Trailblazing

Visiting an immersive zoo-exhibit like those at the Living Desert is enjoyable, but even so, I still love to go off an explore actual wild places.  It's great to lose yourself in a natural landscape, leaving the crowds behind and have your own more intimate experience.  Even more exciting, you leave the controlled environment of the zoo behind and enter a landscape where anything can happen.  You don't know what - if any - animals you'll see or where they'll be or how they'll react to your presence.  Anything can happen - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Living Desert does offer hiking trails.  So do a handful of other facilities I've visited.  Most recently, I was at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, where a snake's nest of trails branches off near the wattled crane habitat.  Staff told me that, had I visited at a different time of year, I might have encountered wild sandhill cranes nesting in the wetlands the trails meandered around.  It was the wrong time of year for nesting, bur I did see a few straggling sandhills about the grounds, even a small flock flying across the road as I was leaving the facility.   It greatly enhanced my experience there.

Ever zoo is somewhere - as in, it's in the landscape of some natural ecosystem, be it Sonoran desert or Great Plains or eastern deciduous forest.  A natural trail is an excellent, relatively low-cost addition to any zoo.  The two main arguments I could see against it are the use of space, which could be devoted to exhibit space or off-exhibit holding and breeding, and liability.  Nature trails are, by definition, a little more rugged in many cases, unless you install a boardwalk or some similar path.  It would be easier for visitors to fall, trip, or otherwise injure themselves, especially if they wander off-trail.  An additional concern is that natural spaces can serve as reservoirs for native predators that may slip out under cover of darkness to harass your collection animals.

I think that the installation of nature trails is of huge potential benefit, though.  For one thing, few zoos have the resources to develop and staff their entire campus, so this turns unused space into protected natural space that serves as an attraction in its own right at low cost.  It also helps reinforce the message that wildlife habitat isn't something that just exists "over there," in Africa or Asia, but is part of our own backyards as well.  It can help teach visitors more about the plants and animals of their own areas.  It can also enhance zoo visits by offering unexpected encounters with wild animals on their own terms.  All keepers have stories about visitors getting distracted from the elephants and gorillas when a chipmunk darts across the path.

As a final incentive, every little patch of habitat preserved can help edge our country closer to its goal of setting aside 30% of land and water areas for wildlife habitat and conservation.  Every bit helps.