And I think that in that way, the animals do earn their, keep The animals are ambassadors. We, we always talk about that. But they’re real life ambassadors that will draw your attention to their plight in the wild. And, and giraffes and rhinos, which I have, are two of… Read More
I mean, kids sometimes just want to get up early and shovel and shovel the, the, the, you know, the feces with the, the animal poop with the, with the keepers. They just love doing that. So I think it’s all part of the, you know, the animals, animals can’t… Read More
If you just write a check, you can brag about, oh yeah, we gave a million dollars to conservation this year. But it’s the quality of what you do. It has to be part of your family, your story. If you do that, I think you’re gonna have a much… Read More
And that, and fun isn’t like, oh, do you know what we did in the wild yesterday?… Read More
And you have to get better every year. Like I said, there’s no finish line. The more you do, the more you can do, the more you’re gonna have to do. Read More
I, how do you justify a zoo to, to an educated public?… Read More
If you’re not helping animals in the wild and you’re just having a, you know, what we call a living museum, I guess, you know, to me maybe that’s just me and a few people, but there’s no future in zoos if we don’t connect it better to saving habitats… Read More
Did you feel that the people who worked at the Houston Zoo and, and possibly Disney, but certainly the Houston Zoo from the groundskeeper up understood the mission of the zoo At Houston?… Read More
And they didn’t all know how to answer the questions to the public the same way. But they knew who to go to. So a a a lot of people get more pride for working for the zoo because now they’re working for something that’s making a difference and they… Read More
Yes, and it got even better after I left because they just, we, we had an incredible conservation team. We, we, a lot of times you’ll send animal people over on a conservation project, but we were able to send technical people over sometimes to help with websites. We could… Read More
We’re not just a, a zoo for the, for the public here. We have, we have a much broader, more encompassing mission. And that, and those boards that get that, because the, the director answers to the board, if the, if you get the board to, to support you, you… Read More
It’s part of one family. We’re all one family. And if you can do that family approach, I call it the one team approach. There’s the one plan approach that everybody talks about that, you know, that’s, that’s about working together too. But the one team approach is everybody’s on… Read More
Some do more than others. Some are doing great jobs and, and we’re getting better at it. But I don’t think zoo directors thought that the board was that interested in conservation. The board was interested in, oh, just make this zoo great for our community. It’s all about our… Read More
Again, I don’t think zoos thought that they should budget for conservation. They thought it was a nice to have. It’s not, it’s your core mission. It’s almost the word or, or it’s implied that every, almost every mission statement in any major accredited a ZA zoo in this country. Read More
And do they walk the talk? Do they deliver on their promise?… Read More
But it really helped certain zoos, like Cincinnati, We’re gonna talk about different aspects of conservation, but what do you think was the most difficult concept for zoos to understand and implement regarding their relationship to conservation?… Read More
And, but you know, you, you, you draw a line in the sand and you fall on your sword for certain things. But white tigers to me was, you know, it was a phase and now, now you can get ’em almost free. You know, they’re not, they’re not very… Read More
So I, so I went to, I went to Cincinnati and bought two cups, you know, from the same litter, a male and a female. I think there was $60,000 each at that point, $120,000. My director said, no problem. We put ’em out there. Public loved them, but it… Read More
What are the, the, the goods and the bads of white tigers?… Read More
Like you said, there’s, there was good aspects to it. If you ask Ed Marca, it really, it really helped his zoo. ’cause he would, he would breed them. I, I’m not a fan of white tigers because it’s, it’s, it occurs in nature very rarely, but it usually occurs… Read More