Ecological Significance of The Zoo Grounds
The zoo is also home for wintering migratory birds such as ducks, and sports a sizable wetland inside the zoo grounds. Since the zoo is enveloped by urban settlements for miles, the zoo wetlands are the only resting spot for some of the birds and are a focus of conservationists in Kolkata. However, the number of migratory bird visiting the zoo dropped from documented highs by over 40% in the winter of 2004–2005. Experts attribute the causes of the decline to increased pollution, new construction of highrises in the area, increasing threats in the summer grounds of the birds and declining quality of the water bodies at the zoo.
Read more about this topic: Alipore Zoological Gardens
Famous quotes containing the words ecological, significance, zoo and/or grounds:
“The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
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“The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.”
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“We’re built, as a nation, on the grounds of a concentration camp. It’s like saying “OK, here’s Auschwitz. Here’s where we’ll start our country.””
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