Well, I think fairly, fairly early on, I, you know, right after I became director, I went to zoo conference out in California and, and got introduced to a very odd species of critter called a docent. Up until then, I’d never even heard the word docent, you know, but… Read More
Part of it because we, you know, we’d had a push to, to display north American hoofstock because, you know, we were all, it was all foreign, you know, hoofstock and you know, the realities of life are, is that native north American hoofstock, particularly the cervids, don’t display well… Read More
So we did that kind of as a part of the justification for all the other things that we wanted to do out there. Read More
Has that been a successful endeavor?… Read More
Well, only from the standpoint that yes, it’s been successful, but only because of the fact that we endowed it. We endowed it right up front, because you’re not going to attract enough visitors in a drive-through park to pay for the maintenance. I mean, it’s just not going to… Read More
Well, now you’re gonna, you’ll have to go to the, we’ll have to go to see, we’ll have to go to the history which I brought with me. And in the, in the, in the, in the early 90s or in the 90s, you know. So you have a– There’re… Read More
Half of– It was given to you?… Read More
Yeah. Oh yeah. Half of it is, well, 200 acres is a drive through north American safari park, where elk, bison, you know, white tail deer, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, and, and then a few mammals and small stuff, some wolves and bears. Read More
How’d that concept of that drive through come about?… Read More
I said, it’s easy. If he defaults, you give it to the zoo and we’ll make a breeding farm out of it. And he said, oh, that sounds good. So we made him put that land up as a, as part of the collateral and the guy defaulted. And now… Read More
When did this occur?… Read More
You need numbers to actually say you’re, you’re managing, and you’re making decisions because you can’t make a decision with a pair of animals other than do we breed them or don’t we breed them. And the genetics are the genetics. You can’t, you know, so. So I think our… Read More
One of our board directors lived on a lake west of Omaha. And the guy who owned the lake was a bit of a gambler. I’ll put that gently as I can. And needed to borrow some money. And he put up the lake as collateral, was wanting to put… Read More
And he said, you know, this is also some land that he owns. And I said, well, why don’t you, why don’t you make him put that up as collateral too ’cause with his reputation, he’s probably going to default. Read More
And if he defaults and he said, well, what would I do with it?… Read More
What vision, when you became director, did you have for the zoo?… Read More
What was your vision?… Read More
Well, I, no, certainly there were things that I wanted to do and it had to start when I became director, I had to start a good collection. We had a lot of, of a really interesting hoofstock, you know, a big duiker collection, a lot of different species of… Read More
And so, you know, one of the things that we developed pretty early on was a philosophy of not simply having a postage stamp display collection, that where you had a pair of animals or a trio, or, you know, or four animals or whatever, but to develop breeding groups… Read More
Well, I, no, I would agree with that. It’s not that I’ve got anything against PhDs. I don’t. You know, I mean, along the way I picked up about three of them myself, but you know, honorary. And we’ve got, you know, we’ve got on our, in our, in our… Read More