Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

If you’ve been to the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park, you’ve had the chance to see nearly 900 acres of wondrous plant and animal exhibits. But did you know you’re only exploring half of the Park?! The other 900 acres is a vast, undeveloped preserve that is part of the Multiple Species Conservation Program for San Diego County, which seeks to maintain and enhance our region’s biodiversity.

Jean-Pierre Montagne, a senior research technician for the Applied Animal Ecology division of the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research, studies the inhabitants of what he calls “the other side of the fence” of the Park, in order to monitor species abundance and diversity. Mr. Montagne is part of a team that observes daily the creatures that have been safely caught in one of the 20 pitfall arrays that are widespread across the Park’s “other half.” Before the captured animal is released, it is identified by species, weighed, measured, gendered, examined for any unusual symptoms, and finally marked, if it has not already been numbered. Upon return to the lab, the information is compiled with data from thousands of other mammals and reptiles that Mr. Montagne and his team have recorded over the years. In the lab, the applied ecologists study the population size of each species, calculating the representation of that species in its ecosystem and checking to see if the species is in decline and/or threatened with extinction.

Due to its many varied habitats, San Diego County is literally a biodiversity hotspot, both in terms of non-threatened and endangered plant and animal species. To maintain the area’s incredible variation, each and every species must prosper. After all, each species, no matter whether made of heart and lungs or stem and leaves, depends on one another. Animals depend on other animals below them in the food chain for a meal. Plants depend on other plants for shade or nourishment. Animals depend on plants for shelter and food. Plants depend on animals to help spread and germinate their seeds. To endanger or lose a species is to injure the health of all the plants and animals, humans included, that rely on that species for one reason or another. As more and more home and business development occurs on lands once only developed by the indigenous plants and animals, species’ habitats are degraded or lost and their very survival becomes a greater challenge.

We, as humans, must increase our awareness of the nature around us and be willing to sacrifice our love of mass construction for the rights of the plants and animals to their native homes. If an endangered species resides on land that seems to be the ideal location for a new office, we must think twice about building there and instead perhaps give first priority to the threatened species. Biodiversity is essential to life, as it is necessary for the balance and maintenance of the world’s plant and animal species; without just one species, life on so many levels, including the lives of humans, suffers and must struggle to adjust.

Andrea, Real World Team

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.