The Desert Museum is one of the most-visited museums in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona. The website describes it as “is a world-renowned zoo, natural history museum and botanical garden”. The museum is on 21 acres, 85% of it is made up of outdoor exhibits, and it has live animals in natural settings, making it what the website calls “a living museum”. However, they have re-created the landscape so that visitors can see mountain lions, Gila monsters, prairie dogs, and endangered animals of the Sonoran Desert all together. I have been to the Desert Museum a bunch of times, and I think it’s great because the paths are through the desert, so you really get to experience the whole environment. Although it definitely is more of a museum than a science center, they do have some interactive programs with some of the animals that visitors can participate in. The overall layout of the museum also leads to more interaction and experience with the environment than most typical natural history museums do, also engaging the public to be excited about conservation. Their website lists the museum’s goals of education, conservation, research, and maintenance of their extensive collection of plants, animals, fossils, and gems. The educational and research aspects of the museum are run by the Center for Sonoran Desert Studies, which works in partnership with researchers from Mexico. Finally, the website lists citizen science projects people can volunteer for, which I know we will be talking about next week. Citizen scientists for The Desert Museum can help research, monitor, map, and control invasive plant and animal species.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
The website seems to be a really great resource for those who are interested in the desert, whether they have visited or not. I think that making pictures available to the public through the digital library. This enhances the presentation of reality since these pictures show the animals in their natural environment. In addition, allowing people to get a preview of these animals is a good way of attracting people to the museum.
Wow, this museum/garden/zoo experience looks amazing, I wish I had known about it went I went to visit Arizona. I loved learning about the dessert landscape and wildlife when I went on a vacation there a few years ago, and I think The Dessert Museum would have been an amazing stop on tour. I’m really glad a place like this exists and I definitely hope to visit it in the future. Also, the website is really good for communicating the message of the museum and what’s its all about. Good hypertextuality (it usually took one or two clicks to find the info you were looking for) and the photos were really exciting and excellent for showing what this museum has to offer.
I think this museum/exhibit/zoo idea is a great way to let people see and experience the biological sciences, especially because it's actually outdoors. However, the one thing that really caught my attention was the 21 acres. That's really not a lot of space when you think about it. It may be nice for gardens but I wonder where they keep the animals and how much space they really have to live on.
Washington State University is located in my town and they have a bear conservation program. They do research, raise cubs and then release some of them later. They have an exhibit where you can see the bears when they are out in the "yard" but it is a really small, limited place for them to live. Granted, a lot of the bears there are injured or not likely to be able to live in the wild at all, but I always think about it when I visit places like the zoo.
This website said that they try and do as best they can to preserve the wild aspect of it all and I'm sure they are a lot better than an urban zoo. Most wild animal parks treat their animals really well and provide them with what they need to be comfortable; I'm sure that ASDM is no different. However, I always wonder, what's the cost for these science exhibits when it comes to animal rights? This probably doesn't apply to ASDM but there are other places that don't treat their animals well. Where do ethics fit into science museums?
Post a Comment