And the staff shuddered with fear at putting ’em together. All kinds of cues. The exhibit’s too small, this is not right, that’s not right. The exhibit’s not the issue. And we’ll look at the perimeter and we’ll fortify that, but we’re gonna put ’em together because that’s what we… Read More
And I’ll cite a story about that in a minute here. And I think that the industry, for some reason, this has happened over time. And there’s less and less curators that know their craft well. I mean, they just don’t, they just happen to be the head of the… Read More
I think that’s extremely important. Read More
If you’re gonna be a curator and you’re going to be directing keepers and other staff to take care of an animal, if you haven’t taken care of it, how can you possibly do that with any kind of accuracy or reliability?… Read More
I think it’s a hundred percent accurate. And I think my generation did not do their job. We did not mentor enough curators in the industry. And so there’s a void now, and there’s people that are title curators that I don’t know, in my estimation, if they really understand… Read More
Do you think this is a problem?… Read More
And how should curators be trained today to do what you feel should be expected of it?… Read More
Some directors have said there are too few good curators in the community. Read More
It doesn’t mean we have to ignore them though. We have to still pay attention to them. So we base our responses on facts. We say, okay, we can be better at that, so on, and so forth. We don’t kowtow it to them, though. We’re very factual with them. Read More
So it has less impact than it did in San Diego when it comes to the physical presence of them. But, you know, again, there are still groups out there that don’t want zoos. We end up on the worst elephant habitat list every few years and then fall off… Read More
I mean, you know, I was in the room, Dr. Dolan was in the room, we had veterinarian in the room, the director was there. I mean, it was a very healthy discussion, sometimes, you know, irritating, but nonetheless, a healthy discussion. And I learned that. So coming to Tampa,… Read More
We can accept that. Well, okay, that’s great because that’s what we can do. We can’t do much more. The radicals always wanted you to do more than you could financially even begin to hope for, or wanted to close you down, one of the two. And I’m saying, well,… Read More
So to me, it does not get much resignation in the community because again, it’s a hunting community, right?… Read More
Some directors, zoos in many cases today, are afraid to confront animal welfare rights groups that are anti-zoo, can we have your thoughts on the best way to deal with these groups?… Read More
Right. I learned this from San Diego ’cause, obviously, San Diego was in the crosshairs of animal rights a lot being in Southern California. And the strategy that they used, which turned out to be pretty successful, was bringing the parties to the table, inviting them to the zoo for… Read More
That’s the business side. We can’t exist without them. People aren’t gonna do it just naturally. They’re not gonna come in. Oh yeah, woke up this morning, decided to go to the zoo. Well, maybe not, unless you had somebody in town. So why would someone visiting Tampa from Montana… Read More
Why would you want to come to ZooTampa?… Read More
Because A, I won’t see Okapi in any other place unless I go, I mean, I’ll see ’em in other zoos, but they’ve got Okapi, I want to go see Okapi. They’ve got shoebill. Read More
Considering the financial resources available to many small and medium-sized zoos, what should be the focus of their collection?… Read More
Yeah, I think, yeah, again, I always look for uniqueness and that can be locally or nationally or internationally, but part of our job is to get people to come through our gates, right?… Read More