Tag: curator

Invasive Species at the Aquarium

  • Asian carp are one of the invasive species featured in the exhibits in your local museums. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)

Big, public aquariums spend a lot of money to make fish look like they’re at home in the wild. But lately some aquariums are showing fish that are out of place. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee looks at one aquarium’s effort to give them the spotlight, too:

Transcript

Big, public aquariums spend a lot of money to make fish look like
they’re at home in the wild, but lately some aquariums are showing fish
that are out of place. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee looks at one aquarium’s
effort to give them the spotlight, too:


The federal government’s spending millions to keep Asian Carp out of
the Great Lakes. Biologists worry Asian Carp could devastate the lakes’
ecosystem. Recently, though, several carp were brought within sight of
the Great Lakes, and biologists are happy about it.


Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium is on the shore of Lake Michigan. It’s
holding an exhibit of Asian Carp and other alien invasive species.


Curator Kurt Hettinger captured the aquarium’s carp during a trip on an
Illinois river.


“They’re literally jumping, sometimes over the bow of the boat,
sometimes smacking into the side of the boat. I just looked behind me
and was amazed to see all these fish jumping in the wake of the boat, and
to this day, I’m still stunned by this.”


And Hettinger’s more than just stunned. He’s worried.


Asian Carp are an invasive species, basically … pests that crowd out
native fish, and that river where he caught them hooks up to Lake
Michigan.


Again, Asian carp haven’t made it to the Great Lakes, but more than one
hundred and sixty other invasive species have arrived and are breeding
quickly.


One example’s the zebra mussel. At first, scientists worried about how
much money it could cost us. Zebra mussels multiply so fast they can
block pipes that carry cooling water to power plants. But now, we know
the zebra mussel’s disrupting the lakes’ natural food chain.


In other words, invasive species are a huge economic and ecological
nuisance. That’s why the Shedd Aquarium started the exhibit.


“The public I think has seen enough stories about the damages and the
spread and the harmfulness, but those stories are not very often coupled
with solutions.”


That’s ecologist David Lodge. He says the exhibit tries to show how
people spread these species around. Lodge points to one exhibit tank. It
looks like a typical backyard water garden. It’s decked out with a small
fishpond, water lilies, even a little fountain shaped like an angel. It looks
pretty innocent, but Lodge says plants and fish you buy for your own
water garden could be invasive species.


“All those plants and animals that are put outside, then have an
opportunity to spread. Now, it doesn’t happen very often, but with the
number of water gardens, it happens enough so that they are a serious
threat to the spread of species.”


Birds or even a quick flood could move seeds or minnows from your
garden to a nearby lake or river.


The Shedd Aquarium’s not alone in spotlighting invasive species.
Several aquariums and science museums are also getting on board. For example one in
Florida shows how invasive species have infested the Everglades.


Shedd curator George Parsons went far and wide for inspiration.


“I was in Japan last year when we were planning this, and I just
happened to stumble across one of their aquariums and they had an
invasive species exhibit, except that they were talking about large mouth
bass and blue gill. You know, something that is our natives. So, it was
kind of ironic to see that out there. It was kind of neat.”


Like us, the Japanese take invasive species seriously. Back in 1999 the
humble Midwestern Blue Gill created a national uproar. Turns out, they
had taken over ponds throughout the Emperor’s palace, and how did the
bluegill get to Japan?


Probably as a gift from a former Chicago mayor. Apparently, the mayor
thought blue gill might make nice sport fishing in Japan. It was an
innocent mistake, but it’s just the kind of mishap biologists want all of us
to avoid from now on.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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New Zoo Exhibit Connects Visitors to the Wild

  • The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago is opening a new exhibit that immerses visitors in African habitat. Although these kinds of exhibits have been around for a while, this is a particularly important one because the Lincoln Park Zoo is one the nation's oldest and most visited zoos.

