| PERSPECTIVE |
(March 22, 2002)- The $31 million Desert Dome at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo opens to the public March 27. It’s an amazing place, recreating the life and landscape of three of the world’s deserts. It’s the latest creation of Lee Simmons. Known as “Doc” to those around him, Simmons took over the Zoo in 1970. It wasn’t much back then – just 10 staffers and a $100,000 budget. Now Henry Doorly Zoo has hundreds of employees and a multi-million dollar budget, and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s best. The Desert Dome is the latest feather in the cap of a man who started out just wanting to study snakes. |
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Transcript
of Perspective
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Watch
the Perspective story here:RealPlayer | QuickTime
Director Lee Simmons
talks about what Henry Doorly Zoo was like when he first arrived in
1966:RealPlayer | QuickTime
Simmons discusses
why it’s important for Zoo visitors to make connections with animals:RealPlayer | QuickTime
Simmons says there’s
a lot that goes on at Henry Doorly Zoo that the public isn’t aware
of:RealPlayer | QuickTime |
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[Mike
Tobias/Reporting]
Trying to keep up with Lee Simmons is like chasing down one of the roadrunners
that will live here in the Desert Dome. On a whirlwind tour of the dome
- just six weeks before opening day - Doc checks the netting on an animal
exhibit, and ties a few knots. Takes a digital photos to document construction.
And hops over a five-foot wide ditch to watch a welder making man-made trees.
[Lee
Simmons/Director, Henry Doorly Zoo] It will be abalena pigs or pecories
and mountain lions up on the ledge. [Tobias] Keep in mind this is a 64-year-old CEO of a multi-million dollar business.
[Desert Dome Worker] Isn't that amazing. He looks like he's in his 50s. But he's a good guy, a good guy. He'll tell you what's wrong, what he don't like. We change things all the time. Get them the way he likes them.
[Tobias] That's Simmons in a nutshell. A high-energy, hands-on, straight-shooter. A CEO who's office is piled high with blueprints and plans. He gets his own coffee in a styrofoam cup. No Armani suits, just a good pair of work pants. It's what you'd expect from a man who recalls an unpleasant encounter with a animal as a defining moment in his career. At the time he was a young man working in a seaside animal menagerie in Oregon.
[Simmons]
It was a chimpanzee, and he climbed up on the mesh above and peed on everybody.
But when you've had a chimpanzee pee on you, you now have connected with
the chimpanzee. You never forget that. [Tobias] He started out interested in creatures much different than the sting rays living in the Henry Doorly Zoo's Kingdom of the Seas aquarium. Simmons was a herpatologist - fascinated by snakes and gila monsters. He got into veterinary medicine, thinking that field was better suited for making zoo-related decisions. He came to Henry Doorly in 1966 as staff veterinarian. Four years later he was running the place.
[Simmons] We've had a fairly good run since then.
[Tobias] Growth was gradual. The aviary foreshadowed things to come. It was the largest in the world when built in 1983, and an early example of a total immersion exhibit - putting people and animals in the same space. Nine years later the Lied Jungle took immersion - and the Zoo - to a whole new level.
[Simmons]
It put us on the map simply because it was cutting edge technology, cutting
edge exhibitry and design, and it was the largest indoor tropical rainforest
in the world. And it still is yet today. [Tobias] The aquarium followed in 1995. Simmons says it was only logical the next major project would be deserts of the world. With the Desert Dome, Simmons wants visitors to see there's more than sand in the desert. There are plants and animals...and water.
[Simmons] When most people think of a desert, they don't think of living green plants. They think of dry sand and dead camel bones, and some French Foreign Legion guy dying with an empty canteen. Any place you've got water in the desert, you've got life. And the life forms in the desert are really extraordinary.
[Tobias] Three very different deserts exist inside the dome. There's the Namib - from southern Africa.
[Simmons] Which is an area that almost nobody goes to because it's
difficult to get to. It's fairly harsh. It's not on the way to or from some
place. [Tobias] Here you'll find a 30 foot sand dune and a sand-fall. There's an oasis with 40 foot palm trees. Caracal cats, leopards, monitor lizards and meerkats live here. Next is the Red Center from central Australia.
[Simmons] The Australians simply call the center. I mean this is the ultimate part of the outback, the harshest part of the outback.
[Tobias] Two Australian landmarks tower over this area - Ayers Rock
and Wave Rock. There's a rock wallaby outside. Inside a cave connecting
the African and Australian deserts you'll see a sand monitor, a frilled
dragon and bats. You'll also see deadly snakes, including a taipan and cape
cobra. Finally there's the Sonoran Desert from the southwest United States
and northwest Mexico. [Simmons] The Sonora Desert is probably the second-most biologically diverse desert in the world, and it's our desert.
[Tobias]
Roadrunners, bobcats and desert tortoises live here. You'll walk through
a hummingbird canyon and forest of 30 foot tall saguaro cacti. A darker
world opens underneath the dome next year. It's called Kingdom of the Night.
Zoo officials call it the world's largest noctural exhibit. It will feature
night time animals and habitats, including a swamp with floating walkway,
beaver lodges and caves. The dome itself is quite an accomplishment. It's
13 stories high, with more than 17 hundred acrylic panels designed to make
the best use of sunlight. It's high-tech stuff. And it started out like
a grade-school science fair project. [Simmons] This is the model that we carved. And it's all out of styrofoam and clay.
[Tobias] Simmons and long-time staffer Danny Morris built the model at night. Morris has worked with Simmons for nearly 30 years.
[Danny Morris/Senior Zoological Curator, Henry Doorly Zoo] It was kind of hard to make that leap from a block of styrofoam to the finished product, but it was all in his head, he knew what we wanted. It was just a matter of getting it, extracting it, and he carved a great deal of it himself. He's amazing. He's good at whatever he puts his mind to doing.
[Tobias] That includes fundraising. None of these projects are cheap - it cost 31 million to build the Desert Dome. That's twice the price of the Lied Jungle. Some call Simmons a master fundraiser.
[Tobias] One comment I've heard about you is, if you have the money, Doc has the idea.
[Simmons] Well...I think we're capable of coming up with ideas that would fit almost any budget, I guess.
[Tobias] With 1.1 million visitors a year, the Zoo is Nebraska's most popular tourist attraction. The Dome will boost attendance even higher for a couple years. But Simmons says attendance isn't the top priority.
[Simmons] You certainly need all those folks to come through the door and pay their admission and buy a hot dog and buy a t-shirt, cause that's what pays the light bill. But a lot of what goes on behind the scenes, a lot of emphasis here is really on conservation.
[Tobias]
That includes breeding animals and working with endangered species. The
zoo has conservation projects in nine countries. It's also involved in research
in genetics and other areas. Simmons is proud of another, more subtle type
of breeding going on every day at the zoo. It's fathering an interest in
conservation by bringing people face-to-face with animals. [Simmons] It's that very close connection that I think breeds future conservationists, future zoo supporters, maybe even a future zoo director or something.
[Tobias] Simmons, though, has no plans to retire. The dome is about to open, but he's already talking about the future - maybe turning gorillas loose in a valley with visitors watching them from a glass tunnel. Whatever happens, you'll find Doc in the middle of it. If you can catch up with him, that is. Reporting for Statewide, I'm Mike Tobias.