Carla Eckels interview with Dr. Bryant and Mark Rand

[Bryant] --or is there another section we can put the animals in, they can survive in the wild. We-- a lot of times in-- not our zoo in particular, but zoos across the country, actually can send people down to different places to kind of learn from the people who are there to try to solve some of those issues. Zoos are zoos, it's a fact. Some of the animals are here because we need to learn more about them so we can help those that are in the wild. Some animals-- people love to see animals in zoos, and you try to develop a collection that's suitable for your area and that people want to come see. People want to come see elephants, but zoos are very strict on the requirements for elephants, in that you have to have more than one elephant. One elephant in captivity is not a good thing, and you have to try to make your group, you have to have enrichment and you have to do all kinds of things. We're actually going to develop a whole new elephant exhibit for our elephants in the future. We're going to have a capital campaign

to try to get a lot of extra money so we can develop elephant exhibits and other animals that we don't have here or expand some of the areas that we do have. [Eckels] You mentioned that it's not a good thing to have one elephant in a zoo, why? [Bryant] Elephants like to live in a group. Some animals don't like to live in a group. But elephants like to live in a group, it's usually a matriarchal society led by one female elephant and the males are off somewhere in bachelor herds and stuff, but the females all group together with their babies, and I have some excellent pictures of the elephants walking along the river and most of them were just all females walking together. And it's something to see. [Eckels] Do you ever get called here at home in the middle of the night to come out to the zoo to help an animal? [Bryant] Yeah. I'm on-- between myself and Dr. Wilson, I'm on a 24-hour day call, and if the situation arises that we need to come out to the zoo, whoever is on call, one of us will come out and do whatever we need to do. [Eckels] So there's someone here 24 hours a day? [Bryant] Yeah, there's always someone at the zoo 24 hours a day, there's several people throughout the

--rather night and they make rounds and they check on all the animals and if we have a particular case we need them to keep an eye on, they can actually keep an eye on it for us. [Eckels] How many people work here? [laughs] I can ask Mark. [Bryant] It's 100-something, but I don't know. [Eckels] Okay. Incredible, I didn't realize it was that many people out here. Okay, we can-- [cut] Okay. Yeah, you know, people have said that you have this uncanny ability to really sense what an animal needs as a veterinarian, you know, maybe what is the word when you look at a-- diagnose, maybe, what's happening with the animal, do you think so? Have you ever heard that before? [Bryant] I've heard somebody say it, I didn't realize it myself, but I do know that if you watch the animal long enough, sometimes you get a feeling of their-- how they feel, you can look at their facial features, you can look at their posture, how they act, if they eat, it's probably similar to a parent and their child. Sometimes a parent knows that there's something wrong with their child and they can

take them to the doctor and the doctor don't know, and they can take them back again and the doctor still doesn't know, and eventually through a bunch of diagnostic tests, sometimes they can find out. And I try to see as many animals here at the zoo as many times as I can and putting the big picture together, listening intently to what the keepers tell us, because they are the so-called parent or guardian of that animal and then seeing the animal itself and then maybe just putting it all together, comes up with a sense that, you know, something's not right and then our battery of diagnostic tests that we have and additional observations usually yield a conclusion to what's going on. [Eckels] Thank you. [Bryant] --samples, then that's it, that's pretty much just the beginning. We'll-- any afterwards we have to re- sterilize them and repackage them and get them ready for use again. Surgical instruments, towels, drapes, anything we've used in surgery or treatment that's reusable, and our technician would tell

(inaudible) all together again and she has a team of volunteers that help her out, and they can sterilize and package and get it ready for use in treatments and surgeries. That's a meerkat, he's in because he had some damage to one of his feet. And then during the course of events he got nerve damage in the back of his leg and nerves sometimes take a long time to regenerate if they are going to regenerate at all, and it sure looks like his nerves are regenerating and maybe he's at the end of his treatment period. [Eckels] -- Care room? [Bryant] Intensive care, we have an animal that needs extra special requirements while recovering, we'll bring him into our intensive care room, or our intensive care unit, that's heated, we can adjust the temperature and humidity, we can heat the animal up if we need to heat him up, or we can cool the animal down if we need to cool him down. We can supply oxygen and fluids if we need to.

[Eckels] What animals are in here? [Bryant] Right now we have a meerkat who's in this cage who's recovering from some nerve damage to the leg. [Eckels] Oh he's okay, he's in the back there in his little cage. [Bryant] He's kind of shy there, he'll run around the cage and when you come in he'll go hide in his cage in his little kennel. [Eckels] And this is a snake over here? [Bryant] No, this is what they call a legless lizard, he's actually a lizard but he doesn't have any legs, he looks like a snake to the layman, but he's a lizard. [Eckels] You were talking about the lizard earlier. Okay, legless lizard. [Bryant] Yeah, she has an abdominal cyst, we've drained a couple times, or at least once, and that we're still worried about her. [Eckels] Okay. Is there any animals that we have here at the zoo that aren't in other parts of the country? You know what I'm saying, that are exclusively, if you will, here at the zoo, to your knowledge? [Bryant] We have several endangered species, some of them are very rare and we have some of the

