DESIGN PROJECT AND ITS RELATION TO ECOLOGY AND ENDANGERED SPECIES

     Endangered species and human influence on animals -is the topic, which became really interesting to me lately. After reading a lot of articles and books about endangered species, I decided to look at different ways how humans can help animals to adapt to urban environment. 

    Nowadays there are different ways, how people trying to help animals to adapt in unusual environment for animals, such as cities. One and most popular way is to crate buildings with green roofs and walls. Green roofs became really popular in Europe, especially in countries like Germany and UK. Green roofs is a great tool to recreate natural environment for small animals like birds and different kinds of insects. A British study of London rooftops found a large collection of spiders, beetles, wasps, ant and bees, 10% of which were designated as rare by the UK agency Natural England.

    I think that integration of green roofs in our design is really powerful tool, which we can use in order to help animals to adapt to urban environment. In my design project I had an ability and desire to integrate Green roofs and walls into my design. Library, which I was designing, is located in China town, NYC. This is really polluted and busy place, which has a lack of gardens and parks. Green roofs in my design could help birds and insects to find new home, which would be similar to natural environment. 

    Green walls are located inside huge opening which is right in the middle of the building. this opening runs from the basement to the top roof. Trees would grow from the basement and smaller plats would be located on the green walls, which becomes green roof at the top. Because of open roof the garden doesn't require extra watering. Plants can be watered by rain showers, like in natural environment. 

    Moreover the glass panels around the garden helps natural sun light to go through building walls and supply enough light for plants and habitats. 

I think that it is really important to think about animals and how we can help them to adapt in our environment. I managed to create new home for animals, who live in the city, in my project.  I am really happy that today people start to think about animals more and trying to find the way to help them to adapt in our environment. 

RUSSIA'S ENDANGERED SPECIES

    Dozens of animal and plant species become extinct every day. One of the ways to preserve biodiversity is to protect rare and endangered plants and animals.
    Photo: The Amur (Siberian) tiger is the world’s largest member of the cat family and the only one living in areas of heavy snowfall. There are slightly more than 450 Amur tigers in Russia.

   The Amur leopard, also known as the Manchurian leopard, is one of the most rare and beautiful cats in the world and the only one living so far north. Human activity has dramatically reduced its habitat, making the Amur leopard critically endangered. There are no more than 40 of these cats in the world, 30 in the Primorye Territory in Russia’s Far East.

    The Siberian crane, also known as the Siberian white crane or the snow crane, has been added to Russia’s Red Data Book and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as a “critically endangered species.” There were as few as three Siberian crane couples in the Oka Reserve in the late 1990s.
Photo: Siberian cranes hatched in the Oka Reserve.

    The snow leopard, said to embody the spirit of the mountains, is a moderately large cat living high in the mountains of 13 countries, including Russia. Elusive by nature, there are few studies of this leopard and its exact numbers are unknown.

    The gray whale lives in the Sea of Okhotsk off Sakhalin in Russia’s Far East. The oldest baleen whale, it feeds on small sea animals including amphipods in northern waters during five months in the summer and on its reserves the rest of the year. There are about 100 gray whales in the world

    The white stork lives only in the Amur River region and is considered a symbol of the area. It dislikes humans and never nests near them. There are about 400 white stork couples in the world.

    The European bison, Europe’s only large bull that has survived centuries of hunting, has always symbolized the power of nature and of the earth. It is listed as “vulnerable” in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

    Leopards once lived in the Caucasus Mountains, but the population was gradually wiped out by humans. Now the only animals living in their historical homeland are in the Caucasian Reserve, and occasionally wander from northern Iran. Photo: A female leopard at Sochi National Park.

    The saiga antelope, recognizable by an extremely unusual, oversized and flexible nose structure, migrates in the thousands, driven by its own criteria. Their numbers grow or decrease for no apparent reason, and so the current goal is to establish rational rules for hunting them.

    A long time ago, the Russian Desman could be found all over Europe, but its habitat has dwindled to a few countries, including Russia. The semi-aquatic animal lives in burrows built into the banks of ponds and slow moving streams; they often become entangled in nets and die.

   The polar bear is the world’s largest predator. Although up to three meters long and weighing as much as 800 kilogrammes, the polar bear is a very good swimmer who can swim dozens of kilometers into the high seas. Its habitat in Russia is between Franz Joseph Land and Chukotka.

SAMOO UNVEILS PLANS FOR NATIONAL RESEARCH CENTER FOR ENDANGERED SPECIES IN SOUTH KOREA

    Samoo Architects & Engineers just unveiled their master plan for South Korea’s new National Research Center for Endangered Species in Yeongyang-gun. The 16,030 square meter center is will serve as a hub for scientific research about the country’s rare plant and animal species. The master plan was conceived as a system of buildings and infrastructure that follows the area's topography.

     Located in one of Korea’s cleanest mountainous areas, the complex will hopefully create a balance between architecture and nature, while providing optimal working conditions for its users. It was conceived as a tripartite structure with Core, Refresh and Research zones. The Core Zone has three radially positioned facilities that house a visitors’ area, offices and a quarantine space. This is the most public and accessible area of the complex.

