Abstract:
Wildlife within Michigan has experienced many different changes throughout the years. When cities develop a loss of habitat occurs, and in many cases, a form of forced removal of species takes place. As roads and other infrastructure are built in the wilderness, fragmentation begins to splits up habitats. Other conditions play a major factor in Michigan wilderness, such as hunting, invasive plants and animals and other changes that could occur. Many animals that thrive elsewhere are on the endangered species list in Michigan. The question then becomes how we can prevent this and how to promote wildlife growth in our present society and within our cities. This thesis takes a few old ideas and combines them into a new idea called Wild:Conserbilitation. Wild:Conserbilitation stands for Wildlife, Conservation, and Rehabilitation. Each section takes into consideration the ideas to preserve, manage, and restore what has been lost and to stop further destruction of more species, while taking into account features such as urban activators, entertainment, conservation, preservation, rehabilitation, and being an educator to the people. To implement this, three key zones can occur. Zone one, the beginning stages, plays the biggest role of this plan, and it locates the start of the process of recovery for any animals in the rehabilitation phases. To further the education and empower its urban activator ability, it would be located in the heart of downtown Port Huron, and play with a much more architectural scale. Zones two and three implement further rehabilitation phases and depends more on the idea of natural landscape influenced design and begins the transition back to wildlife. The three-zone system looks at animal corridors to determine how they transition from the different zones, as well as attempting to define what we can do to reduce the harm that occurs from fragmentation.
