I was, am, was a native of Columbia. I was born there, I grew up there, and except for four years of college, I lived my entire working life there. Columbia is a interesting place. It is sandwiched between some really progressive cities. Charleston is two hours southeast. Charlotte is… Read More
Well, maybe not so much Greenville, but certainly Charleston and Charlotte. And even you could go to Atlanta four hours away by car. People went to those places on the weekends. Nobody came to Columbia from Charleston. Nobody came to Columbia from Charlotte. But we went there ’cause they had… Read More
Took a long time to recover. You know, I’m not a Civil War buff. I think it was a horrible, horrible thing that happened in this country. But you would be amazed that as recently as 10 or 15 years ago, and maybe even today if I had to be… Read More
Sure, the concepts are relevant, especially if they are still fresh, if they’re still relevant today in managing animals. But to say to a young man, “You gotta learn,” or a young woman, “You have to learn all about Heini Hediger,” I don’t know that that’s that important. Read More
In the community, with your zoo, how did you get the community to embrace the zoo?… Read More
What were your strategies?… Read More
I think the concepts of zoo biology are relevant. I don’t know that Heini Hediger, as an individual to my, as a 26-year-old senior keeper, knowing that he…… Read More
What am I trying to say?… Read More
You know, as you were asking that question, what I started thinking about is that you could have asked that about any other profession, car manufacturers, chair manufac- I mean, things change, things evolve. I think for somebody of my generation, those individuals and things like the “International Zoo Yearbook,”… Read More
But in terms of a new curator or a new keeper doing his or her job, I don’t really think they’re that relevant. Let me challenge you just a bit on that. Get your opinion. Heini Hediger. Read More
And the precepts of zoo biology, you don’t think are relevant today?… Read More
On the hippo?… Read More
As you would imagine, the keepers who were taking care of it were thrilled (laughs) because they knew and I knew that it was only a matter of time before he seriously hurt or killed one of them. Some of the other keeper staff weren’t so happy about it, but… Read More
It has been said that many newer, younger zoo and aquarium professionals are computer curators, with little knowledge of the precepts of Heini Hediger, Lee Crandall, William Conway, or knowledge of the “International Zoo Yearbook.” How important for the future of zoos is it to keep this link with the… Read More
Well, I was a zoo director for 40 years, and I never figured that out. Only once in my 40 years did we euthanize a surplus animal, and we did that out of safety concerns for the staff. It was a bottle-raised hippopotamus that we tried for 10 years to… Read More
But we did. It was a commitment that we made. So I think, I’d like to think the keeper staff always knew that a curator or a veterinarian or myself was not gonna walk in one day and say, “Look, we gotta put that animal down. We’ve had it too… Read More
Did you have much feedback after that decision?… Read More
(Satch sighs) That’s a great question. I don’t know if I know the answer to it. I think three things. I was, I entered the profession at a time when veterinary medicine, exotic animal medicine was in its infancy. When I left the profession four years ago, it was an… Read More
So there were a number of things like that that were profession-wide that were very different 40 years after I started working. Read More
How should zoos deal with surplus animals?… Read More