Vintage Bronx Zoo--June 15, 1949

Lawrence Rockefeller on the right, Vice President of the New York Zoological society, is shown photographing the arrival of an aerial ark from Stanleyville, Belgian Congo, after it descended at Idlewild Airport with a cargo of some 200 animals and birds destined for the Bronx Park Zoo. At left is William Beebe, director of the Department of Tropical Research. The New York Zoological society's Belgian Congo expedition spent more than a year and a half in the field to gather the collection, including animals never before exhibited alive.

"The Bronx must have been awful anxious to exhibit an Okapi, bringing the first one to North America in 1937. It seems if they had been patient for 12 years, they could have saved on some shipping fees, and brought it over in this load. That would have still given them 10 years to get a jump start on breeding the first Okapi in North America, before Brookfield did in 1959." Just kidding, Bronx. Who wouldn't want an Okapi as soon as possible, and I agree, why wait? It was probably on Rockefeller's nickle any way."