Wildlife in Artificial Ecosystem

Wildlife in Artificial Ecosystem

Global urbanisation is intensifying. According to a report from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2018), two-thirds of the population live in cities by 2050. Studies have shown that wild animals’ behaviour, habitat and even the body are affected by urbanisation (Hao, 2021, p. 1), and evidence indicates that numerous wildlife is getting closer with human. Wild animals can only choose to be excluded or adapt to these artificial environments (Lowry, Lill & Wong, 2012, p. 537). There are full of challenges for those animals who inhabit the new and unfamiliar urban ecosystem, such as traffic noise (Reijnen, Foppen & Veenbas, 1997, p. 567). Moreover, the Natural History Museum’s report on the State of Nature shows that 41% of British species have decreased since the 1970s (Davis, 2019). Furthermore, this situation is also critical for residents because it also has a huge impact on people. For instance, a person was injured in an attack on a wild Siberian tiger that descended into a village in Heilongjiang, China, in April 2021. While people enjoy the convenience brought by the urbanisation, the areas of human activity and wildlife are merged. It is crucial to rethink the relationship between human and wildlife. Hence, I want to bring an awareness to the public of the phenomenon that increasing numbers of wild animals are inhabiting around human settlements.

This project is building on my previous works. In which I have taken a series of photos of animals that haunt in urban environments. Furthermore, the last project studies a series of problems which would cause by this situation, such as the risk of infectious diseases, as Bradley and Altizer (2007, p. 95) point out that in some cases, the transmission of viruses in urban-adapted hosts may increase, despite the decline in wildlife and plant parasite populations due to urbanisation. However, which also analysed the benefits, such as within the city, it is easier for animals to get food and warmer due to the urban heat island effect.

Nevertheless, the last project has many shortcomings, for instance, the species involved are not rich enough, and the method of displaying the photos involves demonstrating wild animals’ photographs in a natural environment, which is hard to implement and be seen by many people. The current project based on the same purpose as the previous one, which is to emphasise the importance of understanding wildlife issues in cities. Thus, for this project, I decided to expand the album by shooting more species and combining multiple methods of exhibiting the photos to border the effect and with a better understanding of the case, which highlighting the influence of traffic to wild animals and the risk of feeding them.

In the early stage of the project, to collect information about the emergence of wild animals, I consulted several students at the University of Sussex. Dongjie Wei (2021), who also cares about animal issues, states that there are many foxes in Brighton, ‘they hide in small alleys during the day and appear on the streets at night’, and he once saw four foxes looking for food in the trash in the central area of Brighton at 2 am. Which as Lowry et al. (2012, p. 540) state that foraging in an urban environment is a high-risk activity for terrestrial mammals (such as being hit by a car) and changing the foraging mode and avoiding the peak of human activities is one of their ways to deal with this problem. Besides, Wakana Kato (2021) also claims that she saw many corpses of foxes and other unknown animals on the road around the Falmer Village and along the Wild Park. This also certificates that human transport is a massive challenge to the survival of wild animals.

In addition to the accidents that transportation may cause to animals, traffic noise is also a severe threat to wild animals. Although most wild animals tend to avoid people, some animals will inevitably appear in the range of human activities. While I am taking this picture (Fig 1), the rabbit has been frightened many times by vehicles that keep passing by. Furthermore, comparing to terrestrial mammals, birds are severely affected by noise even more. Reijnen et al. (1997, p. 567) state that traffic noise is likely to be the vital element affecting the habitat quality and species density of birds, but when road arrangement and management consider the impact on wildlife, birds are often ignored. Moreover, Francis, Ortega and Cruz (2010, p. 2025) claim that on a global scale, man-made noise may prevent birds from living in suitable habitats and affect their health. Therefore, it must be considered that artificial traffic is an invisible threat to wildlife.

Fig. 1: Hao, M., (2021), Frightened Rabbit, University of Sussex.

For another thing, people need to be aware of the dangers of feeding wildlife (Fig. 2). Sorensen, van Beest & Brook (2014, p. 356) suggest that feeding wild animals can raise the risk of spreading diseases to the surrounding environment and other animals, whether through direct contact with it or through the feed. Not to mention that over 60% of diseases are zoonotic, which means that some diseases are transmissible between humans and other animals (Taylor, Lathan & Woolhouse, 2001, p. 983), and history has proven how much harm a pandemic can cause to humans. In addition to the potential dangers of humans feeding wild animals, there is a high risk that the food they find around the human habitat is unhealthy for them. In the process of my shooting and even in my daily life, I have come across birds and other animals looking for food from the rubbish bins multiple times, for instance, the Fig 3 and Fig. 4. (Other samples see the attachment files.) Hence, I want to capture these senses, and with the presentation, I will mention later to draw attention to it.

