Disney Creates Post to Watch Over the Environment

Anti-fur activists had denounced the Davy Crockett coonskin caps until the Disney theme parks changed from rabbit to artificial fur several years ago. Then the company heard from environmentalists worried that stray Disney helium balloons might be strangling marine creatures.

Finally, last year, the giant entertainment company got into trouble with Florida and the federal government when Disney employees on Discovery Island at Walt Disney World took matters into their own hands with a pack of vultures that were terrorizing and bespattering the otherwise pristine zoological exhibit. Several birds died in the incident.

And so Walt Disney Co. needed little prodding from environmentalists and others currently lobbying U.S. corporations to create senior corporate environmental jobs. On Monday, the company announced appointment of Kym Murphy to the new post of corporate vice president of environmental policy.

Murphy, who holds a degree in zoology from Cal State Los Angeles, has been at Disney since 1978. He worked first in the Imagineering section, then as corporate manager of marine technology and later as director of show quality assurance for both Walt Disney World and Disneyland, in Anaheim. He was also senior adviser to the Living Seas, a 5.7-million-gallon saltwater aquarium at the Florida facility.

Before this, Murphy was corporate technical director at Sea World and director of operations at Marineland.

In his new post, Murphy will be responsible for Disney’s environmental compliance and policy as well as company dealings with outside environmental groups. Inside Disney, he will not only see that “environmentally friendly” products and materials are purchased, and recycling practiced where possible, but will encourage the use of environmental themes in the entire company’s entertainment wares. “As a company that sees itself as having responsibility to millions of people that we contact each year,” he said Monday, “there’s a lot that we can do.”

“Disney is obviously tuned into the power of the media to educate the world about the fragile nature of the environment,” said California Controller Gray Davis, who has pressed corporations to be more environmentally sensitive. “I don’t know why they did this, but I’m glad they did.”

As to the vultures, Murphy denied that they prompted the company’s move.

“I would say the vulture issue was a tiny, tiny little flicker in this overall flame,” he said. “I think that Frank Wells (Disney president) is such an environmentalist at heart, as is Michael (Eisner, chairman) that it was an insignificant role.”

Still, as one Disney official admitted, the Florida affair was “a cowboy act” that gave the company a “black eye.” Disney has since appointed a vulture advisory board, made up of scientists, and has come to terms with the unwelcome birds, which remain at the park.

“They’re one of God’s critters,” said Murphy. “It’s just a matter of learning to live with them more effectively.”