Urban Wildlife Management
What does urban mean to
people
wildlife
It can be tricky to settle on an urban definition. How to compare urban areas to suburban and rural areas?
Potential variables to define urban include:
% Impervious surface
Housing or road density
Historical focus on rural and wilderness environments. Managing ‘natural’ areas; “saving species that were valued for their aesthetic qualities; or animals that were traditionally hunted.
Urban wildlife management was not regarded as a responsibility by many wildlife agencies until relatively recently.
The convergence of 2 phenomena facilitated that change during the 1980’s and 1990s.
interest in wildlife amongst urbanites
human population growth was not uniformly distributed, causing human-wildlife interactions to vary within landscapes
Urban development may be one of the biggest threats to global biodiversity today
Urban avoiders, urban adapters, urban exploiters
New terms: urban avoided, urban utilized, and urban dweller form an updated gradient of responses to urbanization with each category representing a portion of that gradient
key update: within a species, population responses to urbanization occupy a range along the gradient of responses
Wildlife and humans interactions:
vary in intensity and duration
positive or negative?
Social, physical, mental benefits for people
Urban animals also regulate and support the ecosystems of towns and cities
Nature walk, bird watching on NC State’s Campus = decreased stress, increased happiness for students
Many view urban wildlife management more as wildlife “damage control”
damage to property
vehicle damage
health and safety concerns
Urban expansion, wildlife health, and human health are intricately interwoven
Cities as zoonotic hotspots. Zoonotic disease are impacted by urbanization in many ways. Three major themes:
Increased movement of people, animals, and wildlife products
Urban landscape modification
The concentration of humans and inequality in the distribution of health services, clean food and water, and sanitation
Urban wildlife management is…
technically complex
has no single acceptable solution
Multiple outcomes and strategies of achieving those outcomes are desired by different stakeholders, based on their respective values
Urban wildlife management takes place in an environment comprised of…
sociocultural
economic
political
and ecological components
referred to as a social-ecological system or as coupled
Management approaches must be contextually sensitive
Acknwoledge the diverse socio-cultural and political landscapes across urban-rural gradients
Traditional management typically includes population management or individual animal removal (lethal and nonlethal)
not always possible in urban areas, social or safety concerns
Need to understand these concerns to successfully implement
Future conservation will rely in part on our interactions with urban ecosystems and organisms
current conservation is insufficient
people take conservation efforts when they have prior experience in the natural world
people primarily have experiences with nature in the urban setting
What is the paradox? focusing conservation on things we don’t already view as important. Careful how we portray urban nature—especially isf only before experience someone is getting
What does urban mean to
people
wildlife
It can be tricky to settle on an urban definition. How to compare urban areas to suburban and rural areas?
Potential variables to define urban include:
% Impervious surface
Housing or road density
Historical focus on rural and wilderness environments. Managing ‘natural’ areas; “saving species that were valued for their aesthetic qualities; or animals that were traditionally hunted.
Urban wildlife management was not regarded as a responsibility by many wildlife agencies until relatively recently.
The convergence of 2 phenomena facilitated that change during the 1980’s and 1990s.
interest in wildlife amongst urbanites
human population growth was not uniformly distributed, causing human-wildlife interactions to vary within landscapes
Urban development may be one of the biggest threats to global biodiversity today
Urban avoiders, urban adapters, urban exploiters
New terms: urban avoided, urban utilized, and urban dweller form an updated gradient of responses to urbanization with each category representing a portion of that gradient
key update: within a species, population responses to urbanization occupy a range along the gradient of responses
Wildlife and humans interactions:
vary in intensity and duration
positive or negative?
Social, physical, mental benefits for people
Urban animals also regulate and support the ecosystems of towns and cities
Nature walk, bird watching on NC State’s Campus = decreased stress, increased happiness for students
Many view urban wildlife management more as wildlife “damage control”
damage to property
vehicle damage
health and safety concerns
Urban expansion, wildlife health, and human health are intricately interwoven
Cities as zoonotic hotspots. Zoonotic disease are impacted by urbanization in many ways. Three major themes:
Increased movement of people, animals, and wildlife products
Urban landscape modification
The concentration of humans and inequality in the distribution of health services, clean food and water, and sanitation
Urban wildlife management is…
technically complex
has no single acceptable solution
Multiple outcomes and strategies of achieving those outcomes are desired by different stakeholders, based on their respective values
Urban wildlife management takes place in an environment comprised of…
sociocultural
economic
political
and ecological components
referred to as a social-ecological system or as coupled
Management approaches must be contextually sensitive
Acknwoledge the diverse socio-cultural and political landscapes across urban-rural gradients
Traditional management typically includes population management or individual animal removal (lethal and nonlethal)
not always possible in urban areas, social or safety concerns
Need to understand these concerns to successfully implement
Future conservation will rely in part on our interactions with urban ecosystems and organisms
current conservation is insufficient
people take conservation efforts when they have prior experience in the natural world
people primarily have experiences with nature in the urban setting
What is the paradox? focusing conservation on things we don’t already view as important. Careful how we portray urban nature—especially isf only before experience someone is getting