Boy, well, when I was 55 years ago when I was ranger rick and a safari park, I I, I didn’t even look at the visitors very much. You know, they, they were there just to, you know, they were just checking the boxes and driving through and taking pictures… Read More
So we, we’ve got a work cut out for us. But I still think that an experience, a firsthand experience is the most important thing that you can do for your audience. So the audience has changed. And the zoos are changing too. We’re just not changing fast enough. You… Read More
Good, bad. Should they be there?… Read More
Well, again, they usually come in with the technical skills, but they don’t have the, the hands-on abilities. So I would send them to other zoos to benchmark and, and, and it’s a network too, so they get to know other people. ’cause a lot about leadership is, is, is… Read More
What kind of things would you emphasize?… Read More
What changes have you seen during your years in the zoo field regarding visitor attitudes?… Read More
Is that an issue? And how should curators, in your opinion, be trained today to do what you think is expected of them?… Read More
Well, I think it’s a double-edged sword. Sometimes it’s too much education and not enough hands-on. Experience is what seems to be the trend now. And they think they can solve everything in front of a computer and, and, and just day to day to data. But you’ve gotta, you’ve… Read More
So I think that the, what was the question again? The, Do you think that, what kind of training, how would you, yeah, What would you include In a training program if you had to develop it for curators?… Read More
Well, let me start with Charlie Schroder’s. He was asked that question in a book called Mr. Zoo. And, and Charlie’s answer was, you go to the restrooms and if the bathrooms are clean, then you know they’re taking good care of the animals. That’s a quote from Charlie Schroeder,… Read More
They have to tell stories about their animals, individual animals. What makes a good zoo is that the back of house is the same as the front of house. It’s, there’s no difference. You know, if, if you’re embarrassed to show people where the animals go at night, then you… Read More
What do you think makes a good zoo? A great zoo?… Read More
Another question that we kind of said, why do you, are you, were you a good director?… Read More
If you have a Jane Goodall, you have a Bill Conway, you have a Russ Meyer, all these guys that are on our board, Terry Maple, they, Mike Hutchins. All we had, we had an incredible advisory board that that said, no Disney’s doing it right. And they’ll listen to… Read More
Or were they relying more on you as the animal guy to help them form a message?… Read More
Yeah, I’m not trying to be egotistical here, but no, they, they let me decide. Michael Eisner and I would sit down and talk about this when he was the CEO and ’cause he wanted to, one time he wanted to buy the circus, you know, he thought that was… Read More
But it was, you know, they could, why you, why are you doing real animals?… Read More
You can do, you can do all this fake stuff. And so we got a lot of form letters and we had a whole letter writing and there was like 20 people that just responded to letters at Disney. And I did the form letter once and there was one… Read More
It, it was, it, they just had this, the word zoo, we didn’t use the word zoo, but they, they called it a zoo. And that that’s got such a negative connotation historically that we had to deal with a lot of, a lot of letters, a lot of protests… Read More
’cause they’re so good at it, virtual reality now. Read More