I looked back at Lincoln Park in the early years, and our curatorial staff were people that were fortunate to go to college. The great majority of them graduated with a zoology degree, and that was considered an entry ticket to a zoo staff, a curatorial position. In those days,… Read More
And so I think a zoo director has to be a person that can kind of be diverse in their thinking and have to rely on technical help in different areas because of this incredible expansion of operations. Some feel that the zoo community lacks really top notch curatorial staff… Read More
What skillset do you think a zoo director needs today?… Read More
A zoo director today is with not only a zoo, but practically every cultural institution in my opinion, have comparable skill needs. And that is that you certainly, it helps if you know the collection. In other words, a zoo directors should be a person that relates to the animal… Read More
And many of them have extension of researchers and funding for programs in conservation. Some of us feel strongly that in another 25, 50 years there won’t be wild areas left in the world other than national parks park systems, and the zoological gardens and aquariums. So I think this… Read More
Gradually as the animals became more threatened and more endangered, which they were and are, more so all the time. I think the role of the zoo got into conservation and that was and is important. I think again, it was a strong personal opinion of mine, that education should… Read More
I think that the growth is continuing and positive, I think that the zoo has to stop being ever an island unto itself. The zoo is part of a community and whether it lives in a small town, a medium town, or a bigger urban area like metropolitan Chicago, it… Read More
The role of the zoo has been sort of a growth story. We started out as recreation areas, most of them that were parts of park departments, such as Lincoln Park, were primarily the mission of a zoo was a place where people went and had a relaxed time, a… Read More
What do you feel zoos should be doing locally?… Read More
Not just Lincoln Park, nationally and internationally?… Read More
The present head of the association is a guy named Robe Hilsenroth, it used to be Edd Morris for years, and he went down and married a woman at Oaks, not Three Oaks. White Oaks. White Oaks, the white Oaks place outside of Jacksonville, Florida there. And they got married… Read More
The zoo vets have had an incredible positive growth. Keep in mind that when I was a part-time zoo vet, there were a handful of us. We had almost no reference material to work with, very little published material, and it was a very kind of small informal group. And… Read More
And then the thing just kinda started an honest, good positive growth because a man, excuse me, named Murray Fowler, a veterinarian out at Davis Veterinary School in California, decided to publish the first reference book. And that was underwritten by Morris Animal Foundation. And Murray also started cranking out… Read More
What are your views of the Zoo Veterinarians Association, the goods in the bads?… Read More
And she put together various people at different zoos who are doing direct marketing to raise money for their zoos membership. And then the organization cared less about them, they didn’t even give them a room at the annual meetings where they could meet to discuss their own area of… Read More
I think as any organization either grows or dies, AAZPA continued to grow, we involve more and more staff people. The group finally start splitting up into subgroups, you might say the original intent of the group was animal people. And the whole idea of AAZPA was a clearing house… Read More
In other words, they started developing their own education area, their own research people, their own everything, and I felt then and believe today that it has one primary role, as I see it in the profession, and that is the service the membership. The AAZPA doesn’t exist, now got… Read More
Has the role changed from when you started this new organization till now?… Read More
And a few of the people start talking, “Perhaps it’s time that we start our own organization.” And so that evolved, and we found in Oglebay Park, West Virginia, a place that could become a home for our own little zoo association. And there were a group of us. I… Read More
And that was kind of the start of the National Zoo Association, and being a free-standing meaningful group that we started our own national conventions. And I think the next year I was able to step up to the presidency, and I think it was at our Houston conference that,… Read More