Originally published in the Winter 2005 Lincoln Park Zoo magazine

One of the great things about a zoo is that it brings the world to your doorstep. It took Phileas Fogg 80 days to adventure his way around the world in Jules Verne’s classic novel. By the time you finish reading this story and looking at the photographs, you will have circled the globe in just a fraction of the time it took the Englishman and his manservant Passepartout.

The purpose of our trip is not to win a wager from friends, however. The purpose is to learn more about six distinct biomes and the animals and plants that live there, the challenges and threats they face, and how Lincoln Park Zoo contributes to saving dozens of species. Most prominently, they do so through the American Zoo & Aquarium Association’s Species Survival Plans (SSP). The zoo participates in 30 of the more than 100 plans, which manage the breeding of wildlife species in order to maintain healthy and self-sustaining populations that are both genetically diverse and demographically stable.

The word biome itself comes from the Greek bios, meaning life, or living organisms, and ome indicating mass, body or group. So a biome is a community of living organisms of a single major ecological region. We will visit six biomes: desert, mountains, arctic tundra, rain forest, grasslands and temperate forest, which we here in the Midwest inhabit. In each ecosystem we will take a special look at two species that live there as well as at Lincoln Park Zoo, or nearby.

So sit back and enjoy a journey around the world that even Phileas Fogg might have envied.

Next: Arctic Tundra

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