Well, the first one, the first non exotics were in the very first building we built, which was the little rodents. So, we had kangaroo rats and so I brought in jerboa and at that time they were pet shop animals, jerboas (laughs). So, it wasn’t even hard to get… Read More
So, it was easier for them to wrap their heads around different plants from different areas and comparisons as opposed to animals, or they got it equally?… Read More
Their concern with the animals is they thought that if we did an animal collection, if we became a zoo that, that they didn’t want to become a zoo because they all had the same vision of growing up with zoos that people had at that point in time, which… Read More
Would you say that it’s value so to speak, rivals or is comparable to the animal collection in the type of specimens you had to acquire?… Read More
Absolutely. The botanical collection, because the board again, felt most comfortable doing gardens first, we made a pretty serious effort in really doing a good job with specimen plants, well labeled, well-documented, and the second professional staff person I ever hired at Living Desert was a botanist horticulturalist position. I… Read More
And part of that vision also was this comparative between the plants of the desert and the plants of deserts around the world?… Read More
Correct, we started with that from day one and that was pretty accepted from day one by the board. They quickly understood that it did help people understand more about desert plants if they could see that plants might physically look alike from other deserts of the world, we didn’t… Read More
Well, we did a certain, yeah, right away. I mean, we did a lot of classes and we did a lot of local field trips. We did out to death valley and down to Baja whale-watching and we started doing trips right away because I really felt that that was… Read More
Who were you trying to reach in these trips?… Read More
I was just trying to build visitation. So, it wasn’t so much that, I mean, some of the bigger trips you ultimately might have gotten some of the donor types to go along. But for me, it was just creating a reason for people to want to become a member,… Read More
You had gotten the Boy Scouts involved with the Living Desert?… Read More
What was their job?… Read More
Well, they helped me build the first trails. They were the physical labor. They were out with shovels. I staked a trail system out and then they came out and Eagle Scouts came out with a bunch of younger Scouts and cut the trails and pitched the rocks and I… Read More
Did you start or think about then doing trips for the Living Desert would be involved with?… Read More
Well, I mean, I didn’t have to expand too much to others. I mean, we had a huge focus on botanicals because my founding board and Mr. Boyd really want, so we had a lot of garden focus. So, I was very involved in the botanical garden community in getting… Read More
You mentioned plants, how hard was it to acquire exotic plants from different parts of the world?… Read More
Well, in California because we were in an agricultural area, there were a lot of legalities. So, a lot of material that we got, I would work with the various botanical gardens in California, where the material was already in the state, but we did and for a lot of… Read More
Can you tell us something about the first animal or animals that you acquired that were part of that group and how you were able to bring them in?… Read More
Sure. Desert antelope ’cause I always liked antelope. I established a great rapport with the folks down at San Diego and particularly Jimmy Dolan, who at that point was curator of collections in San Diego. And they had just finished building the animal park, the wild animal park, and they… Read More
We could help work with this world famous San Diego Zoo and help conserve this little antelope from North Africa called a slender horn gazelle. And we got the space. We could just out near where we have our big horn sheep exhibit, which is our local desert big horn,… Read More