Well, I think that, number one, the wild is shrinking in a lot of places all over the world. And whether it’s on land or water, there’s a lot of things going on that people have to be aware of. And I think zoos have to take a leading step… Read More
And I think the wildlife in Africa, as opposed to the Amazon or some other places is so much more readily seen and very heavy on mammals and so forth. So it was always a place that I thought was really wondrous. I mean, it was so different from anything… Read More
Obviously, there are other places too, but that’s just one. Yeah. Yeah. Read More
I wonder if you talk about your consultation with the Jakarta Zoo and gorillas?… Read More
Well, I think what happens is sometimes, you have a degree of expertise in a subject matter that people actually recognize. And Howletts Zoo Park who was one of the premier gorilla facilities in England and in Europe had loaned four male gorillas to the Jakarta Zoo. And they had,… Read More
You’re one of the big players here. I’d never seen the Jakarta Zoo. I’d never been, again, in seeing what’s out there, I had never been to that part of the world to experience the pluses and the minuses of what the zoo had to offer, Komodo dragons and all… Read More
I’m just curious, what is your strong interest in Africa and its wildlife?… Read More
And the only organization in China that had gorilla experience was the Beijing Zoo who had a pair of gorillas. So I talked to the people at Lincoln Park and sold them on the idea, again, learning, learning, learning that if we could bring the vet from the Shanghai Zoo… Read More
And I’ll say one thing with sharing information. Early in my career, Dennis Merritt, then the curator at the zoo who I worked for for a number of years was very big about his mantra about publishing and sharing the information that you have. And Dennis was one of my… Read More
But that was an important step from someone mentoring me and teaching me to say, “This is important. And this is why it’s important.” And I’ve shared that with other people. Everybody’s not gonna publish, I get it. But you could give a talk at a thing. You can do… Read More
And he said to me, “Remember, you know more about your subject matter than any of these people do ’cause you’ve studied that.” And he introduced me. He said, “Here’s the dead end kid from Chicago.” Broke the ice. And I gave my first major presentation. But the point is… Read More
I think it goes back to the idea of training people to do a better job, giving them the information to do a better job. And this Smithsonian through the National Zoo had a program of zoo management. They would go out and they would teach a month long zoo… Read More
There was a lot of things going on. And because, I guess, I didn’t screw up too much in doing it, the next year, they asked me to lead a team to Mexico, to Guadalajara to do the same thing. So again, we did that. And then the next year,… Read More
These are forgive the pun, big deals. When we received the koalas that was again, took a long time to get in a lot of people to make happen. Some of those, when we put together unique things with the African Journey building, that was a high point. It was… Read More
So this way, in order to build that base to do what needed to get done so they could do a better job. Those were high points. I think low points at the zoo were when you couldn’t reach certain staff members to do the best job they could. You… Read More
And here I’m thinking, “Gee, I told them they shouldn’t get the horse and now, I gotta do this.” And it was very difficult kind of thing, the circumstances for doing it. So that was kind of a low point for me from the animal management standpoint. But for the… Read More
How’d that come about? And what was your role?… Read More
And as I say, somebody had to say, “I think this is needed.” Someone else had to say, “I think it’s a great idea and I think we can make it happen.” Yeah. So this is an interesting thing. You’ve held now five different positions at Lincoln Park Zoo. Read More
Just curious, did you ever think of leaving Lincoln Park Zoo and going somewhere else?… Read More
I think, at times, kind of yes. But the pleasant’s problem as we would say is that the zoo was always doing some very dramatic, dynamic things. The building was constantly ongoing with Lester Fisher started, and I was always involved because a lot of it was the mammals, not… Read More