I think when you have accidents like that and this girl’s still alive but how many accidents do we know about where the keeper isn’t alive, where it’s led to a fatal injury and how do you talk about that?… Read More
What do you think directors in general, that you could teach them could learn from this type of experience?… Read More
And so, eventually the medical team got there and took her to the hospital. She was very badly mauled, she lost her arm. And it was an accident that probably shouldn’t have happened. As we know, the majority of accidents that happen in zoos are keeper human error. At the… Read More
And this was a person from the horticulture crew and apparently the keeper had said, “Do you wanna pet the baby?” And that was enough to alarm the mother because here was a strange face and we all know what that can cause. And as a result, she was in… Read More
She kept saying something about her arm and there were two people with her, one was a keeper and the other one was one of our security people. And he kept looking at me, when she’d say something about her arm, he kept looking at me. Well, she had a… Read More
Can you give us an overview of what happened and how did this particular incident affect you as a director and how did it affect the zoo?… Read More
Well, it’s interesting that that that accident occurred. It was like it was yesterday. I can remember I was in my office and my secretary said, “There’s been an accident in the Children’s Zoo and we’ve got a keeper down.” So, I went immediately to the site and probably was… Read More
I think that was significant. Yeah, it definitely was significant. You know it’s interesting, the Bean Awards went from significant births, which is what it always was to if you had a colony of Bali mynas going that was reproducing and everything, then it started looking more at not necessarily… Read More
They figured out how to do that. So, there’s been a lot of successes that you could probably group together and say, “Hey, these were notable.” And those were successes but in 1998, a tapir injured a zookeeper and injured her severely. Read More
Bateleur eagle?… Read More
Is there one that jumps out of you in the birth of a species that you were really excited about?… Read More
Oh, there was always quite a few that I thought were really unique and it was really noteworthy. I honestly, I don’t know that I can think of them. I can’t think I can single one out at the present time. I was always amazed like wow, they were able… Read More
They have a great newsletter where it used to be on recycled paper. It’s now slick paper. A lot of things have changed. Communication is much better among the members than it used to be. You have a whole new generation of people out there that are belonging to the… Read More
And when the decision was made to go in that direction, it probably caused some quality of life questions with the individuals who worked in Wheeling as to whether they wanted to pick up and move to Washington DC, big jump from Wheeling to Washington. There were new people being… Read More
And so, the whole philosophy of the organization, the whole focus was changing. It was just changing with evolution, changing in time and it had to happen. That caused some problems. And it was in 1990 that we realized that we probably need to have a change at the top… Read More
What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of AZA from when you first started to when you left active in the profession. When the AZA split, it was basically a one director organization that had an executive director and there were five or six clerical employees that handled everything… Read More
And do you think it’s important for zoo directors who are active to be involved in this national organization?… Read More
Overall to answer the question, yes, you definitely need to be a player in AZA. As to the amount you wanna be a player, that’s a personal decision as to what you want to do. I probably started getting involved with AZA after I went to St. Louis. I was… Read More
So, when it became the independent AZA or AAZPA at the time, were you involved, did you start to get involved when you were at Oklahoma City or were you involved earlier?… Read More
No. Well, I take that back. Yes I was. I think I first joined, which at that time was AAZPA 1969, ’70 and I believe it was under the NRPA at that point in time and then it split ’72, ’73, something like that. ’72, ’73, maybe a little bit… Read More