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American Zoos Go High-Tech to Get Children Hooked on Conservation : Environment: Computers and interactive TV are being employed to educate youngsters on threat to wildlife and habitats around the globe.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

The nation’s zoos are turning to television and computers, hooking up wires and modems to snare the media-savvy child and make an adventure out of learning about conservation.

“Everybody is headed in that same direction, using computers and education,” says Rich Block, director of public programs for the World Wildlife Fund. “Education is a main focus of zoos, and computers are the leading edge of education.

“These kinds of programs can really make an impact far beyond the zoo grounds.”

Many zoos now have simple computers where children push a button to answer a question about animals, and the machine lights up to tell them if they’re right.

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Zoo Atlanta is taking the concept further. It plans to use interactive TV--video and satellites--to take students to the most remote places on Earth.

“If you take a kid to a place he’s never seen, a place that fascinates him, and then explain to him that certain practices are endangering that place and its animals, he’s going to remember,” says Zoo Atlanta director Terry Maple. “And he’s probably going to be hooked on conservation.”

Maple envisions interactive television bringing 500 inner-city kids in a special auditorium face-to-face with a zoologist in the plains of Africa who will discuss environmental dangers to the lions and giraffes wandering nearby.

The cries of the jungle will mingle with the smells of the bush, piped in through the air-conditioning system and making the kids feel as if they’re really on safari.

Maple’s plan sounds much like the successful Jason Project, based in Massachusetts.

Scientists exploring the depths of the Pacific Ocean with a robotic submarine called Jason have connected schoolchildren nationwide with their exploration via interactive TV. Using computers, some kids in land-bound classrooms have even piloted the sub as the scientists, aboard a ship, give them instructions by video.

“Zoos have been slow in getting into the computers and interactive TV, but we are at the forefront of conservation education, so we must use every means available,” Maple says.

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Some other zoos have smaller computer programs:

* The Los Angeles Zoo uses a video projector to put small images of famous people into large-animal exhibits to explain about the animals.

* The St. Louis Zoo uses computer games for visitors to simulate bat flight or decide how animals react when threatened.

* The Baltimore Zoo has a computerized swamp. Visitors get the sinking feeling of walking across a stream on lily pads without getting wet.

* The Indianapolis Zoo installed a database for students. If they want to ask what an elephant eats, for example, they type the question into a school computer, and the zoo’s pachyderm expert types a message back.

“It’s a good way of bringing the immediacy of research and education and the importance of wildlife conservation to the general public,” says Bruce Carr, curator of education at the St. Louis Zoo.

But this movement toward computerization seems to contradict the trend at zoos during the last decade--taking animals out of cages and putting them in natural habitats.

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“The argument is you need to use high tech to reach the media-age child, but the paradox is we’re trying to get people more in touch with nature, and technology often removes them from that experience,” says Craig Piper, an architect at Georgia Tech whose specialty is zoo design.

Maple, who helped pioneer the natural habitat concept, thinks the trends should complement each other.

In Atlanta, gorillas romp under open sky and orangutans perch high in trees as visitors peer at them through the cool, lush vegetation of a simulated African rain forest. Around the corner is the savanna habitat, hot and humid with rustling grasses where giraffes roam.

But because they’re free to roam, the animals sometimes hide from view. And there are few signs telling visitors what they’re seeing.

“It detracts from the feel,” Maple says, watching as a lion gazed impassively at hordes of children from his rocky perch.

Computerization will make up for the lack of information that is a natural-habitat drawback, Maple says.

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He also hopes interactive TV will help the Species Survival Plan, an effort by 150 zoos and aquariums to breed in captivity more than 50 rare and endangered species and someday return them to the wild.

But some biologists fear these species’ natural habitats will be wiped out even before the animals are.

“If I thought all I was doing was creating a museum, I wouldn’t be in this business,” Maple says, pausing to watch a rare Sumatran tigress who recently gave birth to a cub under the survival plan.

“We’ve got to address the extinction of these animals’ habitats, and you can’t do enough of that behind zoo walls. We need to take people there.”

Zoo Atlanta’s $26-million conservation center will be unveiled at the 1994 American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums conference in Atlanta.

In addition to interactive TV, visitors can watch scientists work in laboratories, play with computer exhibits that teach them about various subjects and use zoo equipment for their own experiments.

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For example, the zoo will provide microprocessors and data from a specialist’s years of study of orangutans and get students to track threats to orangutan breeding habits.

“The kids will walk away after learning how real scientists solve real, live environmental problems,” Maple says. “They’ll have worked with a real live scientist who is doing this every day of her professional life.”

Taking a break from drawing giraffes, 11-year-old Will Wingfield asks Maple, “What’s it going to be like? Can I use the computers?”

“Yes, and by the time you’re finished, you can probably become a zoologist,” he told the boy.

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