About the Wildlife Divide
The Wildlife Divide Project was started in Las Vegas in 2012 by artist and curator David Sanchez Burr. The program began as part of the Spring Mountain National Recreation Area art programing. The U.S Forest Service in conjunction with the Southern Nevada Conservancy and the Great Basin Institute, needed programming that would engage the public at large through the arts and have these activities serve as a vehicle to increased education and knowledge about the natural, scientific, and historic value of the area.
Given the unique landscapes and topography of the region in combination with the rapidly encroaching urban areas the Wildlife Divide was designed as a means to explore the threshold between these vastly different ecologies. Art programming in the natural landscape needed to address the increasing divide between pedestrian knowledge of the biological and natural systems that surround our city and the work of the scientists and researchers that study these areas. Art projects, workshops, lectures and exhibitions were designed to thread through the threshold of urban and natural environments, and investigate how these ecologies could someday connect in ways that are both sustainable and conscious of preservation. Although this project started in Mt Charleston it became increasingly evident that the Wildlife Divide could be useful anywhere where there is a need to build community consciousness towards preservation, ecosystems, art and science.
