And some of their members have put in not only just money to support the Kemps Ridley program to protect the beaches in Mexico, when the animals come in and lay their eggs, the local people don’t come and dig them all up to eat ’em. And this has worked… Read More
I think a lot of this would come through the education programs, seeing the children in particular, as they first become aware of the importance of wildlife conservation or of even things like recycling, saving our water resources, basic things like this, making the public aware and usually you have… Read More
There have been instances where this is. I’m most particularly aware of the ones with rhinoceros because I’ve had to deal with them in helping ride a lot of the permits and working with the rhinos. But no, it goes from reptiles to fish. Read More
And on the other end of the coin, during your 10 years as director of the zoo, what would you say were some of your happier moments that you really were got excited about because something occurred or your program had made it happen something like that?… Read More
Oh no. Read More
That’s in any taxon that you want to pick?… Read More
Does that occur specifically with the Rhinoceros Group?… Read More
Gladys Porter supported in-situ conservation primarily through supporting our zoo, which allowed us to make grants to the International Rhino Foundation, to the International Iguana Foundation to Galapagos for turtle conservation, to the Kemps Ridley program for sea turtle conservation. So she made money available so that the zoo could… Read More
And yet they wouldn’t let a representative group come out. They wouldn’t give permits for them to come into a better situation. And so there have been a lot of people. The US is not by far the only place that has people in authority that block good projects. And… Read More
Did you want to get into the in-situ portion?… Read More
They’re animal rights groups and they’re animal rights groups. Some of them are well intentioned, but create problems. Some of ’em are well intentioned and help with animal welfare. I’ve always tried to work first with the groups and if they took what I thought were unreasonable or made, what… Read More
They help with fundraising for conservation projects. They help educate our, not only our children, but our taxpayers and our adults who have funds available to donate to these various conservation projects. So I don’t lump all humane or all animal rights organizations together. There are some that I think… Read More
And if you did, how did you deal with potentially negative issues?… Read More
For instance, I mentioned the southern black rhino originally would probably not be in existence now were it not for the International Rhino Foundation. This is one program that the Zoo and Aquarium Association decided they didn’t want to have as a species survival plan any longer. And so they… Read More
During your time as director at the zoo, did you have to deal with animal rights groups?… Read More
When I was president of AZA, the administration before me, primarily through the work of Ed Moraaco and Dennis Merrit had come up with the idea of having species survival plans to have zoos work together and pool their resources to save individual species. And that had already been set… Read More
During your career as director, what would you consider to be one of, or some major events that affected zoos in general and affected Gladys Porter Zoo?… Read More
And you’ve held this position of working with the organization, the international organization for a while, haven’t you?… Read More
Yeah, I’m one of the original signers of the International Rhino Foundation and I still am secretary of their board, although I try to resign and they haven’t let me. So we we’ll see how long that goes. Read More
Yes, we have programs in India, Sumatra, Java and in several countries in Africa, Zimbabwe, South Africa and maybe a Botswana. We just translocated within the last month, 10 rhinos from South Africa into Botswana and Botswana rhinos had been totally wiped out. So now Botswana can say they have… Read More