You know, they’re not pets and these are dangerous animals and that we manage how we manage in order to maintain the species and not the specimen. I keep going back to that ’cause I think it’s critical for the long term survival of zoos. When you look at zoo… Read More
That’s a space factor. We’ve talked about that. When I got to Brookfield, and I don’t mind saying it because I said it there, every time I talked about bringing a new species in, they’d say, oh, well let’s go back and see what’s in SSP. And I would go,… Read More
And that what we do as a zoo or an aquarium and, and exhibiting animals for the public as well as the management research we do, is good enough to sustain us and not worry about trying to be everything for everybody. Because it dilutes your budget, it dilutes the… Read More
What, what, what do you think is the one mis one misconception about zoo work that you wish the public understood?… Read More
Unlimited. Well, I would, I would go back and require that every institutions have the type of training course that we had in Miami and really push staff to develop skills and understandings of the species are gonna maintain. So we’re creating quality staff. I don’t think that occurs now… Read More
What would you change about the profession if you had unlimited influence?… Read More
And they, Gary’s starting to really manage that program, whereas the state just wanted to keep just three populations and isolate ’em and not save the others by supplementing those small populations genetically. So in harvesting, interesting story. Talk about what innovations you might, you would hope institutions would adopt. Read More
So I went to a guy named, there was a guy named Gary Goki. Do you know Gary works up in North Dad working with Blendings and a guy named Mike Meyer, who is Fish and Wildlife Service. I said, Mike, this, you can’t do this. So I had an… Read More
I was like, really?… Read More
And it became a real issue. And I, I finally got ’em all together and basically worked out that a blandings is a blandings is a blandings, same way with Panthers. They have a long generation time and they’ve only been isolated in these small pockets for less than 70,… Read More
And I said, that doesn’t make sense to me, you know, why aren’t we managing this?… Read More
He’ll travel extensively. And that’s what got a lot of males killed, is they’d go across roads where the roads had been put through their habitat. And, and I said, well, what about all these other pockets out here there, you know, there’s five animals over here, there’s 10 animals… Read More
And I said, you know, what’s going on with plantings turtle?… Read More
You, you had a population in the Chicago area that’s dying out. You’ve got isolated pockets that are too small to be sustainable because of development around them, but the state won’t let you work with them. And you can’t move one animal from one from Laker pond to another… Read More
And so that’s, that’s a real big concern. I had a conversation with Bob Lacey and Bob, you know, big geneticist, worked for Brookfield Zoo for years, started the whole program as far as you know, genetic analysis and his vortex program and all. And Bob and I sat down… Read More
You know, what’s more important?… Read More
And I said, I need to bolster my population. I’m going to go outside the SSP because there’s other giraffes out there because I need to add some new genetic blood and I need to get my population back up. And you have not been able to provide me an… Read More
But it was only after I threat, I shouldn’t say it was only after I told the SSP, you know what giraffes of giraffe right now, because they’re, they’re worse off than rhinos are in the wild, right?… Read More
Oh, I think they’ll disappear, which is, which to me is, is one of my biggest disappointments. When I, I left the zoo profession for about 10 years. I didn’t leave it in that I had my company and I was doing exhibit designs and things and worked for Ogden… Read More
And here next year, well three years later, we finally got one in. Read More