Our ambassadors are people

Joseph Patinio

Grew up in Hawaii hunting Jackson’s chameleons with his father, and at ten was writing to the state agriculture department asking permission to import reptiles. Army at seventeen, then the Marine Corps, then Sin City Exotics here in Las Vegas, where he bred species that are rare, endangered and critically endangered. The zoo is what all of that was heading toward.

Vikki Hill-Gonzalez

A Realtor and longtime community advocate who came to this through service rather than through reptiles. She holds that protecting reptiles means protecting the balance of nature, and that the children walking through the door are the ones who will decide what survives.

Dennis J. Golden

Twenty-eight years of hands-on reptile experience, twelve years breeding and showing dogs, and twenty-three years running kitchens. The husbandry and the management both come from somewhere.

Patricia Patinio

A commercial real estate specialist whose work is site selection, zoning and development incentives, which is precisely what an organisation trying to put up a building needs in the room. Turtles and tortoises are the ones she goes to see.

Angela Bolanos

Justin W. Hollins

First snake was a Suriname boa in 1994, and he has since bred over 200 species of reptiles, amphibians, fish and birds. Kept the second largest breeding colony of Argentine boas in the country and the most genetically diverse one in the world, of a species listed on CITES Appendix I. His test for good care is simple: an animal comfortable enough to breed is an animal being kept properly.

Colette Morales