When I talk to old-time zoo people, we always mentioned Hediger. Well, there’s a lot of people who don’t even know who Hediger is. And I cringe when I see that. I see that they’re losing touch with the perspective and culture of what zoos are. So like more hands-on… Read More
How do you actually work with this species, with individual animals of a given species?… Read More
How do you transfer them?… Read More
How do you exhibit them? What’s their diets?… Read More
Why don’t they come out to this fabulous resource?… Read More
So I don’t know if they were ever successful in identifying that. We probably didn’t have the proper method in trying to pursue that and didn’t have the money to hire somebody who could do that. So you didn’t find the answer. Nah, I don’t know. Sometimes you hear a… Read More
Do you think that’s a problem and how do you think curators should be trained today and what’s expected of that?… Read More
Well, I think curators today, like I said, no. Remember I’ve been actively out of the zoo profession for 21 years, but I’m still associated with it. I mean, I still wanna keep up with it, but I think curators today all seem to have the academic training. They’ve all… Read More
But why don’t some people come to the zoo?… Read More
I remember, when I first came to Topeka in 1963, people would come out to Gage Park into the zoo to see the animals, to be in a semi-natural setting. By that, I mean, we have a lot of shade trees and it’s very pleasant in landscape grounds. Over time,… Read More
Nothing replaces a living, breathing creature. Read More
But I wonder why aren’t we reaching some of these people?… Read More
This whole country seems to be so divisive on everything. I hate to see that happen to zoos. I think we need that to have more of a level head about this, because we’re always gonna have detractors and people who don’t believe in zoos. There’s some people who don’t… Read More
And I don’t agree with them either, but I respect their situation. (chuckles) You mentioned that you would ask the question, why aren’t people coming to, can you follow up on that?… Read More
Why were you asking that question?… Read More
What did you wanna try and get to?… Read More
Well, what it’s getting to is, zoos, yes, you will hear for recreation, education, conservation, research or scientific studies, but I’ve always thought this, we need to broaden that. The zoo needs to be community service, a community resource. And I know not everybody loves animals, but if we could… Read More
In fact, when we would evaluate our success at the zoo, and we’d say how many people are coming, and so on, I would always ask the question, who’s not coming?… Read More
Who in this community is not coming to the zoo and why?… Read More
Why are we not serving them?… Read More