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The world community’s most significant task for the first decades of the 21st Century will be to balance economic and social well being with the conservation and management of the renewable natural resources on which we all depend.
The conservation of global biodiversity and the accomplishment of sustainable use of the world's natural resources is going to be critical to the survival and wellbeing of mankind. Whatever type of biological institution we work in, the prime challenge is and will be to engage and connect people knowledgeably to the natural world around them. This is in order to provide them with sufficient understanding of their reliance on it and to give them the basis to make choices about their lifestyles which can then be maintained for the long term.
Despite the recent economic downturn, North Carolina is and will continue to be one of the fastest growing regions of the developed world. If the five hundred million years of existence of the Uwharrie Mountains, in which the Zoo is situated, were condensed into a 24-hour period, all the visible changes which man has brought about on the landscape and its natural resources would have happened in the final second to midnight of that single day! We have already covered 11% of the State's land surface with concrete, brick and asphalt and 1/3 of that coverage has taken place in the last decade alone.Zoos and their sister institutions, such as museums, botanic gardens, University biological departments, life science centers and others with similar interests and expertise, are in the best possible position to connect people to their environment, but we have a long way to go in achieving that effectively.
All of us at N.C. Zoo are concerned with maintaining as much variety and quantity in the living systems of which individual species are component parts. However, simply directing our attention through a species by species approach in isolation of their ecological context is unlikely to constitute effective conservation. Such limited approaches outside the context of broader land use plans have achieved only minimal success in the four plus decades in which the word conservation has been commonly used. That is not to say that we do not care about individual animals, we do. However, if we are to maintain global biological diversity and with that entire species and habitats, we must bring about a fundamental change in public knowledge and understanding of the interrelation of all life. We need to recognize and know something about the life support systems that we rely on. We need to relate that knowledge and those connections directly to our region, its future economic and social well being and ultimately to the quality of life for our children and grandchildren. If we cannot do that then trying to save individual species will anyway become an irrelevance.
Our Strategic Plan, originally written in 1995, still holds true for all that we do. It takes an unusual approach for such an institution. It examines those natural resources, ecosystems and human impacts that are currently considered to be where change is occurring most rapidly, both globally and locally.
The Plan defines this institution’s priorities in terms of helping to address those changes and pressures as effectively as we can. Our parent State Department of Environment and Natural Resources continually refines its own strategic thinking and a summary of the Department’s priorities is given in the early pages of this document. As one might expect, although Departmental and Zoo discussions approach the subject from somewhat different angles, the conclusions on prioritization are more or less identical. What we at the Zoo do specifically to address these priorities is based on our unique site resources and skills that we can bring to bear in support of the Department’s and therefore State Government's overall mission.
The plan is published in two parts:
Part 1: Readers who have not yet seen it are referred to our original Strategic Plan published in 1995 as the basis of our philosophy and operational priorities. It was felt unnecessary to rewrite this first part of the plan, because, although some of the facts certainly need updating, the messages and foundation contained in it are just as current for our needs six years on. The most important facts and statements of relevance to our latest Action Plan are summarized in the first few pages.
Part 2: A new three-year action plan, based on the Institutional and Division Head work plans. These, of course, come out of the priorities suggested both by the Department’s strategic thinking and our own.
Strategic Plan (82 KB,PDF)
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N.C. Zoo is a member institution of AZA and an agency of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, William G. Ross Jr. Secretary; Michael F. Easley, Governor. A part of the North Carolina Government portal.
The Zoo is closed Christmas day and during severe weather. Call our information line at: 1-800-488-0444.