One of the nation’s oldest and most visited zoos has opened an exhibit that takes visitors on a virtual trip into the jungle and onto the savannah. The goal is to give people a better idea of what kind of habitats animals need and why it’s so important to save those wild places. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on an African Journey that starts in a big city:

Transcript

One of the nation’s oldest and most visited zoos has opened an exhibit that takes visitors on a
virtual trip into the jungle and onto the savannah. The goal is to give people a better idea of what
kind of habitats animals need and why it’s so important to save those wild places. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on an African Journey that starts in a big city:


The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago is almost always a busy place. Three-and-a-half million people
visit it each year. For years, the Lincoln Park Zoo, like many other zoos, displayed its animals in
groups of like animals. Big cats in one area… primates in another… birds in yet another. But a
new exhibit, the Regenstein African Journey, groups animals by geography rather than by
taxonomy.


Kevin Bell is Lincoln Park Zoo’s Director. He says the new exhibit appears to be an African
jungle in some places… and the dry plains in others…


“We gutted the inside of the building and then rebuilt the inside. When we create new exhibits,
it’s artisans that come in and make the artificial trees and the rock-work all look real and paint the
lichens on the rocks and what-not. So, it’s a very complicated long process and a very expensive
one.”


The zoo spent 25-million dollars renovating the building. Now that it’s finished, visitors are
encouraged to suspend disbelief for a moment and visit wild places in Africa.


Monkeys sit in trees overhead. Birds are loose with the people. Pygmy hippos are viewed above
and below the water line. And giraffes roam with antelopes and ostriches. For visitors, it’s a
unique perspective on animal interaction. For the animals… it’s a more natural setting.


Robyn Barbiers is the General Curator at Lincoln Park Zoo. She says it’s not the same as being
loose in the wild, but the habitat created for the captive animals is a little closer to the habitat that
is their natural home.


“So, these exhibits provide the space, the shelter, the hiding spots, the feeding spots, the social
aspects that the visitors like to see and that the animals need.”


Not only are the animals grouped together with other compatible species, but in a controlled way.
Barbiers says animals not so compatible are put near each other.


“We introduced the wild dogs and the wart hogs to their exhibits yesterday – side-by-side.
They’re not in together, but it’s predator and prey. But, these animals were born in captivity.
There was some excitement, but I don’t know if they really recognized each other as predator
and prey.”


The Lincoln Park Zoo’s African Journey is the latest in a trend among zoos called immersion
exhibits. It enriches the animals’ lives and immerses the visitors in the environment to give them
a better idea of how the animals live.


Jane Ballantine is a spokesperson for the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. She says
zoos have always entertained, but more recently, zoos have seen their role as one of educating
people about animals that are threatened by habitat loss.


“We want them to think about those conservation issues and how things are all interconnected,
but while having a good time. We’re not there to lecture. We’re there to show and showcase and
get people to have these experiences and realize ‘Wow! This is what it’s really like and we should
care about this.'”


And the hope of zoos is that these new exhibits will do a better job of that than simply displaying
wild animals in a cage.


Lincoln Park Zoo Director Kevin Bell says this new exhibit was a huge effort toward that goal…


“So, hopefully, by doing these more immersion exhibits, people get a sense of how exactly the
animal relates to its environment, what its needs are and what it’s going to take to save that
species, long term.”


The Lincoln Park Zoo’s African Journey just opened to visitors and admission to the Chicago zoo
is free.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Cloning Trees to Preserve History

People who do historic restoration have been taking advantage of cloning technology. Historic trees are being cloned to help preserve and restore historic landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:

Transcript

People who do historic restoration have been taking advantage of
cloning technology. Historic trees are being cloned to help preserve and
restore historic landscapes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar
Charney reports:


Michigan’s Fort Mackinac is a military fortress from the American
Revolution. In the mid 1800’s, soldiers stationed there planted a row of eight
sugar maples lining the fort’s parade ground. But these trees are now old
and dying.


Phil Porter is a curator who’s worked at Fort Mackinac for over
30 years. He says he was sad and concerned that they would soon lose this
living link to the fort’s past. So he decided to have the trees cloned.


“We think that by cloning them, by going to that very high level of
reproducing what is there now we can do the most accurate job of
reproducing the environment, the right looking trees, and putting them
back in the same place.”


While the clones won’t look any different from a sugar maple seedling
bought at a nursery, keeping the genes of a historic tree alive through
cloning seems to appeal to people. There are tree cloning projects
underway in Massachusetts, Maryland, and even Australia to help replicate
historic trees people have a connection to.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.