Interview 21409 – Caption Index: 640
How successful have zoos been in achieving the reintroduction of species back into the wild?… Read More
How successful have zoos been in achieving the reintroduction of species back into the wild?… Read More
So it’s basically a mutually beneficial program where you trade keeper staff, we traded keeper staff from their facility, our facility, and not just elephants. Orangutan keeper came over, aquarists came over to our zoo, our keepers went over to their zoo, and had an opportunity to learn and be… Read More
And in conservation, aside from in the wild, is the sister zoo relationship important?… Read More
And did Pittsburgh have one?… Read More
We did. We had one of the first, maybe the only at that time, sister zoo relationship with the Wuppertal Zoo. And what we were looking at is a way to help other zoos who were in similar situations as ours, but maybe 10 years earlier than us. And so… Read More
And so we developed a formal partnership with them, one of the very first to work with them. So we did several projects with them. We went to Africa and collected African elephant semen from wild elephants. That’s a hoot. That’s a lot of fun. That’s one of the most… Read More
I mean, they did work on our sharks, they did work on our rhinos, they did work on our elephants. They’re just phenomenal, and a lot of fun too. Read More
What was your relationship with the Institute for Zoological and Wildlife Research and why did you have the partnership with them?… Read More
What did it bring to Pittsburgh?… Read More
We had, oh my gosh, the Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research is incredible. Dr. Thomas Hildebrand and his team out of Berlin are phenomenal. They’re the world’s leaders in reproductive biology and physiology in wild animals and exotic animals. The world’s leaders. And they go all over the world… Read More
And I read every one of ’em cover to cover many, many times, because they had so much information in ’em. So whether you take that book and it ends up on your iPad and you read it that way, or whether you listen to these wonderful video archive sessions,… Read More
Why do you say that land conservation is something zoos should be involved with?… Read More
Well, I think that land preservation is a natural extension of conservation efforts. It’s land conservation, basically. We have conservation easement on the ICC, so it can’t be developed and turned into anything except for what it is, a natural environment. So I think it’s so important that it’s a… Read More
That’s annoying. And they’re like, oh, that’s a new app, we gotta work on that part. But yeah, we need to include conservation any way we can. It’s been said that many newer, younger zoo and aquarium professionals are computer curators, with little knowledge of the precepts of Heini Hediger,… Read More
How important for the future of zoos is it to keep this link with the past?… Read More
Extremely important. Extremely important. In this day and age, right now, sadly, we’re into the cancel culture in some respects. And I think that what I know, what others know in our industry, is that we need to learn from our mistakes, especially when we’re working with wild animals. Because… Read More
And so it would ding and you had no choice, everybody looks at the phone when it dings, right?… Read More
And so it would ding, and everybody’s like, so it was pretty funny because, I went by, when we first put it in, the little sound box dings too, where it comes off of. And we had to fix that. And so I was walking around the zoo and everything… Read More
And I’m like, what the heck is that?… Read More
Absolutely. I mean, every single education program at our zoo ended with some kind of conservation thing you could do at home. So here’s something you can do. So every single person that walked out of one of our education programs had something they could do, whether it was recycling,… Read More