You might have an elephant there in the future, but you don’t now. And so that’s very hard. It would be hard for me to raise money for a facility in Florida that I have no ties to other than it’s the National Elephant Facility, for example. It would be… Read More
So sort of the original model was flawed, because there’re not enough elephants for the zoos that want elephants right now in their collection. And a lot of the elephants in captivity today, in our care, are older animals. So they’re not gonna be moving them around. And so there… Read More
We didn’t wanna do that. We didn’t wanna risk the move. We weren’t comfortable with that, that she would make it. That’s a long trip for anybody, much less an element, to drive. So I think that was really the key thing is that fundraising, having the control of the… Read More
I think people didn’t pick up on a national elephant program for the same reason that they’re leery of losing control of their species and their organizations. In other words, having a national elephant center means that people would have to support a facility that was not in their region. Read More
If you look at it purely from a fundraising standpoint, it’s difficult to raise money for a facility that’s not even near you, or you don’t even have an elephant there, right?… Read More
Space continues to be a problem for zoos and aquariums because more and more animals are becoming of concern, species of concern. So in the wild, we’re not doing a super job of protecting the animals in their native habitats. So we’re seeing more and more animals in need of… Read More
Develop a cheetah regional center there, cheetah breeding regional center there that we were working on. We wanted to bring gower over there, takin, so there were a variety of different species that would be perfect out in that environment, especially takin. So that was something that we wanted to… Read More
Why do you think zoos did not pick up on having a national elephant program?… Read More
Does space continue to be a problem for zoos and aquariums?… Read More
I’m sorry?… Read More
Does space continue to be a problem for zoos and aquariums?… Read More
What are some of the stories?… Read More
Overall, reintroduction back into the wild of animals from a zoo is extremely difficult, in reality. There have been many reptile species that have obviously successfully been reintroduced back into the wild. There have been work with, I know that Fort Worth Zoo has been working with Penguin reintroductions into… Read More
And so it’s harder than you think. There have been some successes, Pittsburgh wasn’t involved in any, we didn’t try, but there have been some successes in that area, particularly with Arabian Oryx and things like that. But it’s hard, it’s a difficult thing to do. Read More
So just mutually beneficial, and so much fun to have a sister zoo relationship. 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