Belle Isle Nature Zoo
The Belle Isle Nature Zoo encompasses approximately 6 acres (2.4 ha) of undisturbed forested wetland on Belle Isle in Detroit, Mich. The Nature Zoo provides year-round educational, recreational and environmental conservation opportunities for the community.
A Deer Encounter, where fallow deer that once roamed the island can be fed by visitors, is part of a multi-phase project to convert the former nature center on Belle Isle into a Nature Zoo focusing on Michigan wildlife, flora and fauna. The Nature Zoo also includes a renovated auditorium, a turtle exhibit featuring native Michigan turtles, an indoor beehive allowing year-round viewing of bee behavior, a spider exhibit and a Creation Station for children’s educational programming.
Future plans for the Nature Zoo include more nature trails, small mammal exhibits, aquatic life exhibits, a wetland pond and an amphitheater.
Read more about this topic: Detroit Zoo
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“Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or
some northerly harbor of Labrador,
before he became a schoolteacher
a great-uncle painted a big picture.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
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—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)
“It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands. Behind every man’s busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
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—John Berger (b. 1926)