Zoos, aquariums, museums tackle climate challenges in - The Boston Globe

Zoos, aquariums, museums tackle climate challenges in Boston

Two Bactrian camels lumbered out of the June sun into the shade at the edge of their enclosure, to the delight of dozens of squealing schoolchildren. Above them, a canopy of tree branches spread wide, offering reprieve from the heat that baked the Franklin Park Zoo’s paved walkways.

The shady grove is now flourishing, in part because of a rain garden nestled next to the camel exhibit. Only months earlier, a strong storm would have sent water rushing down the walkways, away from the trees and into the city’s sewer system. But the new gardens, planted strategically alongside the camels and by other tree clusters around the zoo, allow trees to suck up the rain before it drains away, minimizing the resources required to care for them during a dry spell.

The gardens are one small but visible step Zoo New England, which operates the Franklin Park Zoo, is taking to reduce its energy and water use in the face of a city ordinance urging Boston’s largest buildings to slash their emissions or face hefty fines. These requirements pose a unique challenge for cultural institutions like zoos, aquariums, and museums, which must balance sustainability concerns with the need to care for live animals and delicate artifacts.

“It’s not just [about] the comfort of people — it’s thermal comfort of animals, life support systems, and a lot of contingencies for if we do lose power,” said Josh Meyer, horticulture and sustainability curator. “There’s a lot of energy-intensive systems we need to make that happen.”

To find solutions to these sustainability challenges, Zoo New England and other cultural institutions have partnered with the city’s Green Ribbon Commission, a coalition of community leaders focused on speeding up Boston’s green transition. Starting in 2021, museums and other cultural institutions across the city began working with the commission in small groups to design climate action plans, which they are expected to implement in phases. (The city ordinance currently requires buildings that cover more than 20,000 square feet to reduce emissions in five-year increments to get to net zero by 2050.)

Less than 6 miles away from the zoo, massive filters in the basement of the New England Aquarium pumped water through the coral reef exhibit. Four stories up, the aquarium’s beloved turtle, Myrtle, paddled gently through the water, which is cleaned and recycled back into the giant ocean tank throughout the day to minimize water use.

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Letise LaFeir, the aquarium’s conservation and stewardship chief, said the effects of climate change are always top of mind at the aquarium, which has firsthand experience with damage from flooding along the harbor. Adapting to higher tides and more extreme temperatures is just as much a part of the aquarium’s sustainability plan, she said, as minimizing their contribution to the city’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“We see flooding so regularly,” she said. “So from a resilience perspective, we are thinking about how we might need to elevate our grounds and, over time, put in more green space.”

LaFeir also stressed the importance of what she called “early wins: all these really small things we can do to start to reduce our footprint.” Switching out plastic utensils for compostable ones, going paperless with paperwork, eliminating single-use plastics in the gift shop, and encouraging visitors to use revolving doors may seem small, but LaFeir said that’s the very reason institutions should “check those boxes,” many of which also allow patrons to feel like part of the solution.

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, administrators have also taken the approach of targeting small changes for big impact, though even simple adjustments can hit hurdles at times. Clifford Rust, the art museum’s chief financial and operation officer, said the facility’s new wing is LEED Gold certified, a key sustainability marker for architecture, with eight geothermal wells that draw heat from deep in the earth to power parts of the building.

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Retrofitting the original wing, though, isn’t as straightforward: The building is strictly governed by Stewart Gardner’s will, which requires each gallery to remain exactly as it was at the time of her death.

“We renovate those galleries to make sure they stay that way, but we can’t radically change them,” Rust explained, meaning that any changes to the energy, water, or other power systems must be “seamless and behind the scenes — that’s the trick.”

The museum is currently in the process of replacing all the old lightbulbs with LED lights, an energy-reducer common among cultural institutions. However, Rust said the bulbs at the Gardner museum must be custom-made to “maintain [the] aesthetic that we have in the historic building galleries.”

And while the museum does not care for live animals, it must adhere to strict temperature and humidity requirements to preserve the historic artwork: Though lights can be dimmed at night, Rust said the galleries must always be within 70 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and at 45 percent humidity in winter and 55 percent in summer.

The Museum of Science, which houses scientific artifacts rather than rare paintings among its exhibits, is grappling with its own set of climate challenges. One of the first organizations to partner with the Green Ribbon Commission, the museum was an early experimenter with green renovations, piloting mini roof-mounted windmills and waterless urinals in the early 2010s. Their partnership with the city was the “accelerator,” said Paul Ippolito, vice president of facilities and operations, that “moved us forward even more.”

Straddling the Boston-Cambridge border, the Museum of Science is bound to the requirements of both cities. And in Cambridge, large buildings are required to reach net-zero emissions by 2035, rather than Boston’s 2050 deadline, prompting the museum to fast-track its timeline for upcoming changes.

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“Ten years away is not that far, and we’re talking major, major improvements to our building envelope and all our mechanical systems,” Ippolito said. “And there’s still quite a few unknowns out there, like: If everybody starts to electrify buildings, can the grid truly support that?”

The museum has already taken steps to better insulate some of the building’s windows and increase the number of solar panels, with plans to explore heat pumps and new methods of capturing stormwater to use in toilets and other (nondrinking) water fixtures.

At Zoo New England, Meyer explained that the Green Ribbon Commission was instrumental in encouraging the Franklin Park Zoo to choose geothermal energy to power its upcoming African Experience exhibit, which will feature African penguins, among other plant and animal species, when it opens in 2026.

By contrast, an older exhibit like the Tropical Forest building, designed in the late 1960s, is still powered by a gas boiler. Meyer said the enclosure’s unique cloth roof, specially designed to allow sunlight to filter into the exhibit, is a major source of heat loss and has been one of the most difficult climate challenges to work around.

“We looked at geothermal [for the tropical forest]. We really wanted it to work, but it was just too expensive,” he said. “Renewable energy isn’t cheap, and so being involved with a group like the [Green Ribbon Commission] is really great because they point you in the direction of funding sources and tell you how to get it.”

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Ivy Scott can be reached at ivy.scott@globe.com. Follow her @itsivyscott.