During the gold rush time in California, in 1849, there are historic records of barrels of nene preserved in some sort of brine or something, being sent to San Francisco as food for the miners. It was that much of a decimation of the population. They’re good to eat, I… Read More
The legs are longer, the webbing is less. But when I began at the zoo, my friend was the head of the territorial department of fish and game, who was a fisheries biologist and an amateur herpatologist. So we became close friends by sharing the few reptiles as captives that… Read More
But he included the nene, and one of the results of that survey was as he did in an, of as close a census as he could, he determined that there were only 13 of these birds in captivity, in the entire world, all in Hawaii, 11 of which were… Read More
And we did collect two from that French Frigate Shoals and sent them to the San Diego Zoo because they’d had great success with marine mammals while sea elephants, stellar sea lions. And they did not thrive. They do thrive in captivity. It just so happened those two that we… Read More
Both the humans on them would harm the seals and the sea birds, but particularly the damage to the seals or to the islands would come from rats that would come ashore on those islands. And it has not happened up there fortunately, that the shipwrecks very, very luckily did… Read More
Almost none. The fishermen that had been into that area, there was a landing strip built by the Navy at French Frigate Shoals. They took this low sandbar island and took up dredges, and made it into a landing strip because it was halfway to the island and midway. It’s… Read More
No they were there, and they were wonderful. And a small population for the kids to feed is great, but emphasis on small. Read More
Now on a more endangered animal, what was your role or the Honolulu’s role, if any, in the monk seal?… Read More
And then I continued that policy of pigeon control, essentially trapping them and killing them humanely, and burying them within the zoo, periodically when the population would get too large. My successors did not follow that habit, and then the pigeons during my time were restricted to the zoo grounds,… Read More
So you didn’t bring them in?… Read More
What’s good about the pigeons at the zoo, at our zoo is they’re pure white. And if you look at pigeons, as we look at pigeons in the movies, either in the fountain in Rome or in the streets of Jakarta, or in other cities, they’re any color like the… Read More
Now I’ve been to the Honolulu Zoo, and I remember seeing lots of what I’d call rock doves or pigeons all over the place. Read More
Is that something that occurred naturally or was this an exhibit of yours?… Read More
And here’s a bird that had grown up from a chick, had never seen any parents has raise, ever raised children, ever incubate eggs. And lo and behold, we had such good fortune. He walked over to the eggs and we were so fearful he wouldn’t step upon them or… Read More
And just like a P-chick about the pen. And we fed it the usual mix of almost anything, chopped meat, fruit, but the real trick, the thing that I’m convinced was the clue to the success of that activity of raising that chick was the same food that we used… Read More
It didn’t with these cassowaries. We had to actually go in, push them apart. Fortunately, they didn’t… She was the aggressor, she was the biggest one as is the case in cassowaries. And she did not attack us, she was really heavily injuring him and there was some bleeding, but… Read More
And as is the procedure, a breeding procedure with cassowaries, the males do all of the incubation, 100%, and all of the care of the chick. The females role in raising cassowaries is only to lay a fertilized egg. And then after she lays a clutch, the male puts them… Read More
We put the one whose gender we didn’t know in with her by opening a door, he wandered in, we fed them heavily before. So hopefully, they’d become somewhat lethargic. We had two weapons. One is a strong fire hose standing by and manned by one of the keepers. And… Read More
We were very fortunate and we had a great beginning because this fellow that ran the bird park, E.X. Lewis, had brought back a bunch of cassowaries, and cassowaries, when they’re as big as chickens, as tiny chicks, are very hardy, and light and simple to transport, and not dangerous… Read More
The concrete floor was removed, turned into grass, And in Congress, as it appeared, cassowaries were living behind three quarter-inch bars, but they were thriving mostly on a diet of chopped bananas. But the caretaker that took over after the bird park, superintendent, had been reluctant to ever put them… Read More