Very, and I wasn’t terribly good at it, I think, I think partly because I had so many other involvements and so many sort of networks in the local community that I was sort of juggling. But it is really, really critical I think in North Carolina, because we had… Read More
How important is it for, in your opinion, for a zoo director to make rounds?… Read More
And I’m sure it would. I think the difficulty is, again, I think it comes back entirely to, entirely to finance. You mentioned North Carolina 2000 acres big place. Read More
But I think again, if you look at, if you said to some of the, the European Zoo directors, if you had double the resources or triple, which would be the case in the us would you do, would you make the exhibit different?… Read More
Would it, but would it make any difference?… Read More
But a lot of the continental zoos, if you look at what they’ve done over the last 10 or 15 years for example, are still still very much building facilities that are pretty conventional in the way that they look. There’s, there’s some effort obviously to make the, to make… Read More
Money? Biggest difference, probably zoos in the US have been really, when I’m talking about the mainstream zoos are not, not so much the smaller private operations, but on the whole, the larger zoos have been pretty well financed by, by, by any global standard over, you know, over the… Read More
And so when, you know, when I mentioned to colleagues in, in UK that the North Carolina Zoo is in the process of spending $200 million on new exhibits right now, mind you, that’s, that didn’t happen in my time. We were pretty short of money. But it is happening… Read More
’cause it’s a bit like the national park question is that if you’re going to get involved with the Suraya Zoo, let’s say and give them help over a long period, it’s, it has got to be a longer period because what we find, and thi this is what used… Read More
And that’s the, that’s, that’s probably the main reason why there aren’t more of them Having worn two hats as a director, what would you say are some of the differences that you’ve observed between zoos in Europe and the United States?… Read More
But it comes back rather to, what we were saying earlier is that there’s a weariness of the cost of staff being seconded for long periods of time and of, you know, what, what’s the exit strategy?… Read More
Its starting, but it’s, it’s actually quite difficult in the, the charity that I founded about 12 years ago now, and, and I, we’ll probably get onto this later. That’s exactly what we started trying to do was to, if we were going into, let’s say, let’s say somewhere one… Read More
How long do we need to get involved?… Read More
Why do more zoos have sister zoo relationships?… Read More
But today we’ve got to be designing exhibits that actually put whatever species you’re showing into some sort of visual and biological context. So exhibits need to be be because we’re also trying to tell people, not just, you know, this animal weighs, you know, 300 pounds and you know,… Read More
One of the challenges now is that the supply in African tourism is not keeping up with the demand. So whereas when I’ve been taking groups to Africa now for, oh gosh, 40 years probably, or certainly all the time I was in north, in North Carolina, the North Carolina… Read More
So, ’cause often these lodges of course may be managed locally, but they’re often financed and run by somebody else. And that may link back to somebody outside Africa who has a financial interest. So the, the key now in African tourism is to find the places which have not… Read More
Vital, absolutely vital. I have a son who actually is at the only one of my three boys who’s followed broadly, you know, my, my area of interest. And he actually is working currently with a number of countries in Africa where the tourism aspect has not been developed that,… Read More
How important do you feel tourism in Africa is to protect species long term?… Read More
I know this is a bit of a cliche, but I think a, a new generation, a younger or two, two generations under one a generation that’s now young parents and a teenage generation, folks that are now in that sort of age group that are much more interested in… Read More