Wild Lives: A History of the People and Animals of the Bronx Zoo

Wild Lives: A History of the People and Animals of the Bronx Zoo — page 9
What would happen if Noah should arrive with his arkful of animals and turn them loose But William T Hornaday wanted that to change From the very start he envisioned a new kind of zoo a zoo that would both entertain and educate a zoo that would help change people’s indifferent or destructive atti tudes toward wild animals Today people know that many wild animal species are threatened with extinction and that their wild habitats are rapidly disappearing One hundred years ago Hornaday and a few visionary people like him were among the first to recognize that wildlife was in grave dan ger He and the Bronx Zoo’s founders took the first steps to protect wildlife And they hoped to create a zoo that would give zoo-goers a deeper respect for the animals and a greater understanding of their lives in the wild In 1896 before laying out the plans for the Zoo Hornaday traveled around Europe studying what the older zoos had done right and thinking about what things could be improved The average European zoo of the day was only about thirty acres approximately the size of fourteen city blocks and the lim ited space meant that their animals were very closely confined Hornaday and the founders of the Bronx Zoo believed this was detrimental to the animals And they saw that