First or second behind the scenes weekend at the zoo, they started opening up some of the back areas at the Milwaukee Zoo. And we had a cheetah that sort of shinnied up the outdoor exhibit between tree that had grown and was on the roof of the Lion House… Read More
And then all those little kids following Mr. Rogers all the way around the zoo. That was fun. We did the elephant, the Elephant House has to, when the African Wildlife Federation had its had a anniversary, 25th anniversary, the one that Jimmy Stewart’s daughter was involved in, so we… Read More
You never had an escape in Milwaukee that you had to get involved with?… Read More
Oh yeah, no, we had- for your expertise?… Read More
Yeah, no, we had animal escapes, but they were nothing. Probably the most serious, well, most serious one was we had a Dall sheep that got out as we were trying to get ready to ship it and it almost made it to the gate at, the front gate and… Read More
It’s not, it was always a society program. Not a zoo program. I mean, the zoo was involved peripherally. I mean, we had our bird people were involved. We have a master bander who works within the Aviary department and she’d been involved. So the, yeah, so it was always… Read More
As your time as curator, can you recollect any memorable events such as animal escapes that you had to be involved with or potentially VIP visits or things that were obviously a bit out of the ordinary in the day-to-day running of the collection?… Read More
Well, that would happen more at the National Zoo than it did at the Milwaukee County Zoo. I remember when Ken Kawata, who was at the Milwaukee County Zoo at the time, got married and he was a big panda fan. So he went to Ted Reed and he and… Read More
The Runaway Creek is still there. Dr. Boese was involved in that. He found a parcel of land in, it’s in Belize. That became the Runaway Creek Preserve that the Zoological, well, I don’t know whether the Zoological Society bought it or the foundation bought it, but anyway, it housed… Read More
And then they did similar work in Wisconsin to see, talked about how, because all the bird populations are declining. So it was originally supposed to be a five-year project. It ended up being a 15-year project and finalized with, they produced two landowners manuals, one for Wisconsin landowners and… Read More
But it’s not under the purview of the Milwaukee Zoo any longer?… Read More
I can’t give you the name of it, I’m sorry. Another conservation program that the Milwaukee Zoo was involved in was Runaway Creek. Runaway, yeah. Which is a nature preserve. Read More
Can you give us a little history about that and how the zoo was involved and why?… Read More
And were there any issues and is it still there?… Read More
They were able to get blood, blood pressure. When females were pregnant, they could do ultrasounds on the females. And so it’s been a remarkable success. And people come, keepers from all over the world come to Milwaukee to work with the bonobo keepers and how they work with it. Read More
And she basically started the Bonobo, BCBI, the Bonobo Conservation Program in Africa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And I think she’s still involved, but grew it up to the point where the Society went beyond the Society’s capability. I think World Wildlife Fund runs it now, but,… Read More
And a number of things have come from that Bonobo Conservation?… Read More
Milwaukee got started in that because when Dr. Boese was director of the zoo, the Wassenaar Zoo in the Netherlands, yeah, Wassenaar Zoo was closing and they were selling their animal collection. So they bought, Dr. Boese, the Zoological Society raised the money and they bought gorillas, and brought good… Read More
And at that point, I don’t know how many zoos had bonobos, but we got a breeding group of bonobos and, how many gorillas?… Read More
I forgot how many gorillas. But, so that’s how the program started. And it became, and Gay Reinartz is the reason that the bonobo conservation, the bonobo conservation project got underway. I will say two of the keepers who worked with the Bonobos learned about a training program in Texas… Read More