Absolutely, it is. One of the finest things that has happened in Hawaii is that since the nene was established, which we helped to do in 1957 by the legislature, two years before Hawaii was a state, it’s become that endangered endemic bird. Our Hawaiian geese have become the symbol… Read More
What do you know about the profession that you devoted so many years of your life to?… Read More
Is there a significance to that?… Read More
Why?… Read More
Zoos are necessary for the same reason that music is a necessity and art is a necessity. It’s just no man lives by bread alone. And the whole, the role of zoos, as I see it, is to further an understanding of the entire world of nature, appreciation of nature,… Read More
Well, in terms of elephants, our climate alone is an enormous benefit, where the minimum temperature is 58, so that you don’t have the severe problems of both heating and cooling. In terms of providing a stimulating and adequate environment for them, our zoo is doing that now. They built… Read More
Are zoos necessary?… Read More
I think the major advice I would offer for marketing, as well as it’s related, dealing with public relations and the media, is get to know the people you’re dealing with as individuals, invite them and their families on their time off, which maybe it’s inconvenient for you, but invite… Read More
What is your view regarding the topic of zoo’s maintaining elephants in their collection generally, and then specifically the Honolulu Zoo?… Read More
What are the most important aspects of marketing in your opinion?… Read More
I have not… I’ve been real lucky that the grotesqueness that people laugh at, used to laugh at with animals in, for example, dressing chimpanzees in human clothing and that sort of thing has never been a significant, I’ve never been involved in. The decency, the nobleness of the adaptive,… Read More
Any advice for the newified zoo director about the importance of marketing zoos?… Read More
To be involved with, to be meaningfully involved, truly accomplishing an important purpose is challenging. I think to be internationally involved is to join the agencies, World Wildlife Foundation Fund, but the other is to become active in getting to know, at least, as a paper person, your Congress and… Read More
What changes have you seen during your years in the zoo field regarding visitor attitudes about animals?… Read More
I think the biggest difference is what we’ve, that the skill set that a zoo director needs today is a greater ability to deal with non-zoo, non-animal people. I think animal people, as long as a zoo director familiarizes himself as well as he can with the available information about… Read More
What kind of small or a medium-sized municipal zoo today do to be involved in wildlife conservation nationally or internationally?… Read More
All right. What skill set does a zoo director need today as compared to when you started?… Read More
The zoo was an, it operated very heavily on improvise. There was a sign in the director’s office, every day we have to accomplish more and more with less and less, I can recall that. So he said, now here’s one way we achieve that, come out. And he had… Read More
And we said, “Well, what are these small animals?” He said, rats, he said that’s our rat control, and we also use squirrels, to shoot squirrels. But primarily he’s on duty in the evening with a spotlight, rat control. Works, straight to the leopards. Okay. Read More
And this cobra which had been selected as a relatively quiet animal to begin with, as soon as it begins to climb over the guardrail or climb over the wall, he taps it on the nose with the bamboo pole and it withdraws. And when it repeats that, he taps… Read More