Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
BIOLITERACY, BIOPARKS, URBAN NATURAL HISTORY,
AND ENHANCING URBAN ENVIRONMENTS
MICHAEL H. ROBINSON
In the course of their development museums have clearly undergone an evolution
that on the one hand converges with universities and on the other with zoological
and botanical gardens. . . . What a splendid institution it would be that combined
under one well-coordinated management and on one tract of land, university,
museum and gardens—botanical and real zoological gardens—not merely gardens
of nothing but vertebrates.
—Frank Lutz, 1930
1
Urban environments, in the sense of areas occupied by extra-human living
components—what as a biologist I mean by the word “environment” as
opposed to an architect's definition—are greatly enriched by the presence
of parks of all kinds, whether they are simply open areas of unmodified
countryside, conventional, eccentric, zoological, or biological. (I exclude
from this definition of “environment” extra-human inhabitants of human
dwellings or buildings built for human activities.Thus, pets and household
pests are excluded.) To provide a name for biological parks, described
below, I have coined the word “biopark.” Bioparks can provide a greater
augmentation of species richness and exciting natural history than the other
kinds of parks.
What is a biopark, and why should zoos transform themselves into a new
entity with a new name? The need for a new entity stems from the bur-
geoning world environmental crisis. I have argued elsewhere
2
that the
major threats to the living world accelerated mightily in the second half of
the twentieth century, and that we cannot hope to sustain the levels of bio-
diversity necessary for ensuring a habitable planet unless we are bioliterate.
Bioliteracy will be as essential to an all-round education in the twenty-first
century—indeed in the third millennium—as Latin, Greek, and theology
were thought to be in medieval times. Bioexhibits (broadly defined to
