I said yeah, it is a scary thing. These are big animals, you know, and they put up quite a ruckus. Now, we also closed off that portion of the zoo when we were doing it. It happened at the end of the day. So that was some advantage to… Read More
By the way, that female’s still at the zoo today. Second time this happened, said to the staff, okay, ready to breed ’em again. Well, not as nervous as I was before, but I’m a little nervous. I said okay, I’ll tell you what, next time she comes into heat,… 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
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
So a long story short, I said, we’re gonna put ’em together when the female comes into heat. And the staff’s like, we’ve never done this before. I said okay, I’ll be there with you. We’ll do it. Put ’em together. Four hours later, had mounting and breeding and said… Read More
I think that’s extremely important. 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
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
Some directors have said there are too few good curators in the community. 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
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
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
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