Well, in the beginning it was, I look at it as a misunderstanding and a posturing. We had people in AZA who said, “We are the rhino experts. We know what we’re doing.” And we had people on the ranchers that say, “Hey boy, we’ve been raising cattle and horses… Read More
Do you feel that that goal was accomplished?… Read More
So was this love hate relationship between the AZA and the ranchers?… Read More
So it was getting game coin, ranchers and the zoo association together. And it sort of, wasn’t a natural mix. It was between the ranchers and game coin, but the zoo association sort of looked on these as a bunch of Texas Cowboys that didn’t know what the heck they… Read More
And in fact for the Southern black rhino, we wouldn’t have a program would it not be for the Texas Ranchers involvement with it?… Read More
I had a great relationship with the Texas ranchers because I was right there and two of the ranchers who ended up with rhinos served on my board of directors. So I knew ’em well, they knew me and we already had a mutual rapport. I was asked to sort… Read More
You talked about rhinos. In 1984, you were named AZA, asked you to work with the conservation group and the ranchers to save the southern black rhino. Read More
What were the details of this program and what was your relationship with the Texas ranchers and their relationship with zoos?… Read More
We could efficiently administer the project and have done it ever since. So that’s sort of how we got into that form of conservation. One other way, our current reptile person and now general curator, Colette Adams, became very well known for her capability to breed iguanas and worked with… Read More
Conservation on the ground in the wild habitat takes a lot of money and we did not have a lot of money to spend on conservation, even though we spent percentage-wise the same as some of the bigger zoos, it wasn’t nearly the dollar volume. So we had to pick… Read More
So he early on elicited our primary hepatologist, Pat Birchfield, to assist him with that program. And after a while, it became evident that Brownsville really was way better suited and could do a more efficient job. And so we started doing the Kent Ridley project for the world’s most… Read More
And so it was outta sort of a necessity if we wanted to continue to have a holistic exhibit where we had, roughly, we try and have a third of the animals in the zoo, mammals, a third birds, a third mammals, or a third rectal amphibians and now aquatic… Read More
How important was conservation to your zoo and what was your vision of making that grow and how did it grow?… Read More
Some of the animals had not done well that we had tried to work with in the zoo in an outside environment. So we wanted an air conditioned building where we could work with things like tree kangaroos, some of the smaller macropods. And so we realized that we’d have… Read More
And how did you get the idea that you wanted to have this?… Read More
Plan worked great. It’s sort of funny to see flamingos, which have a normally an outside area, no building to go into, we have to herd them in and put ’em in the restrooms, public restrooms. So to see 40 or 50 flamingos in the ladies’ restroom, making a mess… Read More
Can you share some of the history and development of that?… Read More
And so the safest place in the city of Brownsville to be is in one of the animal enclosures at the zoo. We have practiced throughout the years, we have a hurricane preparedness plan. And from the time we blow the whistle and put the plan in action, to the… Read More
Well, actually the first aquatic building was largely paid for by a grant from one of our friends of Gladys Porter’s who were big rancher and farmer in the area of the Russell family. And that was back in the late ’70s or early ’80s, I can’t remember the exact… Read More
We’re dead center target for hurricanes. Hurricanes come up, go across the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. And many of the models frequently have them coming right up the mouth of the Rio Grande River. And the Gladys Porter Zoo sits less than a mile from the Rio Grand River. Read More