I had preconceived ideas and rough form and some of the staff polished ’em up even further. And the architects could then interpret all that and come up with wonderful things. Now, Wichita was not necessarily in the major market or a giant zoo. Read More
My passion. My board brought it up all the time. I lived and breathed the zoo. I was lucky I had a wife that liked it as much as I did and supported me. I got kidded at times ‘cos I just, you know, I believe in zoos to start… Read More
And I found that originally, I didn’t think I’d be attending these zoo meetings after I retired, but you know, part of it it’s because of the people we worked with. The greatest people in the world and you know, friends and colleagues and they’re passionate. It’s people like you… Read More
What skillset does a zoo director need today as compared to when you started?… Read More
Plus there’s the small parts, you know, how many people are ever gonna get a chance to go to Africa so see elephants?… Read More
But I have always felt that, and I’ve tried to have field conservation support for just about every major endangered species that we had at the zoo. I got over 50% that we were involved with some programs. This elephant exhibit is being used and all the money generated that’s… Read More
It doesn’t take long, it doesn’t take long. When you see an elephant push down a tree and strip off some bark and one branch and move on to the next one, you just want to cry ‘cos that tree is a hundred years old, but that’s elephants. Read More
What made you a good director?… Read More
That’s going to skyrocket the attendance like nothing ever was here before.” What did you mean?… Read More
One, it’s true what I said and it’s not taken out of context, but it is taken out of a longer thing that I said. And yeah, that’s the worst thing I ever said that I kicked myself for, so be it. But I am a believer that animals in… Read More
If I can’t hook somebody and get the story across with a live animal, how are people gonna care about what’s going on with elephants in the wild?… Read More
That was one of the requirements. And we paid for him to go over and spend some time. And he knew that Reillys personally from earlier and a management plan. The hardest thing to do is to kill something you love. That’s what they were faced with. Read More
Did the protest end after the elephants came?… Read More
One, we never had protest at our zoo. We had cheering crowds camped out at the parking lot for five hours before they showed up. It literally ceased after they arrived. We got a few more cards and stuff. We never had, and neither did Omaha or Dallas, have protestors… Read More
Now you had a quote that was kind of used against you. “It is not a question of if, but a question of when we will have young elephant calves born here. Read More
There were some places in Swaziland… There was no place in Swaziland that could have done this. And I don’t think there are some people that believed that the Reillys would cull ’em. That was the bottom line for some people, there was a threat. It wasn’t a threat, it… Read More
And this wasn’t in any deal, we just said we’ll do it. They have their successful program and the thing they’re concentrating mostly is black and white rhinos. They wouldn’t even tell us how many they have. It’s a state secret because they’re 20 miles from the Mozambique border where… Read More
It’s this high now and lush and thick after four years of drought when it finally came back. They couldn’t put those elephants back out, not when they had rhinos. Reproduction ceased, no baby rhinos. I just came back from seeing the first baby rhino who was six weeks old… Read More
Douglas Hamilton was one of our biggest supporters. The ones that came out against us doing this and at the level what they said, I’m just gonna flat out say that we believe that like in a lot of things, money is talk and they get a lot of their… Read More
And the bottom line for those purists that believe that this was not the right thing to do because there was some other place for ’em, I don’t think they understood there was no other place for them to go. All the parks were full. Read More