Well, our education courier, Sue, thought it was hard at that point. There wasn’t recycling drop-off places back then, but we thought if we’ve put this out by our parking lot and people even could, ’cause we had our own parking lot encompassed to us, so we could do what… Read More
Again, everything had to make money?… Read More
It had to make money. That was, yep. Read More
Is that part of- Yeah, they helped with the original view although, I mean, I was enough of a desert biologist myself, I could pretty much know what was out there, but sometimes the university, because they had their research center just up in the same alluvial plain, but it… Read More
What was the status as you were moving ahead at that time?… Read More
we had most of the North American gardens, not all of them, but most of them, and we had a small animal building built, specifically to house, as opposed to just a few, what was in the main exhibition hall, we had a specific small animal building. Again, it was… Read More
Yeah, yeah. Read More
And we finally wound up putting some call boxes in, electronic call boxes, and one of the jobs at night to this day is that we can’t, the last guy, the security cannot, if there’s a car in the parking lot that doesn’t belong to one of us, they have… Read More
I’ve had ’em get lost. We had one lady die of a heart attack out there and at the very end of the highest part of the trail, and had a, I mean, by the time we got the helicopter rescue in she passed away. I had the joy of… Read More
And when you did the surveys and things, did you bring the university?… Read More
And in that, we’ll call that natural area, have you done as part of the, have you done surveys so you know what animal life is there, approximately what plant life is there?… Read More
Sure. So forth. Yeah, absolutely, we know what’s out there for sure. And the trails and exhibits were designed to help people see the stuff that’s out there whether there’s, because it’s not just a flat trail system. It goes from wash bed all the way up to 1,500 feet… Read More
And they can go off on their own to do this?… Read More
Was it in these deserts or what were you driving at?… Read More
it was by continental desert. So, we started with North America because that was number one easiest, cheapest, and didn’t scare anybody. And then the next desert we moved to once the cat was out of the bag, literally, was we moved to the African desert because I figured first,… Read More
It’s still sitting there. So it’s those three major- Yeah. We decided not to try to do like cold deserts, like Siberia or things like that were just too hot and too hard on the creatures, and I mean in theory, not fog deserts like Patagonia and things like that… Read More
We, in order to meet ACA standards, we didn’t fence the whole two square miles of land because the cost, so the trail system is you enter the main park through the zoo park, and then you walk to the edge of the zoo park at one side and you… Read More
Sure, I mean, Bill Woodin at Arizona Sonora from day one said, “Go do it, try it.” Chuck Bieler had just wound up as director at San Diego and was feeling his way through. And Bill of course, would always be willing to pontificate to anybody at the time. And,… Read More
Well, speaking of exhibits, and you had this master plan in your secret master plan, we’ll call it, how did you want the Living Desert to be laid out?… Read More
So, why do you create an organization that says I’m different?” I said, I remember saying this directly to her, I said, “Is there an organization in zoos for blonde people?… Read More