In my opinion, we need badly to involve all the animals that are in the country that are properly, that we can identify. Let me give you an example of what I mean when I say properly identified, in the United States today in zoos, there are about 350 tigers,… Read More
We can’t do that. The private breeders have lots and lots of tigers, who knows what they are. Read More
Including the collections of private breeders within the overall zoo management of wild animals is highly desirable and very, very difficult. When you are dependent upon understanding how many males and females and a blood genetic lines in order to put together breeding pairs and the private breeder can’t or… Read More
How can this situation be changed?… Read More
In my opinion, zoos have got to understand that not just entertainment, not just public education, but all of it together within a core effort of wildlife preservation. If you’re in the zoo business, why wouldn’t preserving wild animals, be the first thing on your mind. And yet by and… Read More
Did that hurt or help zoos?… Read More
Zoos are embracing them, but not sufficiently, not a sufficiently broad fashion. Moreover, what we are now doing through the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the European AZA is not yet common in the zoo world. There is not a global program of accreditation. There is not a… Read More
So this is one of the directions, this global initiative that zoos should be embracing?… Read More
(William coughs) I am concerned that zoos have been very slow to recognize their responsibility, to make conservation their core public service. It’s taken them a long, long time. Zoos had no accreditation program until 1972 when I wrote it. There was no species survival plan until some years later,… Read More
Are zoos embracing these ideas?… Read More
They understand that. I’m not so sure that people did 50 years ago at the St. Louis Zoo, but it would also be fair to say that not nearly as many animals were endangered, then. Read More
During your career, many issues have come up, but what issues caused you the most concerned during your career and how do you see the future regarding those same concerns, or have they changed?… Read More
And yet the people coming to the Bronx Zoo today have a better understanding when we ask them, what is ecology?… Read More
When we ask them, are animals endangered?… Read More
Is this animal endangered?… Read More
(William sighs) I have no data. It’s not a question I can answer. Would you say though, that things that you have done in the various zoos in New York and at the Bronx have helped to bring visitors or give them a better understanding of some of the things… Read More
Perhaps that is because I grew up in St. Louis. There were a great many people from the country who came to the St. Louis Zoo. They’d handled horses, and goats, and sheep, and cows and chickens. Very few people come to the Bronx Zoo who have that sort of… Read More
There is actually however, a great many people who fancy themselves as curators in waiting. And the zoo responsibility is to establish more training programs and a good many curators came out of programs in New York I’m happy to say, and became directors or became curators in other places… Read More
What changes have you seen during your years in the zoo field regarding visitor attitudes at the national level?… Read More
Why would a curator want to take on what is often recognized as such an onerous responsibility?… Read More