I mean, you kind of talking out of both sides of your mouth when you say that. And start to address what’s going on with the animal rights groups and to start seriously looking at the issue of euthanasia of collection animals because they are taking up valuable space and… Read More
I would like them to start addressing where they’re gonna be in 20 or 30 years. I mean, and I don’t think that’s something that zoos in it of themselves need to talk about. Read More
I think the organization that represents zoos has to get the zoos together and start talking about where are they gonna be in 20 years, what are the collections gonna look like?… Read More
I think it’s just an effort to make zoos feel good that they’re trying to maintain elephants. I think it’s a losing battle. I think that the elephant collections in this country, they’re short on females. They’re absolutely short on females that are young enough to produce young. They’ve lost… Read More
And they’ve got the space that they can handle a large number of elephants, especially elephants that are naturally in the wild, very, very social. They’re keeping them in twos and threes or fours. They’re mostly aging. Most of them are gonna produce. They’re dangerous. I mean, we’ve more keepers… Read More
I always talked to my friends that have been in the zoo business and I’ve done this consistently, I said, “Thank God that we came into this profession when we did because it’s gone as we knew it and when it was functional and it was doing a really good… Read More
So what issues would you like to see zoos address in the future?… Read More
It’s almost shut down now because I’m not sure what the consequences were of the decisions that were made for that, but my understanding was that was supposed to be for surplus males. Read More
And the facility you’re talking about is?… Read More
It’s the one that was, I guess it was sponsored or supported by AZA and it was also supported by Disney, but it was kind of a quasi private organization. And now, they’re down to one elephant, I think, and the people that were running it are gone. I don’t… Read More
So what’s your view about zoos housing elephants?… Read More
And AZA is now saying that if you don’t have three animals, you can’t keep elephants. Okay, so what do you do with the one or two elephants that you’ve got, either bring in another elephant or two or you got to get rid of the elephant. Read More
What do you do with it?… Read More
You send it to one of the sanctuaries. It’s not that easy anymore. Read More
I mean, look, what happened to the facility down in Florida?… Read More
Well, if they don’t, they’re more or less violating what they say they’re supposed to be doing, which is maintaining a population for the future to eventually put back into the wild. And that’s what the SSPs are for, Species Survival Plan. It’s tough to do a Species Survival Plan… Read More
Well, you’ve had to deal with the press, and what would you say to those people in the press or otherwise who still believe that zoos are nothing more than places where they cage animals?… Read More
Well, I wouldn’t necessarily use the term cage, but I think you can certainly say zoos are nothing more than places where they keep collections of captive animals. Some in conditions that are excellent. Some that are not necessarily good, but none that are very bad because they’re controlled too… Read More
I mean, maybe, I don’t know, but I don’t think so. It’s all they can do to pay for their own operations. Read More
Should all zoos have breeding programs?… Read More