The article brought up some very interesting and valid points--but like anything else reeking of academia, I'll take it with a grain of salt...
McJungle: I like where's he going with that, though...
I've found the general zoo audience, however, to be even dumber than he has allowed in his article. And smarter in some ways too.
Smarter because they all know it is fake. Dumber because most could care less about wildife and extinction and our little blue planet spinning in space. On the Sumatran rhino thread I mentioned the kids looking at the blank video monitor, not paying the least attention to the Sumatran rhinos that were right behind them-- including a priceless calf gamboling and playing in the mud. I'm sure we could all come up with a hundred similar scenarios.
People have an enormous capacity to take anything real and abstract it on a thousand different levels. If your average zoo visitor believes a zoo rainforest to be just like the real thing (which of course they don't--they've already experienced the real thing on...tv), that is only a small leap, considering the lengths to which zoos like the Bronx go to replicate the wild. I mean, some of these same zoo visitors actually believe that the world is only 5,000 years old and that their lives are actually influenced by supernatural beings: angels, Satan, God on his throne with a long white beard, etc. They know that the zoo tree is rubber, but will fight you to the death over the concept of heavenly cities paved with gold.
Those who have paid for an actual trip to a real rainforest, Zooplantman--that audience is cut from an entirely different cloth. Your people probably already knew that a zoo rainforest was not the be all and end all-- and that going to a real rainforest would be far different and better. Unfortunately, I have found that even these more educated and interested people need to learn to be a great deal quieter, more respectful, and leave a much smaller footprint while out and about in the wild places of the world.
The article keeps stressing the illusion of the Lied rainforest. I can't imagine why. When I went to the Lied rainforest, I thought it was dank, depressing, and outdated. Gilligan's Island meets aircraft hangar. I doubt that any visitor with more than two brain cells believes it to be real (a lot of them, bless them, are only operating on one..) The article is so in love with its own thesis and rhetoric that it can't get past the fact that these simulated environments aren't really that good.
At least people are going to zoos and are getting a chance to see a bird, a monkey, a big cat-- and are getting some measure of education if they are open to it. People have families, jobs, work stress-- like animals in the wild, they too are engaged in a very real struggle for survival. They come to the zoo, they want to have fun, get away from the stress, enjoy their kids. They are confronted with graphics, etc trying to get a conservation message across--ok, well and good, but whoops Susie just barfed up formula all down the front of mommy's blouse while she was trying to read a few words. Billy wants to go to the playground NOW!! Someone everywhere is trying to sell someone something--be it soda pop or save the frogs-- these days. Who needs zoo spam too? People have developed an amazing ability to block out the urgent messages bombarding them every waking second.
But that doesn't mean, just because we are living in more and more abstract constructs, that the real rainforests of our world and their inhabitants do not exist and that they do not have value. I'm glad that zoos are making an effort to educate people all over the world about our planet's amazing biodiversity and the horrible threats faced by the natural world. I just fear that the effort is wasted on the wrong people, resulting in band-aid, feel-good efforts while the real, extremely complicated problems in-situ go unresolved.
I think the point might just be what people are willing to accept, what they have access to, and what is most convenient for them. Yeah, good zoo simulation is nothing like the wild. But most people do not value exploring the real thing. They have limited time, even more limited funds, and the attention span of a day-old guineafowl. They want a quick, cheap experience with no nutritional value. Forget McJungle, we're talking McWorld...
Which brings me to my niece. My brother and his family were packing for a trip to Walt Disney World (they go every year to the exclusion of...everywhere else on the planet). I asked my niece if she was getting excited about going to Florida. She looked at me, puzzled.
" Don't you remember me telling you about when I went to Florida and saw the roseate spoonbills and manatees-- and the Everglades?"
" Uncle Charlie," she said, slightly irritated by yet another mention of my lame travels and clearly unimpressed. " We are not going to Florida. We are going to Disney World."
However, I doubt that most visitors would return.