Bert Vescolani has been president & CEO of Denver Zoo since 2018, following seven years as president & CEO of the Saint Louis Science Centre in St. Louis, where he led the largest exhibit expansion in its 30-year history and fundraising efforts focused on capital projects.
Vescolani has held numerous leadership positions within scientific and zoological institutions. Prior to his most recent role at Saint Louis Science Centre, he also served six years as director of the John Ball Zoological Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Here, he helped the zoo dramatically grow its programmes and exhibits.
Before that, Vescolani was at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago for over 14 years, in a variety of roles, from director of education to senior vice president of aquarium collection and education.
A lifelong love of nature
“As a kid, I was super curious,” he tells blooloop. “That curiosity led me to trying to figure out how things worked and how things were connected. That sense of discovery was an important part of my childhood in growing up. It led me to love wildlife and the outdoors, and being connected that way.”
On leaving college, he went into teaching:
“I was working in inner-city areas trying to connect with students and to grow my love for science in them. I also started volunteering at the Shedd Aquarium. Once I got there, I fell in love. I was a diver. So I had been snorkelling and exploring in and around water for a good portion of my life.
“This was an opportunity to learn more and share what I learned with others, in one of the best aquariums in the world.”
Running aquariums and zoos
Although it was, he says, sheer luck that he ended up at the Shedd Aquarium, he remained there for 14 years.
“I was a volunteer, then part-time, then full-time, then a manager, and then a manager of managers. Eventually, I left there as a senior vice president.”
He went on to run a small zoo, John Ball Zoo, in Michigan. He says:
“Aquariums are different from zoos. I learned an impressive amount in a relatively short period of time about how people connect in outdoor locations, differently than they do in indoor locations.
“In zoos, the wildlife that you are exhibiting is often dangerous. Though sharks and other things can be dangerous, of course. It’s a very different kind of world, and I loved it. We had some great successes there, with a great team to grow and develop that programme, and to map out where we were going.”
Gaining varied experience
At this point, Vescolani was recruited to head up a science museum:
“It took me back to my early days of teaching. It was a good time for me to make that change. I was ready to explore a little bit, to learn and be curious about new things.”
He was at the Saint Louis Science Centre for seven years, before joining Denver Zoo:
“All those pieces of experience, places, mentors, staff who taught me way more than I taught them, helped me get to a spot where, while I’m still learning and still curious, I feel better prepared,” he says. “I don’t know that I could have come to this organisation 10 years ago. I don’t know that I would have been ready.”
Denver Zoo
Home to almost 4,000 animals and 600 species, Denver Zoo is committed to species conservation, providing education programmes and guest experiences that foster human and animal connection. The most visited cultural destination in Colorado, it serves more than 2 million global citizens per year.
“Colorado is a place where it was pretty wild for a very long time, historically, with bison ranging and all kinds of things happening,” he says. “The mountains are close, and wildlife is abundant, in some locations.”
“This is a zoo with 125 years of history. It’s a place that has been innovative and has developed unique exhibits and approaches to conservation and sustainability work. It has an amazing team, and we’re getting better.
“We keep trying to find new ways to explore and experiment, and, maybe, to satisfy some of that curiosity as well. We focus on doing the right things for our community, while supporting and advancing our profession, and, thinking bigger about what we could be as an organisation.”
Meeting people where they are
Denver Zoo is, he explains, uniquely positioned as an organisation:
“We’re not too far from the mountains. People in this area appreciate and have admiration for wildlife. Our role is to meet our community where they are, and help them think about a world where wildlife can thrive; to be a place where communities come together to solve some of the challenges that wildlife face.”
“In most cases, animals, wildlife, habitats, the environment didn’t get in the position they’re in because of themselves. It was because of us. Human actions have taken 31,000 species, both plants and animals, towards extinction.”
Nevertheless:
“I believe if we can get them to that bad place, we can also get them to that good place where those 31,000 turn into five, or three, or zero, and we achieve a balanced system of humans and wildlife. We have to figure out how to do that.”
Reverse the Red
Zoos, he contends, play a special part in helping facilitate that:
“I recently joined a working group, Reverse the Red, through IUCN SSC (The International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission) and WAZA (World Association of Zoos and Aquariums).”
Reverse the Red is an umbrella initiative that focuses on reversing the current trends of species extinction. He explains:
“It’s about planning and acting on behalf of wildlife and wild places, creating networks to measure success along the way and celebrate those successes. Rather than focusing on the negative, it’s about looking at those communities that have rallied wildlife or places, and made a difference. Those stories aren’t told enough.”