Fig. 2: Hao, M., (2021), The Zoo, University of Sussex.

Fig. 3: Hao, M., (2021), A Squirrel on a Bin, University of Sussex.

Fig. 4: Hao, M., (2021), A Crow by the Bins, University of Sussex.

To make the project more rigorous, I extend the concept of the ‘urban environment’ to the ‘artificial ecosystem’, where people are living or artificial objects nearby. This project is based on the campus of the University of Sussex, for which I think the campus of a university is a quite representative ecosystem where has not only a large number of inhabitants and artificial elements but also enough natural environment. On the other hand, there were several difficulties if the project was chosen to be filmed in a city, such as the impact of traffic as I mentioned before, the fact that wildlife in cities is mainly seen at night, which posed a considerable challenge, moreover, choosing a representative city is problematic, and it is not practical to carry out the project in multiple cities.

Therefore, in order to demonstrate the diversity of species in this ecological context, I decided to expand the diversity of shoots, which includes more species of animals (compared to the previous project, which only involves a fox and squirrels), under day and night. Furthermore, as the issue of the human impact on birds I have previously addressed, there is reasonable evidence to indicate that it is crucial to understand the importance of birds in our ecosystem. Thus, the project no longer includes only land mammals, but also birds, in order to emphasise the place of birds in this modern environment. In addition, to emphasise the human impact, the project no longer includes wildlife photographed in natural settings (such as forests) as I did for my last project.

To demonstrate the photographs of this project, this time I choose to combine multiple methods to get as many views as possible. Firstly, I decided to add the new photos to the scene I had previously created with the Unity 3D modelling engine and record a video of the exhibition, which I eventually will share on social media. It is possible to argue that this is a fresh approach to the exhibition and would generate more interest than a traditional exhibition. Secondly, I will print out the photographs of these animals and place them where they once appeared, in this case, where I photographed them (Fig. 5). These are locations where there is a lot of human activity, which also means that they can be seen by more people. Thirdly, I will upload these photos to the iNaturalist website (Fig. 6), which was created by the California Academy of Science and the National Geographic Society, in which the data will be used by scientists for research (McNish, n.d.), this will get the most value out of these photos. Finally, I will publish these photos on my own WeChat public account, which is an individual media platform with a large number of viewers in China, in order to expand the audience for the project.

Fig. 5: Hao, M., (2021), Exhibiting the work, University of Sussex.

Fig. 6: Hao. M., (2021), Upload Observations to iNaturalist, Natural History Museum Website.

Due to time constraints and the impact of COVID-19, the project was confined to the campus of the University of Sussex, which I think would have been better and more convincing if it had been extended to a larger area such as the whole of the UK or even the whole world. However, animals appear more frequently and are easier to catch on campus due to the lower human activity caused by the pandemic lock-down, and as I stated previously, the university environment is representative enough to show the current state of wildlife around the human environment. Moreover, I tried to consult and interview some animal protection organisations and hunters during the pre-search phase of the animal interviews, but unfortunately did not receive a response, which I considered that would have given the project more credibility if I had succeeded in interviewing them.

The next step is working continuously to capture photographs of wild animals that appear in the artificial environment, involving more locations and species, and share them on social media and participate in some wildlife photography competitions to appeal to wildlife photographers to ‘get out of the woods and into the cities (Dasmann, 1966 cited in Adams, 2005, p. 142)’, paying more attention to the wild animals that appear in the cities.

In conclusion, this paper has introduced some of the factors that can affect the safety and health of animals, such as human traffic, traffic noise and human feeding. However，they are not the only issues. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, only those creatures that can adapt to their environment will survive, and this new environment is caused by formal human activities. There is credible evidence to suggest environmental change not only about climate change, human as one of the critical parts of the ecosystem, have creat a huge impact on other life on this planet. As Main (2021) comments on the photographer Manabu Sekine’s documentary photos about the revival of wildlife in an abandoned village after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, ‘these living things seem to be more affected by the presence of humans than by radiation’. It is essential to recognise these alterations, understand how this affects humans and other creatures and try to solve them.

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