Montreal's Biod├┤me recreates four ecosystems under one roof
By Ken Sobol and Julie Macfie Sobol
THE FIRST question you ask upon entering Montreal's new Biod├┤me is what is this place?
The publicity brochures describe a glass-domed structure purporting to house a realistic reconstruction of four distinct ecosystems -- tropical rain forest, Laurentian woodlands, St. Lawrence estuary, and both polar regions -- complete with animals. But what exactly does that make it? Since the Biod├┤me opened in June 1992 there has been no shortage of answers, ranging from the outer limits of metaphorical fancy to the lower depths of bureaucratese: "I would say it's a natural science park," says Michel Languedoc, one of the Biod├┤me's architects.
"It's Noah's Ark," writes philosopher Jacques Dufresne, waxing lyrical in a special Biod├┤me edition of the Montreal magazine Quatre-Temps.
"A tangible example of Quebec's tourist positioning along a nature/culture axis." (André Vallerand, Quebec Minister of Tourism)
"A voyage to the heart of nature." (Le Monde, Paris)
"A combination botanical garden, zoo and aquarium." (A staff member) "Not just a combination botanical garden, zoo and aquarium." (Another staff member)
"A work of art [that] teaches us that we have previously failed to see what we are seeing." (Jacques Dufresne again, quoting French poet Paul Valéry)
Clearly, even those most intimately involved with designing and operating the Biod├┤me find it hard to put their fingers on precisely what they have created under the huge glass roof.
The fact that the building is part of the 1976 Olympic Park and is set in what was once the Vélodrome, site of the Olympic cycling races, contributes to the confusion. As do press reports that emphasized the point that the Biodôme's beautifully shaped granite "Canadian Shield" boulders are really made from concrete and that most of the "wild" animals were bred in zoos and game farms. All in all we arrived prepared for the distinct possibility of finding an ecological Disneyland North.
But after spending hours on the site, it turns out to be nothing of the kind. Its originators, most notably Pierre Bourque, director of Montreal's celebrated Botanical Gardens and the driving force behind much of the city's newfound dedication to nature (which includes the Insectarium and the Japanese and Chinese gardens), have taken a rigorous approach to creating a place where you can enjoy yourself and at the same time learn something about the world you inhabit.
Other cities are moving in the same direction (the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto is about to add a small tropical rain forest), but Montreal has outdone them all in the Biod├┤me. Its size, the juxtaposition of several distinct ecosystems, and even the idea of an open pathway through the heart of the displays are unparalleled.
In short, it works. And with that said, we can set about adding our own particular definition to all those attempts to pinpoint what the place actually is about.
The winding 500-metre walkway through the Biod├┤me begins through the double doors of the Tropical Rain Forest, the largest display and the showpiece of the four ecosystems. Covering some 2,600 square metres, rising to a glass roof 15 metres above the floor, its dense greenery provides a dramatic contrast to the outside world -- especially if you have just been blown across the wind tunnel of the Olympic Plaza on a slightly less than tropical -20┬░C February day. To anyone familiar with the jungles of Central America on which the rain forest is based, this looks like the real thing -- and then again it doesn't. For one thing, in the jungle, groups of senior citizens don't crowd past you crying, "regardez le castor!" and pointing excitedly at a large furry rodent lumbering along a river bank a few metres below the path. (The animal is actually called a capybara; it's not a beaver at all.)
Nor do marmosets (tiny, squirrel-like monkeys) and golden lion tamarins (silky, golden-maned monkeys) approach almost within touching distance before scampering off. And, unless you are very lucky (or unlucky), you don't get a chance to observe caymans (a cousin of the alligator, found in Central and South America) lounging on a river bank no more than a couple of metres away.
On the other hand, the hot, humid atmosphere that smacks you in the face the moment you enter is definitely tropical. The animals move about freely and co-exist with other species in authentic looking habitats, and birds such as redlegged honeycreepers and yellow-bellied tanagers fly about and light as they please, just as they would in their natural habitat. Sometimes they fly too freely. Just an hour before we arrived, a VIP tour had stopped to admire a scarlet ibis as it swooped gracefully onto a nearby limb. Unfortunately the limb happened to be within easy reach of a flesh-eating coati, a raccoon-like mammal with a long, flexible snout. The coati snatched the bird and proceeded to have it for lunch, in front of the horrified spectators. Such occurrences are rare, however.
The vegetation is real, and growing at a tremendous rate. The rain forest canopy has literally risen about a metre since last autumn. In the midst of it all, a half-dozen I strategically placed concrete "trees," containing heating and ventilation systems in their hollow trunks, don't seem so intrusive and the staff are looking forward to the time when they will be almost completely covered in vines.
