You know, elephants should live 80, 80 years. Well, the oldest elephant in the world might have lived 80 or 70 years, but the average lifespan might be 40. So they don’t use a median. They use, you know, the records like saying we, we all should live to a… Read More
And some of ’em are very vocal about it. But I, you know, and I don’t know if it’s growing or not, but the problem we have with the subject of animal welfare and animal rights is particularly animal rights. People can use soundbites like no other zoos or jails. Read More
I mean, we’re most familiar with the case in San Francisco where some people came in the zoo late and taunted the animal, and the animal got out and killed somebody. So a lot of the people that are killed in zoos, you know, half of ’em are visitors that… Read More
So she took the attorneys back to the chamber and for about a half an hour, and we just sat there and the judge came out and says, look, if it was me, I might not wanna send Timmy to New York, but under the Endangered Species Act, the zoo… Read More
So we had a few protestors come, you know, they didn’t want us to keep elephants in the zoo, but it was a small group and we went out and gave them water and talked to ’em. Sue Allen, my marketing person was really good with people like that. And… Read More
And, and judge batch leather, who became a great friend of the zoo, she listened for about 15 minutes. By the way, Les Fisher and Bob Wagner came to town and we had it all planned what we were gonna say. Read More
I wish I had the letter that they, somebody sent me. It was quite humorous. But you know, they had signs sent to me, not Taylor, they called me all kinds of names. You know, I want a terrible person. I was for doing it. It became quite a big… Read More
So they, we talked for about 15 minutes and she said, can I come back to my chamber?… Read More
Could you give us your thoughts on how best to deal with these type of groups?… Read More
I sure can. And I, I, let me start with, and if I get off track a little bit, get me get back to the general. So I had two, Cleveland was not a hotbed of animal rights groups, you know, animal rights group. We really liked Chicago and New… Read More
And so for three years at least, we didn’t have a single gorilla, you know, it was, he, there was two of ’em. I think people felt better about that. And then the friends of SSP said, oh, here’s a ve old gorilla that’s never important for the gene pool. Read More
So I think as long as you have a good story, and it can be individual exhibits are a whole zoo or a whole part of the zoo, as long as you have a good story to tell, I I think it works for people. But it gets confusing if… Read More
I, I, I’m big on the storyline. So we’ve, we switched and we had a rainforest. We had a a, an area we called Northern Trek, which now they call Wilderness Trek. So they, where they had northern animals, we had an African section. So it, so big zoos have… Read More
You know, I don’t think it matters so much. I mean, look at the living desert in Palm Springs or the Arizona or Desert Museum. They’re that are focused on a certain biome such as desert or local deserts. And there are certainly some zoos that are restricted to north… Read More
And you were talking about resources and considering the financial resources available to some of the small or medium sized zoos, should they be focusing, do you believe on specific things in their collection like North America or maybe endangered species or maybe holding species surplus that other zoos are… Read More
Should they be thinking in that way or just in what I call a general zoo atmosphere?… Read More
Is that conservation?… Read More
Yeah, I think it’s a, i for a while I wanted to put our ecotourism program into education, but I don’t know if it belongs in education or fundraising anymore because it, it helps for both. But yeah, I think it’s important that, as you know, you’ve taken people to… Read More
Well, I, they’re, they’re, they’re very much all connected. But yeah, there’s, they’re separate. So somebody talks about conservation and just think it’s, we field conservation. It isn’t, ’cause it’s all those other things too that we do to help help animals in the wild. And, and again, we’ll may… Read More
And relay, what kind of conservation is involved, you know, habitat destruction in case of elephants, et cetera. They need aside national parks and the cent of wolves or whatever. So you got education, then you got scientific research and a lot of that research in zoos can be applied… Read More