Conservation projects at Denver Zoo
Vescolani cites, as an example, the field conservation work that Denver Zoo has been doing over the past 25+ years in Mongolia:
“I would bet you if you asked people in Denver, very few would know about our work there. And it is work that has made a significant impact. It has grown the park, established a sustainable group of individuals who can carry on the research and work, train people, develop science in ways that are pretty significant, and so on – yet very few people know about it.”
It is, he says, all about changing behaviours:
“It’s about facilitating the right behaviours, making sure that people know how to identify those behaviours, and how to modify, augment or supplement some of their behaviours to make a bigger difference. Consumerism plays an important role in our economies and in people’s lives, but let’s be smart about it. Let’s think about it. Let’s use the right information to make those decisions.”
Engaging new audiences
There is always a danger that zoos are, in terms of reaching people and encouraging behaviour change, preaching to the converted. Reaching beyond that established audience can be a challenge.
“I do believe there’s a group of converted that we need to continue encouraging to speak, so their voice helps others come along,” says Vescolani.
“There’s a saying that when someone doesn’t like or is negative about something they’ll tell seven others, but if they’re positive about something they’ll tell two or three. So, what we’ve got to do is help those converted and those on the edge to be better communicators about that good stuff; to allow them a platform and an opportunity and a shared voice.
We have to do this as a collective, not as one individual here and there. It really has to be all of us working together to make that difference. That’s the only way we’ll elevate it.
“We have to do this as a collective, not as one individual here and there. It really has to be all of us working together to make that difference. That’s the only way we’ll elevate it.”
The other piece, he says, is the ‘movable middle’:
“We can edge that movable middle, those who are not yet fully converted. It’s those folks that will never change that you really can’t spend a lot of energy on.”
Changing perceptions at Denver Zoo
Then there are others who misunderstand the role of good zoos, perceiving zoos to be, without exception, a negative phenomenon. It is possible to teach them otherwise, he says:
“We have seen it here. Quite a few people have made that modification and change. For all of us, human nature is based on experiences. You make assumptions, judgments, and decisions based on those experiences. If you’ve experienced one bad zoo, or if you have a ‘trusted source’ that has led you in this direction, you’re likely to follow.”
“We’ve seen that in politics, we’ve seen it in social justice, and we’ve seen it in all kinds of different movements that have taken place. Many of them are in the right direction and positive change comes out of it, but some of them are misguided.”
Being more transparent
‘The wild’, he says, is a tough place:
“There is disease and encroachment, there are predators, but the wild is not as wild as it used to be. There are very few parts of the world where there hasn’t been some influence.
“We have to work harder to be transparent. We have to work harder to show our work, to say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.’
There isn’t a staff member at most zoos that wouldn’t do almost anything to make a difference for animals, and that doesn’t always come through. We’ve got to do a better job showing some of that passion and emotion.
“There isn’t a staff member at most zoos that wouldn’t do almost anything to make a difference for animals, and that doesn’t always come through. We’ve got to do a better job showing some of that passion and emotion.
“We try to do that by having our keepers, our animal care team, our veterinarians, our conservation folks in front.”
Looking ahead
In terms of future plans for Denver Zoo, he says:
“I think that behaviour change piece is critical. We are thinking about what that looks like for us, and what is meaningful for our organisation in that regard.
“Communicating and expanding our conservation work is critical for us, and connecting it directly to the animals that we care for. Often there is some obscure animal that you’re working with that really needs your help, but guests have no connection to it. They don’t see it, both literally and figuratively; they can’t make that connection.”
“So as long as we’re caring for animals, we have to do our best job to connect people with those animals and the conservation stories that are around them. It may seem like that’s what zoos should have been doing for years; some do it better than others, and we surely do it here, but we need more intentionality, more purpose, more behavioural connection, more partnerships and alliances around that.
“Done are the days when we can go alone. There are too many really strong partners out there not to include.”
Future plans for Denver Zoo
“As wild places shrink, they become extensions of managed care,” says Vescolani. “In so many areas, whether it’s Africa or Australia or anywhere else, habitats have become at risk. Because they have shrunk, we have smaller populations that are more vulnerable. It is zoos that are ideally equipped to work with small populations of exotic or wild wildlife.
“We need to focus on doing that with intentionality, making sure that we’re a partner in that process, helping where help is needed, whether it’s a rescue offered or a facility.”
As far as other significant future plans are concerned:
“We want to be better listeners for a broader community, understanding what drives them, what they’re thinking, what background experience, baggage, they come to the table or through our gates with, to an education program or whatever it may be. That way we can customise, to some level, their experience, meeting them where they are, and helping advance our mission.”
