So after going through a couple of these traumatic losses, which are terrible to go through because you have no warning and the keepers are dejected, the staff has dejected, the press has many questions and all that, plus the space issue we decided to get out of the elephant… Read More
And it can get things other than elephants. We’ve seen it in wallabies. We’ve seen it in some hoof animals, Arabian orcs, things like this. It’s endemic apparently to the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. We’ve had problems in Brownsville. They’ve had problems in Houston. They’ve had problems in… Read More
When we talk about these various animals that you had to deal with, when you became director, what were some of the most significant changes that you implemented regarding the care of animals?… Read More
Care of animals is our responsibility once we bring ’em into captivity and it’s our responsibility to provide them the optimum care within reason. And within reason means within the space allocations we have, which are probably some of the biggest things in zoos. For instance, we’re finding out more… Read More
Oh, very much so. One in particular that I can tell you is when I was in the early ’70s, we had, as I mentioned earlier, I bought in some duiker, very rare duiker. And we had the largest duiker collection in the world at the time. And in 1970,… Read More
And within a period of two to three weeks, we’ve lost about five duiker. And these are irreplaceable at that time, and still are irreplaceable probably losses. And we didn’t know what it was because no one had seen it. And then we started the local area. They started to… Read More
Were there frustrating times as a veterinarian?… Read More
And are there some major vehicles for doing this?… Read More
You know, me journals, is. It mostly journals or there’s journal zoo animal medicine, there’s an international wildlife, the international zoo yearbook. There are quite a number of professional publications. We talked about frustrating times as director. Read More
Oh, it’s much more prevalent sharing. People are anxious to have their findings published because it not only raises their image and their institution’s image, but they also realize it’s part of their duty to share this information. So others can have the benefit and hopefully prevent some problems. Read More
We know the same thing we had at ycombas samatra rhino preserve in Indonesia, we all of a sudden were losing some rhinos and come to find that it was a trypanosome infection being spread in the area. And it was being passed from the local domestic cattle, which sort… Read More
Has the sharing of this type of information or other information internationally and nationally, is it more prevalent now and among zoo veterinarians?… Read More
Zoos are doing more and more in science and in scientific research now, because we realize that they’re a lot of things that we didn’t know about some animals that we know now, and that we can think back in our career and say, oh yeah, that’s what probably caused… Read More
We talked about different things, education, conservation, how important should science/research be to zoos?… Read More
Should be they be doing more in this regard, are they doing what you think they should be doing?… Read More
Were there any interesting stories or difficult situations or something that surprised you involving the veterinarians and field work?… Read More
Well, during some of our rhino importations in talking with the African field veterinarians, we would share stories and we had some veterinarians here that were full-time zoo veterinarians that went over there and helped with some of the field work and stories about being chased by rhinos and having… Read More
Not as much as I would’ve liked to because I was usually had the directorial duties and couldn’t do as much actual field work as I wanted to. Read More
Veterinarians have a major role to play in conservation, because if you don’t know about why you’re having problems with animals, in some instances, if you don’t know how to keep them healthy, no matter what good intentions you have or what habitat you provide, if they have disease processes… Read More
Were you able to get into the field yourself?… Read More