Oh, the wonder of it. Sometimes it seems to require more space than we can provide. But the closeup beauty, the liveliness, when you look a condor in the eye, you have the feeling there’s somebody there who’s looking back, that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen in any art museum… Read More
How do we convey that better?… Read More
When you travel in Europe, for example, and you go to a great cathedral, there’s something absolutely splendid about it, whereas my little sister used to say splendiferous, so that even if you are not religious, you’re impressed by that structure, by the feeling that it gives. Read More
One of the things I struggle with is seeing how can we get that feeling?… Read More
Why would you do so with a penguin, or a Python?… Read More
It’s a treasure. In some cases, there are fewer such animals than there are Rembrandts. For example, there are probably some 400 Rembrandts we know of, just about 400 California condors, many fewer Sumatran rhinos. And on the Rembrandt matter, we’ve often heard that he painted 400 paintings in his… Read More
What are in your opinion, the most important aspects of marketing your zoo?… Read More
I would say two things are important in marketing the zoo or the aquarium, first do not trivialize wildlife, do not trivialize your animals. One would not expect to see the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art trivializing, a Ruben’s Rembrandt. It’s a treasure. Read More
Or educate. It has been a remarkable and wonderful experience to attempt and actually succeed in getting the attention of a variety of bureaucrats. And these that range from the mayor of the city of New York, Ed Koch became a great backer of the Bronx Zoo, and many other… Read More
What advice would you have with your experience for the neophyte zoo director about the importance of marketing your zoo?… Read More
When you talk about that, you’re trying to reach people, but also you’re trying to reach decision makers, which many times equals the political process. So to bring it back a bit at your zoo or the zoos that you ran as general director, what’s the most efficient way to… Read More
You’ve had to retrain many bureaucrats during your tenure?… Read More
Is that still a viable conservation tool?… Read More
I don’t think I understand the– If you use the giant panda as the celebrated species of the ecosystem, in order to support every– And have people support, is that still a good tool for conservationist or zoo managers?… Read More
Human beings have difficulty understanding animal populations as such. They want to know Sasha the tiger, not tigers in general. And often we must use that perception in order to get their attention. In my experience is when you do have people’s attention, they can understand that anything, the flagship… Read More
Is that still a good paradigm for supporting this large area for that animal and everything else?… Read More
So when we ask, can we sustain Amur tigers and Sumatra tigers?… Read More
It’s a very involved question, gotta be a lot of fun to work it out and interesting to see how it comes out. Read More
Continuing that just for a minute, does the use of a tiger or a giant panda, or some other charismatic mega vertebrae which you have coined, help the entire population and support the entire population?… Read More
The difference between an Amur tiger and a Sumatran tiger is fairly apparent. But the fact of the matter is that genetically they are very close. So whether whether we will be able to sustain the remaining races of tiger or not is highly questionable. I’d have to say, I… Read More