    The Refresh Zone comprises guest houses and housing capacity for researchers. The most interesting part-the Research Zone-is based on a modular system of ‘Cell Units,’ which are a combination of indoor/outdoor breeding farms and research facilities. Thanks to the modular configuration, the complex can be expanded or transformed according to its needs.

HOW CAN WE HELP ANIMALS ADAPT TO URBAN ENVIRONMENT USING ARCHITECTURE

   It plans to develop parks that include suitable green areas with small trees and shrubs, or to turn rooftops green by incorporating gravel or soil. In addition to attracting animals, such sites offer other advantages that will help to attract both developers and planners, Snep insists. “We've also seen that if more attention is paid to the green design of business sites, people like it and employees are happier.”

   These principles are not confined solely to business sites. Green roofs have been catching on quickly in several European cities, particularly in Germany and the UK. A British study of London rooftops (Grant, 2006) found a large collection of spiders, beetles, wasps, ants and bees, 10% of which were designated as rare by the UK agency Natural England (Sheffield, UK).

Retail sedum roof, Canary Wharf, London, UK. Reproduced with permission from Kadas, 2006.

   Green roofs and other green spaces form ecological networks within cities that provide birds and insects, as well as some plants, with a flexible ecosystem on a relatively modest total surface area. Green buildings can also be important outside cities by mitigating the impact of barriers, such as roads and railways, to the movement of animals and plants. “We have come up with a kind of building across a highway, as an ecological corridor across a road,” said Snep, whose team is now working with architects to design green buildings.

   However, such work needs a detailed understanding of how animals and plants respond to artificial environments. Although this is a relatively young field of research, it is making significant progress and is moving beyond mere description to prediction, according to John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA). Bird species are the most studied in an effort to gain insight into the abilities of animals to adapt to urban habitats. Urban settings have different selective pressures from those on wild habitats: they impose close proximity to humans as well as to rivals, predators and prey, but can also reduce threats and create benign conditions including ready access to food, and insulation or shelter from seasonal variations and adverse weather conditions. The role of the city as a moderator of natural forces is reflected, for example, in the discovery that the abundance of birds in urban environments does not decrease as one moves northwards in Europe, as it does in wild environments.

CAPTURING ENDANGERED SPECIES

    I think this is an incredible video, that everyone should watch. This 15 minute talk really makes you think about how much we harm animals and how the number of endangered species grows every single day.

     As Joel Sartore I really asking to watch this video and think how many animals each person kill every day by living life which we got used to, without even knowing it. 

ENDANGERED SEA CULTURES

Amazing video about endangered species:

ACTIONS TO PROTECT ENDANGERED SPECIES

    Numerous international agreements deal with issues related to the conservation and protection of endangered species. The scientific effort to more accurately catalog species and better define the scope of biodiversity has dramatically raised the number of recorded threatened and endangered species in recent years. In spite of these shocking statistics of endangerment, there is a good deal of evidence that national and international efforts to preserve endangered species have been very successful. Some of the most important international conventions are ratified by most of the world's nations, and have had significant power to enforce agreements in the decades since their introduction: (1) the 1971 Convention on Wetlands of International Importance that promotes wise use of wetlands and encourages designation of important wetlands as ecological reserves; (2) the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage that designates of high-profile World Heritage Sites for protection of their natural and cultural values; (3) the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES); (4) the 1979 Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals of 1979 that deals with species that regularly cross national boundaries or that occur in international waters; and (5) the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD was presented by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, and has been regularly updated since then; the most recent amendments to the CBD occurred at the 2002 United Nations Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. The CBD is a central element of another international program called the Global Biodiversity Strategy, a joint effort by the IUCN, UNEP, and the World Resources Institute to study and conserve biodiversity.

    Many countries, like the United States, have also undertaken their own actions to catalog and protect endangered species and other elements of biodiversity. Many of these national conservation efforts, like the ESA, have and international component that deals with species migration and trade across borders, and that mesh with the international conventions. Another important aspect of endangered species protection is collaboration with non-governmental organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, the Nature Conservancy and the Ocean Conservancy. The United States, for example, has a network of conservation data centers (CDCs) that gather and compile information on the occurrence and abundance of biological species and ecosystems that was designed and established by The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy has also facilitated development of CDCs in Canada and in Central and South America.

    International, national and non-governmental agencies attempting to conserve biodiversity and protect endangered species choose whether to pursue single-species approaches that focus on particular species, or to develop more comprehensive strategies that focus on larger ecosystems. Because there are so many endangered species, many of which have not even been discovered, the single-species approach has obvious limitations. While the method works well for charismatic, large animals like giant pandas, grizzly bears, whales, and whooping cranes, this approach fails to protect most endangered species. More effective strategies focus on entire natural ecosystems that include numerous, hidden elements of threatened biodiversity. Furthermore, more conservation policies are attempting to consider the social, political, and economic ramifications of a species or environmental protection plan. As in the case of the northern spotted owl, policies that require large economic sacrifices and offer no immediate local benefits often alienate the very humans that could best help to preserve an endangered species or ecosystem. Modern environmental protection strategies attempt to present alternatives that permit sustainable human productivity.