Zoo people

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

Jim Fouts, 42, an unaccredited
exotic animal broker/transporter who in
1990-1991 surfaced as a central figure in
routing animals from AZA-accredited zoos
to canned hunts, is now breeding about 25
species at his Tanganyika Wildlife Co. ranch
near Goddard, Kansas, and promoting the
sale of meat and antlers from captive-reared
elk, after several years of breeding and selling
ostriches. For several years beginning
in 1977, Fouts captured South American
monkeys for laboratory suppliers; then ran
an exotic bird import business; and operated
an avian quarantine station from 1982 to
1985. Because zoos are now more particular
about who they deal with, Molly McMillin
of the Wichita Eagle reported recently,
Fouts now trades mainly with “privately
owned zoos, circuses, and wealthy animal
collectors,” and finds Kansas “a good place
to do business because it does not have as
many restrictions on raising exotic animals
as does California.” Fouts is, however,
advising Sedgewick County on a proposed
ordinance to ban private ownership of
“inherently dangerous” animals including
“undomesticated cats over 15 pounds.”
Presumably this does not include feral
domestic cats.

Betty Dresser, director of the
Center for Reproduction of Endangered
W i l d l i f e at the Cincinnati Zoo, will in
January relocate to Algiers, Louisiana, as
newly named head of both the $15 million
Audubon Center for Research of
Endangered Species, set to open in July,
and the Freeport-McMoran Audubon
Species Survival Center, which opened in
1994. Dresser is perhaps best known for
having led the research that brought the
October birth of a test tube-conceived lowland
gorilla.