They may have heard of Conway as the director of the zoo. They’d have no idea who Hediger and Crandall are. I mean, I made sure all the keeper areas had a copy of Crandall’s book and Hediger’s books were, and nobody I worked with had heard of them before,… Read More
How important is it for them to know?… Read More
I think it gives them, now I haven’t read the books in years, so I’m not sure how they stand, you see, Walker, I used Walker all the time when I started at the National Zoo. So Ernest Walker, I thought was great in terms of just mammals and just… Read More
The other thing is is I think they need to look back and tend to think historically, ’cause I remember hearing, oh, well we do it so much better than they used to do it. You know, this is what they used to do and we do this. There’s no… Read More
They need to, well, even even keepers, you do not have a job in a zoo where you’re not working with people. You’re always going to be working with people. You need to know how to work with people, how to, you know, whether as a collaborative or manage people. Read More
Is it important?… Read More
And people loved watching them go through. And keepers loved creating things to make them, you know, like this is, you shove things into this leaf to make them hunt for their food. But it was, but the animals that came from the zoo environment were successful, they could reproduce,… Read More
So zoos serve a purpose, but more as animal ambassadors and with some of the other, I mean, in Milwaukee we’ve raised box turtles, some turtles for reintroduction. Done work with massasaugas, tracking massasaugas in the wild. A lot of zoos now have projects that are outside that are conservation… Read More
What skillset qualities does a curator or a general curator need today as compared to when you started?… Read More
Well, I mean, when there was, on ZooLex, there was someone who wanted to build a, wanted a virtual zoo in England, I guess, where you would just be looking at animals in the wild. You would never have the animals there. And when we had the regional conference in… Read More
Devra’s golden lion tamarin project in Brazil, remarkably successful, but it was a big learning curve on, you know, training animals and how you can adapt the animals to the wild. When they first had them, reintroduced them into the rainforest in Santos, they found out that the animals were… Read More
I mean, constant, when did you start at Lincoln Park?… Read More
How so?… Read More
You were a couple years, you were… ’68. Six- Oh, ’68, yeah, so you were four or five years before. And we were, that was the time the zoo was an ark. We’re going to save, you know, save the big species and the small species. Well, everybody will be,… Read More
What skillset qualities would you say does a zoo director need today to run a zoo?… Read More
Well, other than Michael Robinson, every zoo director I’ve worked with had worked in a zoo before they became director of the zoo. They all had either animal experience in the wild or experience working in a zoo. I think it’s very hard for someone who is the director of… Read More
The missions has changed over the years. Read More
It seems the zoo work is becoming female-dominated profession or would you disagree?… Read More
Oh, I think it’s all related to salaries. I remember when Cheyenne Mountain Zoo was hiring, I think it was a director, I’ve forgotten what it was. And one of the people in Milwaukee, one of the education people had applied for the job and he went out and he… Read More
So if I see a zoo that has predominantly female staff, I look at salary levels and they’re never the same as other zoos around. Or comparable zoos. Now you’ve worked with various directors. Mm-hmm. Read More