But most things like the children’s zoo is free for the first hour of every day, so people aren’t prevented from it. We also charge for parking, but there’s free parking all through Forest Park. So you’re not compelled to use our parking lot. At your zoo at one point,… Read More
Remember that?… Read More
Captive, I’m sorry. The Captive Breeding Survival Group was an organization established by Uly Seal. Uly Seal is the father of our Species Survival System, Inventory System. Inventory of all zoo animals, that was Uly Seal’s concept. And then he developed that concept further that not only do you keep… Read More
And that was US Seals, Uly Seal who happened to be a scientist that worked I think University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Zoo. Now you mentioned that St. Louis Zoo is a free zoo. One of the few. But your zoo and others do have features that you… Read More
Did you have favorites?… Read More
You said, “No, we need to have this type of animal here.” Well we always wanted to have our collection represented. So we wanted to have most of the kinds of birds, most of the kinds of mammals, most of the kinds of reptiles to be represented. But we wanted… Read More
So any plans were really based on what was the concept for the time: “the industry.” Can you explain what CBSG is?… Read More
Was there a master plan to doing that?… Read More
Did you just wanna follow?… Read More
Were you just following species survival guidelines?… Read More
It wouldn’t have been very much. I was pretty well underpaid. I said, “Okay, I’ll stay three more years.” We stayed three more years. We did raise the money. Then they came to me and they’d say, “We’d like you to stay just three more years and then you can… Read More
We raised all the money to pay for the River’s Edge. Read More
Can you tell us about your concept of developing exhibits and acquiring animals?… Read More
Well the River’s Edge was the western end of the zoo and we wanted to have… Raja now has been born. We wanted to have a larger outdoor environment for Raja, so we wanted to have elephant area. We always wanted some underwater viewing of animals and we saw Toledo’s… Read More
We had other dreams too, but we ran outta money. But we did do the River’s Edge. We had underwater viewing of hippos, outdoor cheetahs, outdoor hyenas. We also had a exhibit for the mongoose, dwarf mongoose outdoor exhibit and then a great big yard for the elephants and a… Read More
It’s also gonna cost more. We originally had a $55 million goal. We have to raise it to 70 million. We know we can do it, but it’s gonna take us three more years. We’re asking you to stay three more years. We’ll give you an option for three more. Read More
I also remembered in Europe where they have very limited space. They have outdoor yards for primates and cats up on an upper level and the winter housing and night housing is down underneath because they don’t have space behind it. So we picked the space that the lion house… Read More
And the architect took that tablecloth, went back and made Big Cat Country. That’s what Big Cat Country is. Came from a drawing on a tablecloth, paper tablecloth. Now the River’s Edge required a lot of land. Read More
How did this unique idea come about?… Read More
Was that it, when you were building Big Cat Country?… Read More