Then there are the facility improvements:
“For zoos, those are ongoing and consistent. There are new exhibits, the replacement of roofs, all the not-so-sexy things that you need to do to keep the place functional and alive.
“When you have an organisation that is this old, there’s a lot of maintenance to be done, so it’s about finding a way to fund and support and, and make good choices there, both in sustainable building, the sustainable operation and the management of those almost 90 buildings we have on our campus, ranging from new to old. It’s a constant challenge.”
Denver Zoo & COVID-19
COVID, of course, has been another major hurdle.
“l I think aquariums fared far worse, being indoors, with the fear of transmission of COVID, particularly early on. They were forced to be closed, in many cases, much longer than zoos were,” says Vescolani.
“We were closed here for three months, which was about 30% of our revenue. We work on pretty tight financial margins as it is, so that had to be made up by not doing capital improvement, staffing, a variety of different things.”
“The good news is that when we reopened, people were ready. Pre-vaccination, we had a community that was comfortable in masks, and comfortable with ‘rules’ of some form. So we didn’t get a lot of pushback. As vaccinations came out, confidence went up dramatically around the world, until Delta and then Omicron happened. Now, people are back in that confused and worried state.
“The financial implications were huge. The term ‘pivot’ took on a special meeting last year as we all had to figure out how to transition from anyone being able to come in at any time to organising timed ticketing, creating all kinds of safety mechanisms throughout the site, and taking care of the mental health of the staff.”
Mental health is key
The latter was something Denver Zoo did particularly well:
“One thing that I think we learned well is paying really close attention to people’s heads: how they showed up at work, how they were feeling during the day.
“Like most non-profits, we have a close-knit group of working employees, but boy, there were some people really struggling. They were struggling with confusion, the unknown. Some of our staff also lost relatives or friends to COVID.”
“There was a lot of fear, and if you take anxiety and fear and the unknown, which are all connected, and layer that on with everything else that’s going on at work, it’s a lot for people to handle. So, we had to be attentive to that in new ways.
“We reached out to partners so that we could provide services for our staff. We worked with a depression centre here in Colorado to give us tools, techniques and strategies so that we could navigate through that better.”
Learning from the pandemic
Despite the recent challenges, he says:
“I do think we’re better for it. We’re more confident about what we can do to survive, and how bad things can get, but you can still make it to the other side. We were able to bring back a lot of things towards the end of last year, and to thank staff both monetarily and in a significant, unique way.”
In terms of the implications: “If you go back in history, most of the significant pandemics that have either put us on our heels or had the potential to impact us even greater have been in relation to our encroachment on nature, to our not respecting nature in the way that we should.”
“That doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t have happened anyway. People live from nature and with nature and off nature in many ways. But it may have been more contained.
“As we have grown our exploitation or use of wildlife and wild places, our risk goes up; this is a really intricate, balanced, interconnected system. As you tease away the parts of the system, it becomes increasingly fragile and at-risk. We have to think about it as all connected, we can’t just think about us, or them.
“We have to think about how we all interrelate: people and wildlife. There are opportunities there. Thinking about biodiversity is important, period. If we don’t, then we risk the loss of a lot of things that we don’t even know about yet.
“I think it would be fair to say, from what we know at this point, that other pandemics could well be on our horizon, based on that fragility and exploitation, though ‘exploitation’ is a very weighted word. Not all people make exploitative choices, after all; they are simply trying to live.”
Hope for the future
Might COVID prove to have been the salutary lesson we all needed?
Vescolani is cautious:
“We’ve got some pretty bad historical lack of learning. I think this will prove to be an impact point in human history. It has affected the world in ways we all feared, but didn’t ever think would happen to this extent. Science, again, came to the rescue, relatively quickly, which worries me as much as I applaud it and appreciate it personally. When it happens that we can’t solve it right away, that is going to be more significant.”
“I’m an optimist, a ‘glass half full all the time’ kind of guy. I do think our problems are solvable for the most part. But it may not happen in a timely enough fashion. That is how I feel about what’s facing us with animals, plants and wild places.
“People have been banging this drum, or ringing this bell for a long time, and saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to pay attention.’ In the 1970s in the US, it was as a result of bad water, bad air, bad everything that we got the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and so on. All were public policies that were made because we took advantage of the natural world.
“Hopefully, that same realisation will also be towards the top of people’s minds as we look to the future.
“There are smart, talented, good people out there: good communicators, good scientists, just good people. If we can get them together and get them in the right configuration, we’ll get it figured out.”
