But you can imagine what all the millionaire neighbors sitting in houses overlooking Regions Park thought about that. So there was, and, and, and then of course you had this, this, this other problem of having so many buildings that were the first in the zoo. Well, so you had… Read More
’cause we, you know, we, we not so meant much at the moment, but we had a very good guy in the marketing department who was a very good presenter. And so he and I and other staff used to do, you know, regular TV programs talking about what we… Read More
Either more important things to do. So dealing with the media through that period of time, really the 10 years or so that I was in charge, or certainly supporting the in charge people dealing with the media was quite a challenge. It taught me a lot. But how to… Read More
The the zoo, if you, it’s actually divided into three parts. The zoos, you’ve got a road running through the middle of it, the the outer circle re spot, and a canal running through another part. So you’ve actually got three bits. The canal is, is very popular from a… Read More
The fact that London, you know, any institution which is venerable and you know, very much in the public eye, but at a time when also there was, you know, a lot of, a lot of, you know, why, why should we fund London Zoo?… Read More
Did you have a good relationship with the press and, and how did you nurture that relationship?… Read More
Very different between London and North Carolina, because in London, London you were dealing with a pretty vicious media overall wasn’t helped of course, by the, by the anti zoo lobby figures like Zuckerman and others. Good, great though they were for the, for the society were controversial figures in… Read More
So that, that’s the only sense it’s being followed. There is, there is no, unless I’m outta date, and I don’t think I am the, for this, for this anyway, there is no set master plan. But in recent years, the building and Asia continent and then an Australian continent… Read More
You know, whoever, whoever or whatever that form of governance may be, they may decide on something different. Read More
Mm, not long. It did have, right at the start, the idea was to build representation of all seven continents. Thank goodness that has not happened. It’s not, it’s not the problem, of course, well, it is the problem with capital money, but that’s not the real issue. At the… Read More
So you can imagine as chair of that group, and we were funding something like $20 million a year into, in, into both UK conservation and into West African conservation. So I knew all the key characters. The, the then head of national parks for Uganda was one of my… Read More
And what do you think the shelf, what is your opinion of the shelf life of a master plan?… Read More
That’s what, that’s what, as we were saying earlier, that’s what’s so important about long-term relationships, building those long-term and keeping them, Does the zoo have a master plan?… Read More
The relationship between the department, which was then we are now under the Department of Cultural Resources, NA, natural and Cultural Resources, a lot of the environmental, particularly the sort of the water, water quality, air quality, that’s the thing, has gone into another, another division now. But they, that… Read More
And quite a number of wetlands specialist areas, particularly for rare plants. A number of others with small wetlands with Sal and North Carolina is the salamander, is the capital of the salamander world. Basically 40, 43 species, some of which are not found anywhere else. So lots of opportunity,… Read More
North in North Carolina? Yes. I think to build, to build the programs, the, the exhibits were in pretty good shape and pretty up to date, pretty well up to date in terms of, in terms of their design. Now that doesn’t mean to say that there weren’t some gaps… Read More
You didn’t think about having a, a home on the grounds That would’ve been impossible being state property?… Read More
There was, we don’t, there’s nobody living on grounds and certainly not, you know, in a permanent basis. Obviously we, there are times one has to have people on the grounds for in hospital situations or hand feeding, that sort of thing. And, and in emergencies nearly all the staff… Read More
Now, when you first came, what were your first priorities when you first came to the zoo?… Read More
Much the same. I think as, as I’ve just described, you, you know, we talked earlier about being sort of on the grounds every day and of course our, you know, as I said, a zoo was so big North Carolina that it was quite difficult to be on the… Read More