We’ve got lots of king cobras on the ground, so one more gets loose, nobody ever knows. Three criteria that Americans zoos cannot achieve to (laughing). Okay. All right, that will not be an exhibit that will be in our normal US zoos. Don’t put that on the list of… Read More
And finally, we got around to asking that question. (indistinct) said, “Well, here’s the procedure. First of all, we get cobras. First we have a relatively large number of cobras available. There’s a good population here in Burma.” So we select the more lethargic, the more quiet examples, specimens that… Read More
It’s comfortable, it’s in the shade. We feed it in there, we make it like that little box. Then we open that little box very carefully and the cobra comes out. We do this before the visitors come in the morning. And this young man, a 10-year old boy is… Read More
He escorted us through customs, no suitcases were opened and a lot of smiles, right?… Read More
Can you kind of give us a capsule version of that?… Read More
The most remarkable thing that we wanted to, Bernard Harrison and I went up to the zoo in Rangoon and Burma in the mid ’70s. And the purpose of that trip was for him, particularly, because I knew it wouldn’t do our zoo any good, ’cause we couldn’t keep king… Read More
Things that aren’t on the approved list, even the same genomes, separate species, sometimes have to go through a long laborious permitting process, unnecessary delays for the zoo. But it’s way better to have it than to not have it. Quick exhibit question. I know you’ve seen a lot of… Read More
In the what?… Read More
On that, we saw 50,000 of them in Maui. But you know, what’s knocking them now is their population is gone down to, I’d say less than, in our yard, less than 5%. We used to get as many as say 100 in our yard. They were a lot, and… Read More
I would strongly feel like your common snapper would be an undesirable resident because he’d feel, in terms of aquaculture, they’d, and toads from what I’ve read, but the red-eared and the tortoises are freely permitted. Read More
Somebody didn’t think about it in the cane toad, did they?… Read More
Well, the key thing is that, the law is a good one to… Like so many laws, the concept is wise. The administration of it is sometimes, since it’s done by people, and often with people that don’t understand the background and the purpose, there are gaps. Initially are working… Read More
One of them was, do you accept the laws requiring the banning, such as the snake ban create a serious limitation on exhibiting these creatures?… Read More
How does one work around that issue?… Read More
And as a result, the US Department of Agriculture became the lead agency. They’re now 22 employees on Guam, deal entirely with the brown tree snake. A varying amount of sniffer dogs, three or four teams operate to inspect the planes before they leave. It’s always the trouble. It’s always… Read More
That is what the people on Guam are far more concerned about than they are about the loss of their native birds, is the fact that their freezers don’t work, their TV doesn’t work night after night, after night. More than half the nights they were without electricity. We’ve done… Read More
And he had retired and he agreed to serve, and he was close friends. He’d served in the 442nd infantry division, for which Dan, Senator Dan in Norway had also served and lost use of his arm. And this chap, Bill Thompson was hugely instrumental in helping us obtain money… Read More
And finally, it was determined that the brown tree snake, which had been introduced from, probably Manus, which was native to New Guinea and Northern Australia had become established by, as well as they could determine, by a Navy surplus equipment, shipped into Guam, was causing a great deal of… Read More
And there was almost no inspection at both Guam, before the snakes left, and here when the planes arrived. So the snakes were getting aboard. I think we documented nine brown tree snakes that arrived in Hawaii. Half of those, well five, as I recall, were alive when they arrived,… Read More
The brown tree snake. The brown tree snake is an easy and relatively uncomplex story, that in the mid ’80s, native birds were being greatly reduced in population on the island of Guam, primarily in one part of Guam. So there was a lady named Judy Salvage. And Judy was… Read More