… Read More
Well, we put it together pretty early, actually. Once they, I would say we wound up with a long range planning committee in the early ’80s. And I hand selected the best I could, board members that I thought would be most open. And I had at that point, I… Read More
What did you learn about returning animals to the natural habitat?… Read More
How did that start to influence things at your zoo in Living Desert?… Read More
Well, I mean, we came into the Arabian Oryx re-introduction program, I knew it was going on because I was, at that point had already computerized the studbook. And so, we were looking at animals from reproductively as to who could go back, what animals were overrepresented in our populations… Read More
What hand did Living Desert have in returning Arabian Oryx to Oman?… Read More
How did the project begin?… Read More
What were the results?… Read More
How did you start to develop the conservation and preservation projects you were involved with with your view of wanting to breed endangered species?… Read More
Well, again, for the most part that was, the ability to the luck, if you will, that there I was sitting two hours away from San Diego and had all the money and had an interest in desert species, not everything they had was desert, but they had enough of… Read More
And so, we computerized very early on compared to all of our colleagues because I understood them and I put my way through graduate school programming ’em for professors and as soon as there was such a thing that I thought we could buy, we bought some of the original… Read More
What was the idea behind that project and how did you get the community to be involved in that?… Read More
Well, our education courier, Sue, thought it was hard at that point. There wasn’t recycling drop-off places back then, but we thought if we’ve put this out by our parking lot and people even could, ’cause we had our own parking lot encompassed to us, so we could do what… Read More