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
How difficult was it to get the funding for that?… Read More
Was most of it from the Gladys Porter era or not?… Read More
Summer safari. Yes. One of our education curators several years ago came up with this and basically it’s where you, people are always looking for things for their children to do in the summertime. And so we started programs half day and full day programs. And some of the full… Read More
What was your vision, as director for education within the zoo and how did you start to develop that vision?… Read More
Well, you can’t justify a zoo if you don’t include education as one of your pivotal roles and the animals that we have simply serve as ambassadors. We can’t hope to repopulate the world’s wild places with animals. We can maintain animals as a hedge against disaster, but we cannot… Read More
And when they walk in and they hand you a list and say, here’s a list there of these people combined are willing to give half million dollars to the zoo. You need to structure a program and ask ’em for it. And that’s a pretty good start. And in… Read More
Primarily on the board, we have had add two different full-time and two different part-time fundraisers workforce. And in most instances we found out that all they did was put together the lists or to get together the information for grant requests. And it was still, we had to have… Read More
These are the people, and our most effective tool in a couple of instances has been having an initial survey done of the community leaders and of the board to identify, well, now, if we did this project, would you be willing to support at such and such a level?… Read More
Did you then feel the need to hire people, or did you just depend on your board?… Read More
They were all personal friends of Gladys Porter, and while she was still alive, they would come. We had Miss Kitty from “Gun Smoke Fame”, Amanda Blake was a stalwart and she was there at least four or five different fundraising times. And I got to know and adore her. Read More
And it’s takes a lot of work, takes mainly organization. And it’s means getting a team of people, getting ’em interested, having a format that they know that works, deviating from it enough each year, so that it doesn’t seem quite the same each year, but all sticking to having… Read More