Well, the basic job of the curator is to supervise keepers and make sure animal care is right and work with veterinarians and maintain the collection, decide which animals you’re gonna breed, which animals you’re not and to find suitable homes for animals that are surplus to the population and… Read More
Do you think zoo animals, you kind of touched on, be introduced into the wild?… Read More
Why do you think education is so important in zoos, or is it?… Read More
Well, I think zoos, of all, education is important. I mean, because we, I mean, we have living creatures there and the education departments, I mean, the Society’s education department, their classes are always, always full. They go from infants and their parents up to like sixth, seventh grade. Have… Read More
So education serves a lot of purpose, a lot of purposes, I mean, they do counting. It can help with mathematics, it can help with reading, ’cause kids are interested in animals. So anything that will get them more interested in learning and being able to talk to their parents,… Read More
I will tell you that they’ve had a contractual bird show in Milwaukee for years and when Kim Smith was the curator, Walter Crawford provided the bird show. And it was very popular, but it was very rollerskating parrots and very showbiz type. And Kim contracted with Steve Martin. No… Read More
The curators decide what the play is going to be about. And they write songs, create puppets, and the the actors go around with the puppets and the kids interact with the puppets. It’s great, yeah, that’s worked. I think Central Park Zoo started that. They started a theater program… Read More
And I think that’s been much more effective than the animal shows themselves. Read More
If the animal activists want a dialogue, yes, they can achieve it, but I’m not sure, many animal activists don’t. I mean, I can tell you, talking to Pat Derby and others, it was, I mean, had no interest in what I had to say. Dialogue means two people have… Read More
We had talked about the animal rides, but animal shows like birds in flight, do you think they helped to get the message across to visitors about a group of animals or about conservation?… Read More
What do you think their value is?… Read More
If you don’t have a nasty controversy that you can raise money on, you’re not gonna point out what’s good about a zoo. So I don’t know who would provide the training and whether it would be helpful or not. Read More
I don’t know what training you could have. I mean, when I ran into my animal rights problems, I had people that I knew in animal rights groups that I could call and say, okay, this is what’s going on, you know, from your perspective. But if you get someone… Read More
Do you think then zoos can or can’t achieve a dialogue with animal activists?… Read More
I think the, and again, I mean, I’ve been retired since 2007. So, I mean, I go to the Milwaukee Zoo and I’ve been there several times. I think the emphasis on animals in the wild tends to detract from the mission of the zoo and what zoos do. I… Read More
We collected fecal samples for a year during, well, during Eve’s pregnancy and the vets took blood samples who could send ’em to Front Royal and they could create charts. So Patricia could just get a fecal sample from a female she suspected of being pregnant and could run the,… Read More
Would you say that curators and professional staff, based on your experience, need training on how to interact with animal rights groups?… Read More
Do you feel it’s important for curators to publish?… Read More
I don’t know how many, what I’ve… I think that it’s important for curators to share animal information. I don’t really know whether there’s the emphasis on scientific journals. I mean, I found the American Keeper Forum much more interesting in terms of day-to-day keeper work than any of the… Read More
Who do I talk to?” In talking about, what would you say or think is the largest professional problem facing US zoos today and identify what can we do about correcting the problem?… Read More