Can Wild Animals and Humans Coexist in Cities?
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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
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The pandemic has created what scientists call the anthropause, which is a large slowdown in human activity. That’s allowed all sorts of wild animals to get comfortable in and around cities, from boar in Rome to turkeys in my own hometown of Oakland, CA. As we humans keep expanding and taking up more space, sharing our cities with wild animals might be our best chance to protect them. So, can we learn to coexist with animals in an urban world?
*What are wild animals even doing in cities?*
A lot of times they don’t have much of a choice. In 2007, the world hit a major tipping point. For the first time, more people lived in urban areas than in rural areas. And by 2050, 2/3rds of the world’s population will live in or near cities. On top of that, the sheer amount of people on the planet just keeps growing. Right now, there are over 7.5 billion people. By 2050, that number is gonna be around 9.8 billion. That means more construction to house all those people. More land to grow food to feed all those people. And more pushing into forests and fields and rivers.
*What impact are animals having on cities?*
When we picture wild animals in cities, it’s easy to think about the problems that can cause a coyote to attack a person, for example. But the reality is that reports of any kind of attack or injury are super rare. It’s way more common for urban animals to be nuisances or pests, knocking over trash cans and stuff like that. But these animals still have important roles to play in cities, and removing them can actually disrupt ecosystems and wreak havoc on other animals down the food chain.
*So how CAN animals and humans live together in urban areas?*
One way is the concept of urban rewilding. It’s a growing trend of transforming urban areas from wildlife dead spots into something more attractive so nature and animals can move back in. For example, D.C. has more green space per capita than nearly any city in the country. It’s planting around 11,000 trees EVERY year. And the city has passed some pretty strict pollution laws to improve the surrounding water quality. All of that is bringing back more birds, fish, and reptiles. Some animal experts in the know even refer to DC as an urban paradise for wild animals.
SOURCES
Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Fund
c402277.ssl.cf...
Pew Research report on urban wildlife
www.pewtrusts....
Research paper on human-wildlife interactions in urban areas
www.publish.cs...
Should cities be more inviting to wildlife?
www.kqed.org/e...
How animals change in response to cities
magazine.washi...
Urban rewilding as a strategy
www.dw.com/en/...
How urban habitats can foster biodiversity
e360.yale.edu/...
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#rewilding #biodiversity #urbanwildlife
We want to hear from you -- have you had any interesting encounters with wild animals in your urban community? What is your city doing to create safe habitats for wildlife? Share in the comments below!
I live in a city in western North Carolina and sadly my city is not doing much. They are planting pollinator gardens which is good. I plant flowers in my yard. I feed the birds in my yard and I lay out food sometimes for wild life but we have a dog now which complicates things a bit.
In my country, the small village where I made my rural service, I have to run ducks out from the health center before they pooped everywhere 😭
Hi, we live in Berkeley and often host deer for the day in our back yard. They love the peace and quiet and safety (no neighbor dogs), a steady supply of roses and other edible plants to eat (there are plenty to share and they can't reach the higher roses) and the bowls of water we leave out for them to drink from.
@@kasturikarenmattern9515 Your yard sounds beautiful. My husband always keeps dogs in the yard which really hinders the wildlife.
@@dianewallace6064 we have a cat and the mother doe was concerned about him as the fawns are little, and the cat is big. Almost the size of a wildcat. But there are no dogs in any of the yards adjoining ours, which is, I think, a big factor in why the deer feel safe there. We also have lots of birds who use the water bowl and the cat does not bother them. He is old. And we have squirrels during the day, raccoons and possums at night. We love it!
I spent a few years in north oakland, where the locals would gossip on nextdoor about the local turkeys and even nicknamed the alpha male turkey "daddy bird". Apparently he disappeared a few months ago, RIP daddy bird
Daddy Bird! Rest in power.
I live in the countryside and we have a herd of whitetail deer that constantly move back and forth around the neighborhood. We also have a population of rabbits that live in a construction storage yard near by that hides in the pipes and other construction equipment during the day and hop out during the night.
Thanks for sharing!
My ecology professor I had while I was going through my biology degree was really big on research regarding urban ecosystems and it made me appreciate ecology far, far more than I otherwise would have. As in like I was expecting to blow off the course with a D- and I ended up working towards an A+, thoroughly enjoying the course. It was also the first and one of only a few times in my degree program that I began thinking about the intersection between science and policy/decision making--bringing in stakeholders and designing research questions based on their communicated needs.
Wow, that sounds like a pretty inspiring professor! Thanks for sharing. We need more people like that.
I currently live in a zone in Mexico where it is not fully urban like Mexico City, and it's part desert.
