Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
include natural history museums, anthropology museums, zoos, “safari”
parks, botanic gardens, arboretums, aquariums, and oceanariums) are poten-
tially, and sometimes actually, major forces for informal biological educa-
tion. Institutions exhibiting living organisms (mainly restricted to plants and
animals, but potentially capable of exhibiting microorganisms and fungi)
have great powers of attracting human curiosity and interest.
3
Despite their
affective attractiveness, as well as that arising from rational and aesthetic
impulses, these institutions are blighted by a Victorian compartmentaliza-
tion of knowledge.This division, once productive in science, is now a bar-
rier to environmental holism. To state it simply, it is an obsolete approach
to separate the exhibition of living animals from that of living plants when
the two are inseparably interdependent, interlinked, and co-evolved in the
real world. Thus there is a profound educational reason to substitute bio-
logical parks for zoological parks and botanical gardens. “Zoo” works well
as an abbreviation, but “bio” does not; hence “biopark.”
The biology, the evolution, the prehistory, and the history of our species
are integral parts of the biopark theme. Since our origin, and particularly
since we “invented” agriculture, our interactions with the rest of the living
world have had profound, in fact terramutant, effects. And, of course, much
of the artistic activities of humans, including graphic art, dance, music, and
literature and poetry, have been inspired by nature and have often reflected
it. Museums of natural history have collected specimens revealing the details
of the changes in life over time, the geological history of our planet, our
place in the universe, and the structures and physiology of living organisms.
These subjects all belong together in the biopark's educational and exposi-
tory features.The limits are not ultimately imposed by our imagination, but
by considerations of space, resources, and particularly budgets. Thus the
motive for the new entity is educational, and any enrichment of urban
environments is a secondary—but perhaps sublime—consequence.
There is an element of déjà vu in my view of urban environments. In
1985, just over a year after I became director of the Smithsonian National
Zoological Park (NZP), fresh from nearly 20 years spent in the tropics as a
research biologist, we held a symposium at the zoo on the subject of
wildlife survivors in the human niche.Thirteen distinguished contributors,
including biologists, veterinarians, educators, and architects, addressed a
variety of themes. The papers, unfortunately, were never published in the
proposed symposium volume. But they are in our archives, and they refresh
my failing memory.They illuminate many of the issues that I address here.
