Gardens and Animals - Room for Both?

Strolling around the grounds of the Naples Zoo, it was easy to get lost in the beautiful gardens that predated the animal components of the park.  They seemed to go on almost forever.  Looking back at the trip, though - as I wrote my review, as I looked through my photos, and as I looked over the zoo map - I was struck by a realization - there really weren't that many exhibits at the zoo for the size of the park.  The gardens took up a lot of ground.

That, I suspect, is how the planners wanted it - to preserve the beauty of Caribbean Gardens while carefully, selectively adding exhibits to enhance, not diminish, the wonder of the park.  They pulled it off fairly well.  Still, it reminded me of an ongoing concern that I've had over the years - the war over space in zoos.

Apart from money, space is the most valuable asset in zoos - and in some cases it is scarcer than money.  I mean space both in terms for adding animals and enclosures - as most breeding programs for endangered species are hampered in part by how many individuals zoos can physically maintain - as well as space for expanding enclosures and giving animals for space.  Many zoos that have elephants, for example, are trying to expand their enclosures as much as possible to give their pachyderms more room - Milwaukee County Zoo just completed their expansion, with Maryland Zoo in Baltimore working on one at this time.  With most  zoos locked in firmly set boundaries, every square foot has increasing value.  Are gardens a luxury that we can always afford?  Or should they be the first to go under the bulldozer?

Gardens do have many values they bring to the zoo, both tangible and not.  They can serve as just as much of a draw to the visitors as the animals in some cases, helping bring it additional community support.  They can serve as conservation centers for rare plants.  They can serve as buffers around exhibits to provide animals with more privacy and space, both between animals and visitors and between animals and other animals.  They can provide excellent habitat opportunities for native wildlife.  They have the potential to lead to better opportunities for holistic education about the connections between plants and animals.  And they have a more subtle, psychological effect on visitors.  Studies have shown that animals displayed in more natural settings evoke more positive emotions in visitors than animals in traditional barred enclosures, which can in turn lead to more support for conservation programs.

Also worth noting - plants take less care than animals do, in many cases.  The greatest expense of any zoo or aquarium is usually staff.  At every zoo that I've worked at, I've realized that, if we filled the entire facility with animal enclosures, one against the other, there is no way that we'd be able to afford to care for them properly.  We have some open spaces, then - why not plant them up?

Sometimes, it's in the best interests of a zoo to remove a garden, or cut down on botanical displays, in the interests of their animals.  Animals should always come first.  Still, if possible, gardens - especially ones that are logically and meaningfully integrated into the collection to support and highlight the animals - can be a tremendous asset to any zoo.