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
Although a few people go, “Why do we have these strange animals that are not from our desert?” And we go, “Well, we’re saving an endangered species.” “Well…” Was your main focus dealing with San Diego and then you started to expand to others?… Read More
So, we have a contiguous 1,200 acres there. Read More
And it’s all leased?… Read More
Well, we own 300 of it and the rest of it’s leased. Long-term, just like San Diego, Suisun lease land, it’s just leased. And you mentioned you had this plan, your plan, and that there were certain animals of the desert you wanted to bring in. Read More
Yeah. Still protects it today. Mm hm. Read More
Is the land still leased?… Read More
Yeah. Well, the original 300. We picked up other pieces over time. So we have about 1,200 acres that we control. We also, we leased a full section from the city of Indian Wells. We’re in two cities with the city line runs right through the facility. I actually built… Read More
And the other side was an actual part of the topography. It was a big ridge of mountain that came down and there was the distance between them was, oh, probably 700 feet of ground where the water from 25 square miles of desert mountains was supposed to go between… Read More
It wiped out some of my original gardens, wiped out all my trail system. Wiped out everything clean. It actually wiped out a fair portion of a toe of the mountain that it literally ate into the toe of the mountain. And we had big horn sheep on that mountain… Read More
And when that storm hit and destroyed a lot of the town and a lot of the houses they destroyed were extremely wealthy houses, this wasn’t some flood in some backwoods farmland somewhere, the water district knew it had to do something to not allow that to happen again, so… Read More
That still protects it today?… Read More
Ah, a flood plain floods, right?… Read More
The general manager of the water district was born and raised in the Colorado Desert down, and so he actually loved the desert and he was interested in it. And so, he stayed, the part of the reason he leased the land to us initially was because he thought that… Read More
And I said, “Where can we put them that they won’t float away in a big storm?” And I said, “Where is the water gonna go?” And he looked at me and he said, “Young lady, I’m an engineer of water. It’s been my career.” And he said, “And I… Read More