Biodiversity Month

The World in Your Backyard: Biodiversity Day at the Peabody

Event type: Biodiversity Fair
Hosted by: Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University
Date: May 18, 2002
Time: 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. EST
Where: Peabody Museum of Natural History
Cost: $5

While biodiversity refers to all life throughout the world, the spring season gives us a chance to delve firsthand into the diversity of one remarkable group of organisms - green plants. Wild plant diversity is impressive, with approximately 270,000 species worldwide. Moreover, there is a great diversity of agricultural varieties that have evolved more recently through artificial selective practices of cultures throughout the world. On May 18, International Museum Day, museums across the world will present programs relating to the general theme of globalization. Although “globalization” means different things to different people and is frequently associated with economic and political issues, the Peabody Museum will instead take a natural history approach in a combined celebration of IBOY, International Museum Day, and the arrival of spring, with a day-long family celebration of plants and biodiversity using both local and global perspectives.

Visitors will be able to taste exotic fruits and vegetables, learn about basic backyard ecology, take a local biodiversity survey, watch fun and engaging films, plant seeds to take home, and buy native plants for their yards and gardens. There will be talks and workshops about invasive plant species, agricultural biodiversity, the effects of globalization on wild and domesticated plants, and landscape design using native plant species to attract butterflies and other wildlife. New Haven schoolteachers from the Peabody Fellows teacher training program will display posters on how they have used the traveling BioAction Lab to teach biodiversity. The plant sale and seed-planting activity will be under an 800-square-foot tent just outside the Museum. There will be something for everybody - come join us! For a more detailed schedule, check our website at www.peabody.yale.edu/events.

For more information contact M-F 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. EST:
David Heiser
Phone: 203/432 3776
Fax: 203/432 9816
Email: david.heiser@yale.edu