And to me, it’s unfortunate that zoo directors are changing now. A lot of zoos are hiring people with varied backgrounds, whether it’s PR or development, or just a general business background, because they don’t have the background to fight as the leader of an organization with animal rights groups… Read More
And I think that, if you don’t have good knowledge of what you’re doing and be convinced that you’re doing the best for the animals, then how’re you gonna respond to these animal rights people that are there to find fault with whatever it is you’re doing?… Read More
I think the biggest thing today is that we have a lot of animal rights groups that are watching what we do, which isn’t bad, not bad at all. So we have to know what we’re doing and we have to know what we’re doing is the right thing to… Read More
Same questions, based on your experience, what skillset qualities, does a zoo director need today as compared to the zoo director when you started?… Read More
Well today, you must keep up with what’s going on electronically. You must be aware of how to use what is available to you through computers. That’s not to say that that’s the way to spend your time but you must be aware of it and be prepared to use… Read More
Two questions: What skillset qualities does a curator or a general curator need today, as compared to when you started?… Read More
We were always gonna be the Zoological Park or the Bronx Zoo. We were never gonna be anything but. But it worked. You’ve worked with a unique director and you’ve been a curator and a general curator. Read More
No, it didn’t at all change how the zoo ran. Most of us, really were not too happy about the change. We were old school, or whatever you want to call it, stick-in-the-mud, I don’t know. But it was for fundraising. We had developed a development department to raise money… Read More
How did the evolution of the New York Zoo Society to the new name, The Wildlife Conservation Society happen, and did it change how the zoo was run?… Read More
But we have to have everything from aardvark to zebra!” No, we don’t anymore, Bill. That’s not the way we’re going.” And your statement. Read More
Bill Bridges was the editor of our magazine, and I happened to be with him one day and I said, “We’re sending the old aardvark down to Miami, to the Miami Zoo.” And Bill Bridges said, “You’re sending him to Miami?… Read More
I don’t know when he died, but he bred something like nine aardvarks. But when I was sending him, the person who took care of animal records was a woman named Grace Duval. Read More
We had an aardvark at the zoo, that one of the previous curators had purchased, 10, 15 years before I got there and he’d never been on exhibit. He was living in the kangaroo house, in our old kangaroo house there and all those years, he was there, and no… Read More
You made a statement once, you said “You can’t be a Noah’s Ark and have everything.” What did you mean by that?… Read More
And that was kind of sad because I didn’t have the same kind of relationship I had with him that I had with Conway. Read More
That was quite an adjustment. Bill was a, he and I probably worked more closely together than, certainly more closely than I did with the man who followed him. Bill would listen to me, ’cause I was a dreamer I guess and I always had some crazy idea and he… Read More
How did the retirement of Bill Conway affect you in a professional manner?… Read More
And you pulled the sign out of the box and put the one in that you wanted to use at that time, “Animals on exhibit” or whatever. And that was something that might have prevented something like that. I also gave them bear spray. Every keeper that worked with wild… Read More
That is the most horrible, horrible thing that you can experience, is having someone killed like that young woman was. To this day, we don’t know what was in her head, what she was thinking or maybe she wasn’t thinking at all. But I said, “We can’t have this happen… Read More
with large carnivores, and what lessons did you learn?… Read More