population in our zoo that there may be a few others scattered ones across the country. One animal I know we're the only zoo that has it is the yellow-headed vulture. We're the only zoo in the country that has a yellow-headed vulture in captivity, and this bird came to us by way of the Cincinnati Zoo, and then I think this bird is 40-something years old. [Eckels] Is it one of the oldest animals at the zoo? [Bryant] No. Rocket, our male Aldabra Tortoise, is probably the-- I can show you Rocket, he's out here. [Eckels] Okay. Good, then we can talk about him then, we can continue now. [Bryant] --animals feed, because some of the animals know that you're trying to trick them and maybe if you-- [pause, silence] [Eckels] Okay, testing. [Reed] --and then the residents are the animals. [Eckels] Jeez, it's incredible, and then to look at the zoo. And he told me your father was--? [Reed] Director of the National Zoo, and for 28 years before that was the veterinarian there. [Eckels] Right, that's what he was sharing with me. My goodness,

so it's sort of in your blood, so to speak, for you to be working at a zoo. Shoot, I should-- I need to do a story on you now, but as I was sharing with you earlier, the focus here of course is on the zoo and Dr. Bryant, and there was something that you shared with me over the phone. Ok that's a little better, about Dr. Bryant. One moment. Got to make sure my headphones are always working. Okay. That looks real good. First of all, let me get your title, your name and title please. [Reed] I'm Mark Reed, I'm the director of the Sedgwick County Zoo. [Eckels] How long have you been director here? [Reed] I've been

director for 10 years, I've been at the Sedgwick County Zoo for 21 years, and I worked previously at the San Antonio Zoo for seven years. [Eckels] So you were here one year prior to Dr. Bryant coming on board? [Reed] Yeah, about a year and a half. [Eckels] Were you the one that shared with him on (inaudible), he mentioned to me that somebody was talking about building a zoo hospital here? Were you the one that had mentioned to him that would happen? Or I guess maybe because there already was one here but-- [Reed] Actually we called it a clinic. I promised him as soon as we could, that we would build a real zoo hospital and I can tell you that-- you know, I was originally thinking, you know, 600,000 dollar hospital and of course he was thinking bigger and I got to the point that I found myself-- that I couldn't say no to anything and he had 18 years of dreaming, going to other zoos and conferences, and seeing everything and planning, and because of that he was so well prepared, had all the answers, so he got everything he wanted and I think we have one of the best hospitals in the country.

But he knows where every switch and drain is, 'cause he made sure they were there. Meticulous attention to detail. When they did the design concept and it's 100 percent his baby and we think he did a marvelous job and I'm partial to veterinarians but it's our most important aspect that we provide good care. We've always had a great vet in Dr. Bryant and he's had a lot of great help from the community and equipment and we just didn't have a place to do the work and now we've got that. [Eckels] Well talk to me a little bit about Dr. Bryant, there's something that you said you noticed, and I'm trying to remember what the phrase was, something about focus-- you'll know. [Reed] Well to start with, just as a background or whatever, Dr. Bryant apparently from the time he was a kid, from the stories he's told me, hatched chickens and was always into animals and he's-- the only zoo that I know that actually had a lot animal experience before him by working at the

King's Island outside Cincinnati, he was a lion keeper and and went all through that, but the neat thing for him as a zoo vet is that of all the people here, he has if not the best, I can't think of anybody that has better, but I call "animal sense", and that's just invaluable in a zoo vet. So he knows what the animals are doing, knows what the keepers here are dealing with so he can see everything from their perspective, has a great feel for the animals, and that just makes him, as far as I'm concerned, the best zoo veterinarian out here in the United States and I just feel lucky that we've got him here at our zoo. So that was kind of neat. But he literally came here, worked originally for another veterinarian, Dr. Othello Curry, simply because of he know that Othello did the contract basis, we did not have a full-time vet, and he knew he could get some experience here, and we liked him, he liked us, and I guess he started to work full-

time on January 1st, 1982, and one of his first big jobs was moving the chimps and the orangutans into their new facilities down at the (inaudible) Building. It was exciting times, and he has continuously inspired everybody here with his just animal knowledge, not only his veterinary knowledge. I'm convinced he's got a photographic mind because he's-- like a lot of people, been in the business for a long time, there's so much to keep up with, and he does it. And he spends at the same time, hours and hours for up until just a couple years ago, he, you know, basically was working seven-hour days in here and many a night, all night, with animals that needed attention and one of my next important things was to get him a full-time veterinarian so that he could have a few days off before he burned them up completely. [Eckels] And he is so grateful, he mentioned that-- is it Dr. Watson, am I saying it right? [Reed] Dr.

