And I said, but I don’t think you should hire him. I really don’t, there’s some good quantified people. And ED Gould said, “Well, if that’s what she wants to do, then it’s her decision.” And I don’t know, I mean, I just basically lost it because I took my… Read More
I think the biggest issue that is with anybody that’s in the zoo profession is that you get into the zoo profession because you really have a affinity and love for animals. But as you get more and more into management, you come to realize that if you don’t have… Read More
I think it’s a really, really priority that there needs to be in each be people skills involved in any hire that’s gonna deal with the collections and also deal with the people. Read More
You talked about experience, how you have to communicate with people, et cetera, during that time, how did your management style evolve and how did it change over time?… Read More
And how did animal dealers impact the zoo and what was going on and as your later years in the profession, what did you see their impact was either positive or negative?… Read More
Well, our ability to acquire, I mean, that’s where we got most of our collections was from animal dealers, I mean, there’s no question about that. And we had a lot of animal dealers that we could go to and we relied on them very, very heavily, especially for the… Read More
And so it’s all basically done through contact with zoos or through the SSPs. Read More
Now, when you were a temporary as general curator, what would you say was one of the more important things that you learned at this time that helped you later on?… Read More
And I think that trip to south America, but that was about it. Read More
So when you were, but mostly you were acquiring animals early on, even when you were general curator temporarily, you were acquiring animals from animal dealers?… Read More
Yes. Read More
No, I was not, no, I think I might’ve been supervised. Read More
But you initiated it?… Read More
I initiated it, yeah. And we went down and we spent two weeks in Florida collecting, we brought back a huge collection of herps and a lot of them, we sent to other zoos. And it was really the first time anybody, I think in the zoo, especially the keepers… Read More
Yes. Read More
For the zoo and what was it?… Read More
It was to acquire reptiles. And I was really surprised that they allowed us to do this. I mean, I remember I went to Eisenberg and got his permission and it was four of us. It was Jack Armstrong, Jack DePreto, Leash Mel who was a keeper in the Reptile… Read More
You were the general curator?… Read More
And it’s still the case today, I mean, a lot of these species that normally were available and you could get them from dealers that brought them in from the wild doesn’t happen anymore. And if it does that, the cost of obtaining a large mammal is just astronomical. So… Read More
Now, I’m sure AZA is gonna disagree with that pretty dramatically, but still, I feel it’s a major problem, and it’s only gonna get worse as time progresses. And most zoos can’t deal with the private sectors because of the AZA restrictions. They’re not dealing with the animal ranches in… Read More