Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
room. It will have a pond stocked with aquatic plants and a variety of gar-
dens designed to attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and other small wild
animals. Bird feeders, viewable nest boxes, and bird baths will help to attract
local and migratory birds. A former animal barn will be refurbished and
equipped with learning stations and audio-visual interactives. In a
restricted-admission area, formal and informal activities will be greatly
enhanced and facilitated, particularly for school classes and organized
groups of all ages.
Waterworld (a tentative but descriptive title) is an exhibit planned around
multiple themes of immediate global relevance. The overriding concept is
water as the essential basis of all terrestrial life, its cradle and sustainer. Other
themes will be the earth-sculpting effects of liquid and solid water; water as
the basis of industry, agriculture, and civilization; and water's uses in human
recreation. Water-conservation issues will be highlighted, partly by refer-
ence to the hydrology of the local watershed from Rock Creek to the sea.
The exhibit will be built around the three ponds of the zoo's former
wetlands-and-wildfowl exhibit.
CONCLUSION
Urban environments are greatly enriched by the presence of parks of all
kinds, whether they are simply open areas of unmodified countryside, con-
ventional, eccentric, zoological, or biological.Where, as in my concept of a
biopark, wild species richness is enhanced by careful planning, this can give
rise to more complex and exciting natural history experiences than parks
that are managed simply as urban green spaces, or as islands of clean air.
Such an enhancement, can, of course, be created by the same means in parks
not intended to function as educational entities.This should be encouraged.
Aesthetic pleasure, stimulation of curiosity, and the advancement of biolit-
eracy all are urgently needed, now and forever.
NOTES
1. F. Lutz, “The Use of Live Material in Museum Work,”
Museum News
6 (1930),
7-9.
2. See e.g. “Biodiversity, Bioparks, and Saving Ecosytems,”
Endangered Species
UPDATE
10 (1993), 52-57; “The Biopark Concept and the Exhibition of Mam-
mals,” in
Wild Mammals in Captivity,
ed. D. Kleiman (University of Chicago Press,