Sandra Wilson. She actually came here, she was at the Montgomery, Alabama Zoo, she was the number one vet, and chose to come here, combination of back to the Midwest, combination of working with Dr. Bryant, combination of knowing it was going to be great facilities, all sort of things that to draw her, so we've got two top-notch veterinarians working at the Sedgwick County Zoo. [Eckles] You know, we had talked to Mark earlier about how he is the only African American, I guess senior zoo vet, across the country. Why do you think that's so? What would be your thoughts on that? [Reed] I can't say right now for sure, there's Dr. Othello Curry, who's a contract veterinarian who's African American, and there have been a few others periodically. Los Angeles Zoo has had a couple over the years. Other than that, um I really don't have an answer, it's something that our

whole industry has got a major diversity committee, which Dr. Bryant is on, is to look at the attraction of more diverse ethnic groups, be it African American or Asian or whatever, into our field. It is lopsided based on national statistics, and we want to do something about that. [Eckels] Well he said here at the Sedgwick County Zoo, it's just a really well-kept secret, if people just come they'll obviously love it and learn a lot. [Reed] Well, I think it's one of the best zoos in the country for the amount of effort we put into it, we say the cost benefit ratio. As you may know by now there's no rating system on what's the best zoo or anything like that, all zoos have certain things to be proud of, we know what our problems are, in all cases it's just a question of time and money to fix whatever those problems are. I look at zoos as a reflection of the community. This community supports the zoo real well and has supported Dr. Bryant and the animals' health care. We've got

relations with all the major hospitals in towns, clinics, reproductive centers, dentist, eye surgeons, some of the people he's brought in to help have just been incredible. So we've got a great network out there in this community. [Eckels] That is great, I understand you're the number one tourist attraction in Kansas. [Reed] Actually we're the number one tourist attraction in the state of Kansas, we're doing about just a fraction under a half-a-million visitors and we're also proud to say that's almost equal to the statistic for the metropolitan area and that's one way we look at it that we feel like we're providing a good cultural asset to the community and it's used well. So we say, you know, one out of every five people in the state of Kansas comes to the zoo. [Eckels] That's a real good statistic. Well tell me, what is it that-- if someone has never been to the zoo, what would you say they're missing and why should they come? [Reed] Well they're missing a great contrast in the great plains of Kansas and everything that they would experience immediately in the jungle building. One of the world's great ecosystems and we sort of put

together generic jungle that represents South America and the jungles of Equatorial Africa and Southeast Asia. We have a couple of exhibits that we think are top notch. Our new Pride of the Plains exhibit, we think, is the best lion exhibit in the world and it's been said so by some of our colleagues, so that makes us real proud. You know, you get a chance every day to do something that you think-- that your peers think is the best, may never happen again in all our professional careers. I personally think we have some of the finest veterinary facilities. We just had some director and trustees and chairman of the board up from Oklahoma City Zoo and they were just blown away by our hospital and efficiency and what it cost us, and so we're real proud to show it off to visiting colleagues when they come. [Eckels] In fact, I was really impressed, although I have not ever, now that I think of it, been to a veterinarian hospital, so he was just showing me various things, and the radiation-- he mentioned something about where the operation room, I guess some of the-- I'm trying to think of what he was telling me, the radiation

machine, if you will, was donated from Oklahoma? [Reed] Right, the x-ray machine. We've got pretty much a state of the art x-ray machine, came out of one of the major hospitals in Tulsa. The hospital that was built in an area where they had more hospital rooms than patients, in many cases, and they were willing to shut one down, and with the help of getting it here and moving it, we probably got a half million dollars' worth of x-ray equipment put in for about 20,000 dollars for getting it hooked up. It's a state of the art and top of the line in the zoo world, so we're glad that we've got good facilities, because it's very important diagnostic tool. [Eckels] And I understand you're getting ready to do-- where you invite people from a variety of backgrounds to the zoo and try to get them interested in what's happening here. [Reed] Yeah, we're-- Wichita, Kansas, doesn't have in the city itself a

university that is found throughout the state from this last census, but there is a tremendous community of Asians, African Americans, and Hispanic population and we decided instead of having one for each, which we have had in the past, we want to try and combine and have an opportunity to bring them to the zoo to show them the cultural aspect that they might not have been taking advantage of and we've had some good leadership on board. We always say diversity starts at the top, we have a very diverse board and hoping and plan to have it worked out and show up in our visitors that come to the zoo. [Eckels] And finally, if you were to tell me, you all sponsor trips? He talked about going to Africa and things like that. [Reed] We-- the Zoological Society has sponsored trips to Africa, we've done Tanzania, Doc went on one of the trips to Tanzania.

We do Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa. We also do trips to South America, the Amazon jungle to the Andes mountains, and they are offered to-- first they're offered to our zoological society members and if we have any openings, the general public is invited. They're (inaudible) safaris. The staff-- it's one of the perks of being the staff, they get to lead these and get a chance to see another part of the world. [Eckels] What's your favorite part of the zoo? I know I said that's my final question, but I'm curious. [Reed] I always have a list of favorite animals and I have a top ten and sometimes those change from year to year periodically. Rhinos have always been one of my favorites, have always been in the top ten list, but right now I'd say my favorite area of the zoo is the new Pride of the Plains exhibit. It just transports me to the copies of the Serengeti that I saw

when I was in Tanzania and Doc had a lot of ideas after his visit and we think we got a real neat exhibit down there. [Eckels] Thank you so much, I appreciate it, Mark. Mark Reed, Zoo Director.