U URBAN WILDLIFE The 21st century continues to bear wit-ness to the relentless growth of human populations, along with the cities that have become our principal habita-tion.. The tra
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URBAN WILDLIFE
The 21st century continues to bear
wit-ness to the relentless growth of human
populations, along with the cities that
have become our principal
habita-tion In 2008, an unheralded boundary
was crossed when more humans
glob-ally came to live in cities than outside
them The transition from humans
liv-ing in small social groups to a massive,
urban, cosmopolitan populace has taken
place in less than one percent of the time
we have been identifiable as a species
We are, it seems, villagers confronting
the challenges of big city life, and
seem-ingly poorly equipped to deal with
prob-lems ranging from obvious social discord
to our near-suicidal mistreatment of the
natural world Proponents of concepts
such as biophilia and nature deficit
dis-order tell us that one of the more
impor-tant consequences of urban life is that we
are also becoming increasingly alienated
from the natural world, in ways that can
produce a lack of empathy, concern, and
connection to other living things, humans
included
Abetting a moral and personal
alien-ation from nature is the ever-growing
burden of the urban ecological footprint
Cities not only dominate, directly and
in-directly, the global ecology, they are also
important ecosystems in their own right
(Hadidian & Smith, 2001) The urban
environment is characterized by both a
high degree of landscape heterogeneity and a rapid change of landforms, primar-ily as a result of constant development activities Wild animals that have long been urban residents, for example, squir-rels, must cope with these, and species that are colonizing urban habitats, for example coyotes, must adapt An ever growing and expanding zone of human-animal contacts characterizes city and suburb, wherein the majority of interac-tions are undoubtedly positive, while the more noticed, discussed, and attended to are undoubtedly negative Any wild ani-mal living in the urban environment can
be, and certainly at one time or more has been, labeled a pest Historically, wildlife authorities in North America have con-ducted pest control by using traditional approaches—hunting, trapping, and poi-soning being preferred Derived largely from an agricultural context, such prac-tices have been deemed necessary as eco-nomic measures, but are harshly criticized for their moral presuppositions (Fox and Papouchis, 2004; Robinson, 2005) Controversy and polarization arise from differing ethics of how we ought to relate to and live with nonhuman animals Both specific practices, as well as the prin-ciples underlying the treatment of wild animals in the urban context, are rightly being questioned Traditional wildlife control practices, such as the drowning of nuisance animals that have been caught in traps, deserve obvious criticism, because