Well, there was some rough road, as I said during the period of distraction. We were in the newspaper every other day it seemed like. I think our approach, I don’t think, I know our approach has been, we’ve been open and honest. And I know that sounds like maybe… Read More
It’s not like that anymore. And I think our vice president of marketing and public relations, Sandra, has done a fantastic job nurturing that behavior. You know, calling them out when they do a misquote or misidentification or something. But also then giving them opportunities to see things, you know,… Read More
The second time we went up to Tallahassee to get funding for manatees, we finally knew that we had broken through when a couple of the representatives says, we knew you’d be back, ’cause you said you were gonna be back, we said yeah, we’re back. ‘Cause we need more… Read More
Well, if you don’t have ’em out, you don’t have ’em looking. You’ll never know. And we’ve never, I mean they’ve all come away going, man, this is fantastic. I love every part of it. So, you know, might be one of the reasons we’re getting grants and state funding… Read More
What role, if any, did politicians play in the success of the zoo in Tampa?… Read More
When we are not in the room, are they talking about us in a positive way?… Read More
A lot. Politicians are important in our small community, whether it be for legislative purposes, funding purposes, or just getting community support. And we’ve got a great support base with our politicians and we bring them out to the zoo frequently, they’ll come by, will have their families out, behind-the-scenes… Read More
Kind of loose strategies, but we took every opportunity. I think our biggest strategy is we took every opportunity to talk to community groups. I don’t care who they were. There was no group too small, too big. And we would send people out. I went on many of them,… Read More
These are the men and women that you will see behind the desk that are making the decisions for your stay there, encouraging you to go X, Y, Z. Many of ’em aren’t from Tampa, but they’re from other communities just to show how important zoos are. So that’s another… Read More
I don’t know if they do as much of that anymore, but they do have a lecture series that they put on every once in a while, free to the public, come on in, listen to our expert on the following. So they may not be going to sites as… Read More
I think China’s probably the most dramatic example of that. I know there’s others throughout the world, but I mean, shoot every bird, you’ll get paid to shoot every bird that you see and bring it, get rid of them all. Just craziness like that, that has such long-term effect. Read More
How did you get the community to embrace ZooTampa, to embrace the zoo, did you have strategies?… Read More
You know, oh, we just hunted 10 more, just hunted 20 more, you know, but times how many more before that?… Read More
So again, not our decision to make, our job is to be as responsible as we can and then let the cards fall as they want. So to me, it’s, you know, you go to China and you see what they did during a cultural revolution when Mao said kill… Read More
It’s just important to me that we don’t think we are better than those animals. And that our job is to make sure we still got ’em. Because eventually, not in our lifetime, but who knows how many generations down the road. Read More