Over the next six months an ambitious renovation project will be taking place on the grounds of the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo to bring the dream of a true national, Natural History Museum to reality.

New exhibits will take visitors through Bermuda's history from the formation of the Island, to what it looked like prior to human habitation, and straight to modern Bermuda and the ecological footprint its privileged residents leave upon the world today.

When the $1.5 million revamp is completed, visiting the Natural History portion of BAMZ will be a completely new experience, The Royal Gazette was told.

When the museum was initially built in the 1940s it was more through happenstance than institutional planning, curator Dr. Wolfgang Sterrer said recently.

Initially it consisted of only a few collections of coral and fossils, he said, and it was not until 1985 that a second storey was added to the facility to beef up the scientific collection and its associated library.

"There were exhibits but there was no real attempt to develop it as a national museum of natural history," Dr. Sterrer said. "We want a scientific museum with proper collections, not just exhibits."

For the past year a team of BAMZ staff including Dr. Sterrer and Aquarium and Zoo Curator Brian Lightbourne have been working with consultants specialising in natural history museum out of Boston to develop the museum toward that goal.

Planning has now reached the stage where exhibit fabricators will begin work on the physical installations within the next week.

The existing museum is trying to keep its doors open for as long as possible, Mr. Lightbourne said, but will soon close to the public.

"We're trying to leave it open for as long as possible," he said. "But construction will have to begin in early January."

It is expected to be closed for six months in advance of its rebirth.

When the doors re-open, it will be on a larger and more cohesive facility.

"The museum concept will be laid out in two halves," Dr. Sterrer explained. "The first half will feature natural history before human contact."

Exhibits will lay out Bermuda's geology from its volcanic origins and through the Ice Ages - "the ups and downs of its evolution before people came", Dr. Sterrer said.

There will also be a `peeping cave' highlighting the Island's unique cave formations and the creatures that inhabit them.

Bermuda's greatest number of surviving endemic organisms actually fall into this cave-dwelling category, Dr. Sterrer said, with some 60 species completely unique to the Island.

A second gallery will lay out Bermuda's various habitats - rocky shore, sandy beaches, fresh water ponds and forest - through the use of three-dimensional dioramas.

"The cahows, for example, used to nest right under the trees before Bermuda was settled," Dr. Sterrer said of Bermuda's endemic relatives of the petrel. "We know they don't do that anymore."

A video presentation in the centre of this side of the new museum will take visitors through Bermuda's creation and development in a matter of minutes, Dr. Sterrer said.

The second half of the facility will be dedicated to Bermuda after human settlers - and other invaders such as pigs, rats and cockroaches - arrived.

In addition to highlighting how Bermuda's natural resources were altered beyond recognition, the museum will show how early settlers often ingeniously used the resources available to them.

This is an area of the museum's development where staff are hoping the community will provide needed input. "If you have artefacts that might help us piece together the past, show them to us," Dr. Sterrer said. "Old toys, cutlery, implements can all tell us something."

But there were needed resources that were simply not available on the Island as well - such as iron and coal.

Dr. Sterrer said early settlers would ask for these items from overseas because without them, they could not even make hooks to catch Bermuda's plentiful fish.

It was the beginning of a trend that would eventually come to define Island existence. As time passed, local resources were increasingly replaced by overseas goods.

Fishing and farming declined and Bermuda began to import every greater amounts of goods.

The gradual introduction of species from insects to birds to plants, whether deliberate or accidental, also radically altered the appearance of the Island and this too will be featured in new exhibits.

Bermuda did once have a number of endemic insects and snails which have since become extinct, however, Dr. Sterrer said.

A final portion of the revamped facility will focus on conservation - what is happening to the Island' natural habitat today and how it might be better preserved.

The exhibit will centre around a giant `ecological footprint' - a concept used to compare the ecological impact of the world's various nations based on the amount of resources consumed and other indicators.

"Bermuda's ecological footprint is huge," Dr. Sterrer said. With factors such us the frequent air travel of residents and transport of all the imported goods to the Island driving it to North American levels if not higher.

The exhibit will allow visitors to calculate their own ecological footprint and suggest methods of reducing the toll they take on our planet.

As the entire project rolls together, both Dr. Sterrer and Mr. Lightbourne said they have been overwhelmed by the many details that must be addressed.

The development team must consider each exhibit, how to best explain the exhibit to visitors, whether it ties in with the overall concept and then double check everything and attend to a million other details.

"It is quite a feat to make a dream a reality," Mr. Lightbourne concluded.