I usually see scorpions chasing for crickets on my garden and also I can hear too many birds singing around. It seems to be a little like a mini-desert in these kind of semi-urban places. I kinda wish there was a better way to treat animals around here.
It was waaaay different back in Mexico City, where I used to live.
Thanks for sharing. Did you have any wild animals around in Mexico City?
Deep looks sent me here👍
Yay! We love Deep Look and we're glad you followed their advice. What did you think of the video [bracing ourselves for honest feedback...]?
Creditable insight on the biotic relationship between animals and humans ...Great Video 👍
Me too! :)
I live in Brooklyn park, mn and I see dozens of wild turkeys wandering around in the summer. We also have wooded areas where deer live so they wander around at night.
Cool. Thanks for sharing!
Yooo shoutout Deep Look for bringing me here. He's so funny!
Thanks for checking us out! We ❤️ Deep Look!
Just found your channel. Dude, this is some excellent journalism! Bravo!
Thank you for watching and your kind comment!
I've seen turkeys wondering around here too in the northeast (near Boston to be exact.) even in places where they normally don't show up, which is downtown Boston and near heavy vehicle traffic areas that are normally busier.
And we also have "urban wilds" in our city including several near where I live. This is why I love where I live since I'm a nature lover here.
Boston is a good city to find wild places
If I could like this video more than one I would. This is really good brah. Great work.
Aww...thanks for the love! We appreciate you!
Octopus in my neighborhood?
You live in Atlantis?
I remember seeing a meme about octopi living in trees in the Pacific Northwest.
@@AboveTheNoise Or they have Ms. Friz for a teacher.
@@AboveTheNoise you guys are a PBS channel and you don't recognize the Magic School Bus opener?
My family's backyard alone has been home to woodchucks, rabbits and even a snake at one point! We put plants in our backyard and even leave out some animal-safe food from time to time. We get lots of visits from wildlife, we even saw a fox in our front yard once!
Cool! Thanks for sharing! Sounds like a welcoming habitat.
Everything is fine and dandy until there's Wolfs on Wall Street.
...wait a minute
Lol. Good point - we already have some wild animals wearing suits running things...
Nice work! I just subscribed.
So glad you subbed. Welcome!
We shouldn’t live separate we should live together as one
Nice video! ❤️
Thank you!
As someone who likes birds in cities, the coyote is my new favorite animal!
Fantastic video! I work for a museum here in California and we will be talking about this topic this fall. Any chance we could share this with our visitors during that time?? Not sure how to contact anyone about this.
That's so cool! Please do reach out - we'd be happy to help. Our email is AboveTheNoise@kqed.org
@@AboveTheNoise we are excited to have gotten permission to show this fun and interesting episode as part of our "Wildlife on the Edge" art exhibition at the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature! Come check it out if you're in Solvang, CA!
Awesome vid man very informative keep it up
Thank you for watching and supporting the channel!
There’s a law in Canada where you can’t hurt geese no joke (they are pretty agressive and annoying tho..pooping everywhere and hissing like cats when I person comes to close to there fluffy babys) still love em though
I live in Australia. This either sounds like really cool idea........or the opposite of that
Do go on...
Animal IQ sent me!
So glad you came and checked us out! We are big fans of Animal IQ!
MADISON, WISCONSIN, BABY. Turkeys galore. One town over in Middleton I see turkeys, the occasional deer, groundhogs, muskrats, sandhill cranes, and a ton of water birds I've yet to identify.
I think humans can coexist well with any species smaller and less numerous than us x'D.
Hmm. Interesting criteria!
I’ve often wondered if it’s possible (physically and financially) to build cities that can cater to both wildlife and humans. Having both environments within sight of each other, but with little negative interaction.
Aw, city folk are cute, getting all nervous about animals.
Yes, cities need to be more inviting to nature. Why should people accept living in a place animals won’t even venture?
Good question.
It's all fun and games for you until that wild animal is a tiger or a lion.
@Mad Max 😨
Houston Texas has the bat bridge, and that why the mosquitoes are not as bad as the rest of Texas.
I live in HTX and the bat bridge is super cool! Although the bat bridge in Austin is wayyyy bigger, both Austin and Houston's bridges are awesome.
If every human can understand this video. Earth would be a better place
wildlife is being replaced by delusional religious people that lack respect for animals.
