Wildlife and Human, The Impact of Urbanisation on Wild Animals

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, when most people are isolated at home, various wild animals appeared in cities worldwide. According to South China Morning Post (2020), numerous wild animals came to the streets, such as wild goats appeared on the streets of Wales, a wild puma showed in Santiago, Chile, and a sea lion was sighted on the sidewalk in South Buenos Aires, Argentina (The Guardian, 2020). Urbanization is expanding at a worldwide scale, with biological results that expand past urban boundaries (Bradley & Altizer, 2007). Research shows that the urbanisation has influenced wild animals’ behaviours, habitats, even bodies. For instance, the difference between the red foxes' skull in the city and the country was discovered (Parsons et al., 2020). This study focuses on the wildlife in cities, explores the relationship between wild animals and humans and the influences of human activities on animals, and analyses the benefits and disadvantages of this phenomenon, raising a question that animals should live in cities or the natural environment. This project is based on other scholars’ studies and personal practices.

Increasingly wild animals are gradually moving into cities due to the urbanisation. However, they are not only moving in but also adapting the city environment in several ways. Parsons et al. (2020) have found that the red foxes in the urban ecosystem have shorter and wider snouts, smaller heads and fewer gender differences. In addition, the study of syncretization (the adjustment of wildlife population according to modern city conditions) by Luniak (2004) also reports the similar phenome, which claims that it is a global trend and there were at least twelve new species of birds and two mammals have highly adapted city life in Warsaw in past decades. The urban heat island effect makes animals tend and living in cities means that it could be easier for animals to get food. According to Dell’Amore (2015), there are more and more wild animals in cities worldwide, one of the many reasons is that cities are a cornucopia of food. Dell’Amore (2016) also writes that a coyote has spent his whole life in a cemetery in downtown Chicago, living on the chicken on the graves placed by the mourners, and a cougar wanders in the Hollywood Hills (Fig. 1). It is indeed easier for wild animals not to starve, yet this could also cause certain significant issues.

Fig. 1: Winter, S., (n.d.), Hollywood’s Cougar roams through Los Angeles’ Griffith Park.

The emergence of wild animals in cities may cause major health problems. Bradley and Altizer (2007) suggest that despite that the number of wild animal and plant parasites has been reduced by urbanization, in certain situations, the transmission may still increase among urban-adapted hosts, in which they also emphasized the importance of research on diseases about wildlife within the city because the continuous and rapid urbanization process will bring risks to not only humans but also vulnerable organisms living in them. The outbreak of COVID-19 has sounded the alarm for us, the source of the virus is still unknown, and the wildlife in the city must be taken seriously. Nevertheless, the situation could cause problems because the city ecosystem is not designed for wildlife. The natural habitats of plants and animals have been replaced by more and more artificial infrastructures (Hamer & McDonnell, 2010 cited in Lowry, Lill & Wong, 2012, p. 537). This environment is foreign to wild animals and created new challenges such as finding habitats and traffic noise (Reijnen, Foppen & Veenbas, 1997, Fernández‐Juricic & Telleria, 2000 cited in Lowry et al., 2012, p. 538). These studies demonstrated the significance of the issues.

This project aims to reveal the status of wild animals living in urban environments. Which involves search, track and photograph animals in artificial and natural environments, then compare which, to create an awareness of current phenomenon to the public and attract attention. Foxes and squirrels were chosen because Demonstrating the species diversity of wild animals in the city is one of the key parts. The reason why this project did not choose to illustration more species is due to a fact that cannot be ignored — although there are many wild animals in the city, they still are afraid of human. But the project will still cover as many species as possible. The photos will be shown in the natural environment (Fig. 2), where the animals should be or to say used to be. The aesthetics and representative aspects of the picture are carefully considered. The light effect of the scene is completely dependent on natural light. The content not only displays the urban and artificial landscape, but also considers the beauty of the animal's posture, movement, and expression. The reason for choosing photography as the medium to show this project is that photographs show the frozen time and pieces of reality. Compared with video, it can provide higher reading speed and wider thinking space; Comparing to text, there is no language limitation, which is critical because this is a global problem. Additionally, the pictures are also easier to display and spread.

Fig. 2: Hao, Ming., (2021), The Visualisation of the Works Display Method.

According to Adams (2005, p. 139), who produced a brief history of the ecosystem and protections of urban wildlife research, this issue received some attention in the early to mid 1900s, but most activities in this area just originated in the recent decades. Because of the global and historical nature of this phenomenon, the project is facing to the general public, hoping to attract the attention of urban development planners, policy makers, scholars and environmentalist and all the people who related to city development designs, and plan sustainable development strategies for urban ecology. For this phenomenon, as Adams (2005, p. 140) claims, some cities try to find solutions. For instance, the Urban Wildlife Trusts, constitute by 47 local institutions which dedicated to protecting the ecology of cities and suburbs in the UK (The Wildlife Trusts, 2003 cited in Adams, 2005, p. 140); in the late 1960s, the conception of ‘ecological landscape’ came into the Netherlands, which was used as a new method of city open spaces designing (Ruff, 1987 cited in Adams, 2005, p. 140). However, even though this problem was valued in several cities, defects still existing. As Dasmann (1966, cited in Adams, 2005, pp. 141-142) suggests that the research on wild animals is too narrow, focusing too much on game animals and hunters, and they should go out of the forest to the city, and work with planners, landscape architects, and all other people related to urban environment construction to make people's daily life place, can get the greatest degree of rich contact with biological and natural beauty.

The project does not involve any person, however, there still have moral considerations regarding the animal protection. In a study on the ethics of wildlife photography, Cooper (2017, p. 95) concluded that some ethical issues of animal photography are vague, and wildlife photography cannot be assessed just as harmless or positive. But animal photography is an activity recognised by society, and the basic principle is the history of human beings view of animals (Cooper, 2017, p. 96). Thus, this project will not cause harm to any animals, and insists on not feeding, chasing, capture, harass, mark or trapping, so as to minimize the disturbance to animals.

In conclusion, the urban environment can indeed bring some convenience to certain animals, such as heating and food, but it still poses great threats to humans and animals, such as the spread of some bacteria and viruses and the impact of noise on wild animals. Lowry et al. (2012, p. 546) suggest that city ecosystem puts wild animals under selection stress, which is generally not same as the pressures it experienced in evolution. This paper’s point of view is that animals are not suitable for living in an urban environment, but counter-urbanization is impossible and unreasonable. Just as Lowry et al. (2012, p. 546) summarise that when there are no limitations of resources, animals will respond to new selection pressures offered by cities. The extraordinary adaptability of certain animals has been proven by their thriving in the new environment of the city (Lowry et al., 2012, p. 537), and we will be able to understand better which animals are suitable for survival in cities and which should be excluded, by exaggerating research on urban wildlife (Lowry et al., 2012, p. 546). Therefore, the project focuses on capturing images of wild animals in the city and comparing them with the images of wildlife in the wild to attract the attention of the society and public to the wild animals in the city.

Bibliography

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Hao, Ming., (2021), The Visualisation of the Works Display Method.

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