*”People watch the films, they visit the zoos, and by the mesmeric power of these vicarious experiences they come carelessly to believe that the Bengal tiger (or the white rhino, or the giant panda, or the diademed sifaka) is alive and well because they have seen it. Well I’m sorry but they haven’t seen it. They’ve seen images; they’ve seen taxidermy on the hoof. And the wellness, even the aliveness, is too often a theatrical illusion. Zoos are not fragments of the world of nature, no. They are substitutes.
The Wild is not something that can be carefully contained or reproduced. The very notion of doing so goes against the very definition of what wilderness is. And yet we are still stuck between our desire to experience wilderness without actually incurring any of the risks or discomfort that entails. I can only hope that nature is resilient enough to handle our confused appreciation of it.”*
[ The Demise of the Komodo Kings - http://dia.so/1xB ] [ #Ciencia #Ecología #Conservación ]