For the most part, adults happily enter into the illusion, but children are utterly entranced. Beneath a waterfall is a tropical pond with a glass wall so that as you stand on the path you look directly into a river floor vista that comes close to what a snorkler might see. From the expressions on the faces of the younger children, pressing up against the glass, the water line well over their heads, it is almost the same as becoming a fish for a moment or two. To leave the claustrophobic green world of the tropical jungle and step into the spare, pale light of the Laurentian forest is an esthetic experience as striking as moving from a roomful of pre-Columbian ceramics into a gallery of Tom Thomson landscapes. To anyone familiar with the Laurentian woodlands it evokes a pleasurable gasp of recognition at the beauty of our own northern environment. Through an ingenious use of space, the Biod├┤me's creators have managed to fit a mountain brook where otters splash, a small beaver pond in which ducks swim serenely (the pond can also be viewed from underneath, where you can see the beavers at work up close), a rocky hillside inhabited by a pair of lynx, and stands of real yellow birches and sugar maples, into the room's 1,500 square metres.
The St. Lawrence display, approximately the same size, takes you into the cold, salty environment of the estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence. About 2.5 million litres of water slosh around the huge main basin, home to numerous species of local fish, some familiar, like the striped bass, others not, like the fourline snakeblenny. One of the Biod├┤me's notable features is the sheer volume of water it contains at any given moment: more than four million litres are circulating in its 26 bodies of water, including ponds, rivers, streams and holding tanks.The third grade science truism about the earth being three-quarters water has been given an expression of reality.
Not unexpectedly, there are lots of gulls, ducks and sandpipers on the 10-metre-high cliffs and in the marsh area, but the sea creatures of every colour that line the tidal pool -- red anenomes, green sea urchins, polar starfish and common waved whelks among them -- are a surprise and a visual treat.
The polar areas were a different kind of challenge; space was limited (less than 700 square metres), polar animals are expensive to purchase and to maintain, and polar regions lack the vegetation that provides visual variety in the other ecosystems. So the Biod├┤me planners chose to illustrate one specific lesson, the concept of evolutionary convergence. On one side of the display they stocked a subarctic area reminiscent of the grey schist cliffs of the Labrador coast with murres, guillemots, puffins, razorbills and other northern birds. Along the opposite wall, they created an antarctic zone of basaltic rock formations and sent in the penguins.
Evolutionary convergence is a bit like those stories you used to hear of everyone having a double on the other side of the earth, in China, or Australia, or wherever. Though the guillemots and penguins are completely unrelated biologically, the two species have evolved to resemble each other closely in size, shape and, most importantly, protective colouration. In short, similar environments evoke similar responses.
By the time you arrive at the end of the trail, the mélange of birds, mammals, reptiles and fish (more than 4,000 in total), the great contrasts of vegetation and the teeming underwater worlds have provided a dizzying deluge of new information. But that is just the start. To really understand the complexity of this peculiar hybrid, you need to move behind the scenes for a glance at the private Biodôme, where the imagination of modern technology has created its own electronic, hydraulic and mechanical ecosystem.
This is a world of modern plastics, gleaming metal, and surgically spare compartments; of holding tanks, pumps, sand filters, salination systems, water purification beds, heating elements, ultraviolet lights, ventilators, diffusers, cables, pipes, tubes, ducts, food preparation areas, veterinary clinics, machine shops, storage rooms, computers, research labs, study areas and offices. A world that encircles the public spaces somewhat the way our atmosphere envelops the planet.
In the basement, a few ordinary-looking computers control the intricate and delicate programs necessary to keep four distinct environments running concurrently. They monitor and regulate the various temperatures, light intensities and humidity of the artificial climates. They also keep track of the vast volumes of water, and the thousands of elaborate mechanical contrivances ranging from the electric heating rods hidden under the caymans' river banks to the assorted pipes, tubes and cables that pass through the 1,200 separate outlets in the displays' walls.
Despite the latest software, it can take hours just to feed in the appropriate data and much longer to work out even the most straightforward readjustments. When the polar area was under construction, for example, it took a full six months for a computer to analyse the reliability and stability of potential construction materials.
Just the fact that the frigid display would be located in close proximity to a half-dozen or so different and constantly changing temperature zones (the outside, the three other ecosystems, the transition anterooms, the basement labs) was enough to give any self-respecting computer a nervous breakdown.
But technological problems are sometimes a breeze compared to the adjustments required by the most innocuous natural change. As one of the staff ruefully admitted, "Duplicating nature turned out to be even harder than we'd expected. Every time you make a change, like every time a new plant takes root, all kinds of unexpected things happen. Certain animals start munching on it, that alters their diet; the seeds end up somewhere else, it affects the air's moisture content; everything else in the room has to be adjusted." Technology does its best to keep up with nature. Above the nearly invisible nets that cover the top of certain displays to keep the birds in, a rather spectacular Norwegian-made cable car system makes it possible to clean skylights and change bulbs, especially in the banks of lights that provide additional artificial sunlight.
Concealed behind the foliage and hillsides of the tropical rain forest, a catwalk gives the keepers unseen access to the free-flying birds' feeding stations. And beyond that, remaining sections of the original Vélodrome bleachers, once the latest in design and now looking like the abandoned remains of a long-forgotten civilization, have been used as additional structural supports.
