And I must say, at first I wasn’t that much aware of it, when I first got here. But I had only been here three months, I said to myself, these docents were put in the giraffe house, that old giraffe house we had here. It stunk so bad, you… Read More
Did you start volunteers in the zoo?… Read More
No, the volunteers were started here. The docents were here. Maybe there were 20 or 30 when I got here. There are over, we can’t do them all right now. It was, I think 400 plus. And these are full-time docents. They not only are the backbone of the zoo. Read More
You have to have the volunteers and you treat them like they’re your family. You treat them like every, you let them know exactly what’s going on. Before that wasn’t happening. The, oh, these are volunteer docents, they’re just volunteers. You know, let’s don’t let them have a pop. Let’s… Read More
Obviously, you kidding me?… Read More
They’ve done great work, their research is above anybody, but they went through that issue at times, because when you don’t have to worry about anything, you’ve got everything handed to you. You’re going to have a problem. And so here we know what we have to do. That’s my… Read More
Now did you have, what’s your opinion about volunteers in the zoo?… Read More
You know why?… Read More
Because that’s where we were screwing ourselves in the early days. People didn’t think, I always felt this as a business. a business of, yes, saving animals. But of conservation, educating people, this is a business we have, everybody. This is like, your CEO is a businessman. The board is… Read More
And that’s why they’ve had several problems. I love the National Zoo, I’m not knocking it at all. Read More
Why as a zoo world gone from when you and I were in business years ago in the 1960s and seventies, what was it, maybe 75,000 at the most?… Read More
Or I’m sorry, I don’t mean most. Of all the zoos, maybe there was, I don’t know, let’s say 600,000. I don’t know what it was back then. It wasn’t much at all, by the way. And today you look at 176 million people, 176 million people visit our zoos… Read More
So this is a big business. And some people don’t like it, when I use the word. This is a business. It’s a big business. Read More
The average ability I think in this country, the education is ninth to 10th Grade. The average in the country. Go to my front gate and see who comes here. I try and tell the trustees that. See who our visitor is. I went down there for years. I’m not… Read More
T-shirts ripped. You could see these kids didn’t have hardly anything. I hate it, I hate what we have to charge for parking right now. And if this levy passes, I’m gonna change it, period. I don’t like $10 a car. Our members all get in free parking, but when… Read More
Yes, we have a high-income people come here. But look at them. Read More
Do your signage and do it to where it’s, where it draws the eyeball there. Read More
Africa, Asia, pretty simple, right?… Read More
You know, you can’t list every animal that’s in Africa or Asia. And do that. Then also at your signage, put up there snow leopard, endangered, obviously. Why is it endangered? Hunting, over population. Simple words. Maybe one sentence about it. That’s all you need. That’s what you want them… Read More
Well, we’ve had some other signs, but nothing like today. We have, you’ll see in the zoo, how we have, I don’t know right now where this is our busy season. You can start with the, I know they’re up, but you’ll see signs pointing to about everything. Make sure… Read More