while an interesting experiment, what does label of national park seek to achieve? conservation, most probably not - anyone who is following the torrent of news about indiscriminate slaughter of wildlife (mostly elephants and rhinos) in conservation areas of sub-saharan africa and south asia would beg to differ.
what kind of *wildlife* would an urban conservation area sustain with its fragmented habitats? mostly generalists like humans, cats, dogs, badgers, foxes, etc. and any species that requires large undisturbed areas or are tied to specific food source are unlikely to survive.
in some ways, this is a sign of things to come. as we destroy the world's ecosystems and empty our national parks and oceans, we are (perhaps subconsciously) changing our expectations of what is *wild* and where we could expect to see them. studies show that today's children mostly associate wildlife with television documentaries (and zoos). (when i took a group of 16-17 years old high school students to the peruvian amazon last year, they commented how it looked like the documentaries on nat geo.) and very soon the television would be pretty much the only place where we will see what used to be wildlife and national parks.
so in that vein, future londoners would be tickled to see a fox rummaging through their garbage bins and celebrate the thriving wildlife in our backyard. cheers to that depressing idea....
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