As a viewer of Adam Something, I have to highlight urban sprawl due to over dependence on automobiles to be one contributor to wilderness encroachment.
myles bess could talk about how paint dries and i'd still be interested in it
Well, now...☺️
One idea I've been thinking about is getting rid of fences. It would allow animals to roam freely through the areas, mostly suburbs. This is somewhat unrelated, but I had a conversation about zebra mollusks that were supposed to help clean water pollution. It was unsuccessful, because they clogged up the flow, but it was likely poorly implemented, and I really like the idea of allowing animals to contribute to the ecosystem.
San Diego has many open-space areas and parks that used to connect well enough to sustain migratory animal populations. Over the decades, suburbanization and freeway development have severed many key corridors. Recent efforts have been made to preserve the remaining interconnections, but also to create and connect more open-space areas.
Perhaps surprisingly, key elements of this effort have been paved bike routes and unpaved bike trails! I'm not at all sure if it's just palatable politics, but serious transportation money is going into these efforts, money that would otherwise be budgeted for road expansion. Some rather strange and unique coalitions have formed, ones that essentially sideline (or embarrass) any opposition.
Many of these bike routes pass near existing developments and freeways, making them convenient for access. Then they disappear into wild areas that are inaccessible by any other means, providing not just incentive to go for a ride, but also to commute to work by bike. As San Diego struggles to add light rail and electric busses, and freeways are increasingly gridlocked, it seems as if the bike effort is the "little engine that could".
While it has never been rare to see rattlesnakes and coyotes on local bike paths, we're now starting to see more mountain lions, rabbits and other animals. Which has resulted in many great photos being shared in the r/SanDiego subreddit!
As an aside, the recent crash of Monarch butterfly populations has encouraged an enormous number of San Diegans to become "Monarch Farmers", cultivating milkweed and fighting aphids and tachinid flies. San Diego is on a major Monarch migration route, and I love seeing this kind of effort.
Pretty cool, eh?
I happily invite snakes to my house
coyotes are jus dogs who havent been turned into lovable dummies by humans. they are actually really smart about not messing with humans directly.
they are all over in the smaller metro areas surrounding Milwaukee
We have a lot of love for our Bay Area coyotes.
Hello, fellow Oakland mate.
🗣️ Thank you
🤔William Oscar Garvin: animals are thinking wow if these humans keep us in their house to be friends then maybe we'll live with them too as well so they can be our friends.
PBS Terra sent me
We are so glad you came over to check out our show! We are big Terra fans. We feel pretty 🍀 to be part of the PBS Network of amazing channels.
@@AboveTheNoise Thanks!! Great content in video and I subscribed to your channel. Nature is everywhere. I remember watching the documentary National Parks America's Best Idea and a park ranger in NYC was interviewed and he said that nature and wildlife are in NYC and everywhere. That interview changed my whole mindset. I had thought I had to leave the city to find nature. Not so.
what about singapore
its a garden city
should the definition of cities change?
What happens if we introduce a tiger?
I don't think that would go well!
What if we just raise cities off the ground? Animals and trees have their land below and we have our land above, like bridges/highways.
Ah yeah, and you keep that from collapsing without having a trillion dollars to spend on concrete though, its impossible to raise our cities in a not so costly and efficient manner
@@gamesnig true, i think i was sleep deprived when i made this
Singapore and its otters
Tell us more! That sounds intriguing...
7:07 - Washington DC is a paradise for wild animals
Every American: duh
I don't think a lot of people know this!
@@dereklartaud3807 was supposed to be political commentary...
I don’t think they we can co exist with animals we use so much land and it keeps growing faster there’s barley enough land In some places for humans and cities I think eventually the animals is the cities will start to go into the suburbs
Also one day someone will see the Lorax walking down the street
You sound like you have the intel on the Lorax, Sam I am.
Surely we can (and definitely should, without any doubts) plant more trees, introducing green patches, removing pollutants, making better conservative efforts and educating et al; BUT it does not solve the root of the problem, as which was clearly explained by the host, it is The OVERPOPULATION- if we do nothing to curb our population growth, all the conservation endeavors are as good as vain.
Think about increasing 2 hectares of green land in a city yet when global population reaches 9 billion 😏
What good does it do? Where do we get those lands to grow to feed the extra 2 billion mouths? How much more CO2 (and methane) would be emitting into the air?
Land, land area, ocean, water, creatures living in it, food availability, resources are all limited. Should the human population not?
Thought bubble / Crash Course Philosophy 😉
Terra sen me here
Absolutely not, Animal can't live in a city, due to human ignorance and selfishness city is design to be for humans alone. But the thing is, we can build one, a world where we can coexist with animals, a city designed not with only humans in mind but a city designed to where we can coexist with animals, not just cities but anywhere in the world.
Wait until some wave of light petrifies every human on Earth.
Dr. Stone reference?
Egg