Behind the exhibit walls, many of the water displays let out into holding tanks, sort of halfway houses for recalcitrant or disoriented aquatic creatures. In one tank, 30 or so newly arrived salmon were getting acclimatized before making their debuts and, in another, a rare black sturgeon was receiving first aid after an attack by some overaggressive gannets.
Underneath the various artificial lakes, ponds and bits of river and ocean, a huge recycling system pumps, filters, purifies and distributes those four million litres of water. In the tropical rain forest, for example, a misty rain, great for the complexions of staff working in the area but a tricky feat of engineering, is sprayed over the entire space every 30 minutes to maintain the required 70 percent relative humidity. The mist emerges through slots at various levels in the concrete trees which, in addition to containing heating and ventilation systems, also help to hold up the roof vault.
Filling the main display basin of the St. Lawrence River ecosystem is far from a simple matter of turning on the tap and letting it run. Estuaries are oceanic, so along with all the usual pumping and purification, the water must be run through a salt bed. The scientists also found it necessary to create and toss in some 180,000 tiny synthetic "bioballs" that attract and provoke the growth of bacteria that break down the organic waste of the basin's denizens. The whole tank is flushed out and completely recycled every two hours.
Despite the immense technical complexity of the Biodome, to everyone's amazement there has yet to be a major technical foul-up. Almost more surprising is the fact that the whole operation, with an original capital cost of $58.2 million and a yearly budget of $15.2 million, is run by a staff of only 138, a figure that includes everyone from secretaries, education officers, and public relations people to technicians, engineers, the house vet, and a half-dozen research scientists. (It's only fair to point out that they started out with a large, beautifully constructed, virtually empty structure, with heating and cooling capacity already in place. If they had started from scratch, it's hard to imagine what the total cost would have amounted to. As well, cleaning, restaurant and security services are contracted out.)
The Biodôme was created partly to replace the deteriorating municipal aquarium on Ile Sainte-Hélène and the old-fashioned Angrignon Zoo, both now closed. Scientists and technicians from those establishments, as well as from the Botanical Gardens, simply transferred to the new centre. In some ways the Biodôme seems more like a collective, with everyone sharing responsibility, than a typical institutional hierarchy.
Many of the research projects concern preserving and breeding endangered species such as the rain forest's golden lion tamarins. The Biod├┤me is part of a worldwide program, headquartered in Washington, to maintain the tamarins and reintroduce them into the Brazilian jungle. Hyacinth macaws, black sturgeon and beluga whales are among other endangered species under study by the scientists.
The researchers do double duty. Biologist Michel Delorme, for example, would probably rather devote all his time to his research on Glossophaga soricina, a tiny nectar-sucking bat with which he is more than slightly obsessed. But like everyone else, he is often called on to assist Rachel Léger, the head of the Life Collections Division, in resolving problems with diet or cohabitation as they arise.
An important function of the Biod├┤me, especially for those of us who never got beyond high-school biology, lies in educating the public about the natural world. Rather than a heavy dose of didactic signage, however, it offers some 18 young nature interpreters, who roam the walkways and answer questions. They are not just chatty guides; many have advanced degrees in biology or related fields and they are all extremely serious about their work.
Diane Mitchell, who accompanied us through the tropical section, says she has to be constantly reading to keep up with her public. "They're always wanting to know more and more about things, like the circulatory system of toads." But, she says, she loves her work. "People don't consider themselves part of nature," she says, "and the Biod├┤me is one way of making them rethink how they see themselves."
So what does it all add up to? Curiously, of all the opinions we have encountered the one that manages to get closest to the place's essence is that of the early 20th-century poet Paul Valéry, who never even knew of its existence but whose musings on art were quoted by Jacques Dufresne.
While not denying its educational and research capacities, the Biod├┤me is most like a huge, walk-through sculpture. A team of 40 craftspeople spent two years studying the appropriate geological formations and then recreating them as a vast indoor rock garden of cliffs, boulders, caves, river beds, arctic landscapes and waterfalls, all made of concrete but all shaped, incised and painted to duplicate exactly natural formations of rock or ice. It's no great exaggeration to call the 10-metre cliffs or the massive undersea boulders of the St. Lawrence estuary, for example, works of art.
But there is more to it than the creation of beautiful artifacts, because those responsible for the Biod├┤me were also attempting to create environments so realistic that the vegetation would be fooled into natural growth, the animals would feel free to roam and to reproduce, and the four ecosystems would begin to function and to appear as much as possible as they do in nature.
This complementary mixture of the art of nature and the art of man is not so different, of course, from the theory of the natural garden in 18th-century England. But instead of retreating from civilization to experience nature, as people did then, this new garden embraces technology wholeheartedly.
The Biod├┤me presents the entire hemisphere as a work of art, in the broadest sense, and invites us all to enjoy it and by extension to think about how to preserve it. We have come a long way from the old fashioned concept of zoos, with their rows of caged zebras and monkeys, and we are also a lot closer to understanding the place of our own species in the context of the rest of the natural world.
