Feral Cities

by Tristan Donovan

  At the southern end of the pond, there’s a small island peppered with trees. “You’ll probably see some turtles around the island,” says Seth. “We introduced painted turtles, but red-eared sliders and snapping turtles have found their way here on their own. We suspect that the red-eared sliders may have had help, since people buy them as pets and then let them go.”

  One unexpected resident of the Nature Boardwalk is the black-crowned night heron, a stocky wetland bird with dark red eyes and black feathers that run from the top of its head and down the back of its otherwise white and gray body. These birds, which feed on fish and aquatic invertebrates, are an endangered species in Illinois, yet there is a thriving colony of them in Lincoln Park.

  “The heron started showing up right around the same time as we renovated this area. We did have a small colony before that, but every year they are coming and nesting in larger and larger numbers right here in the heart of Chicago, which gives you an example of how you can conserve a rare species even in an urban landscape.”

  The boardwalk is only the most visible example of Lincoln Park Zoo’s urban wildlife work. As well as creating a slice of Illinois prairie in the heart of Chicago, the zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute is busy piecing together the ecology of the city.

  Seth is the institute’s director, and his path into urban ecology was the result of sloth. “I feel like most people in wildlife studies have a very inspiring story of what got them started,” he says. “You know, they saw a bald eagle perched on a tree during a hike or they woke up and realized that the rattlesnake was their spirit animal or something. My own story is born out of laziness.

  “When I was an undergraduate at the University of Colorado, we had to do a project where we had to watch an animal for a few hours and write down things about its behavior. Well, the apartment building I lived in in Boulder had a prairie dog colony living across the street. So I thought that would be perfect as I could virtually see them from my window and they were awake during the day and were not going anywhere.”

  His professors were unimpressed with his plan to watch the tan-colored rodents. “I went to my academic advisor and said, ‘Hey, what’s going on with all these urban prairie dogs that I see everywhere?’ He said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Why would anyone want to know that?’”

  Undeterred, Seth headed to the university library to check the scientific literature for information about the urban lives of black-tailed prairie dogs. There was nothing.

  “I realized, ‘Wait, really? No one knows anything? These animals live fifty feet from where I sleep. How can no one know anything about them?’ That just blew my mind. So I asked some very basic questions, the sort of things people were asking about animals in the wild in the early 1900s, and ended up turning that project into a masters thesis and then a PhD.”

  Initially, Seth thought there would be little difference between the prairie dogs of urban Colorado and the wild, where the activities of these burrowing rodents changes the vegetation and soil in ways crucial for everything from sagebrush and burrowing owls to pronghorns. “I thought they would influence diversity in the same way and that their populations would function the same, but that wasn’t true at all. We found that they lived in ten times the density that they did in natural landscapes, that they didn’t really migrate between colonies as much as they should, so their genetics were peeled back, and they didn’t change the bird community in the same way as they did on the prairie.”

  Seth’s prairie dog study is ongoing, but now it is just one of the projects underway at the Urban Wildlife Institute, which has also been studying the effect of relocating groundhogs and nonlethal ways of keeping city rabbits under control.

  The institute’s flagship project is the biodiversity monitoring study. Its goal is to build as complete as possible a picture of wild Chicago. “We’ve set up over a hundred field stations. They initiate right over there in downtown Chicago and travel out west, southwest, and northwest,” says Seth, as we plant ourselves on a bench overlooking the boardwalk pond.

  At each field station are motion cameras that take snaps of passing animals and alcohol-filled “pitfall” traps to catch spiders and insects. The team also holds regular bird counts at each station. As with the prairie dogs, the results have confounded expectations. “When I look back over my body of work so far, the recurrent thread is that things didn’t turn out the way I thought they would,” says Seth. “Things were very different with the prairie dogs, and we’re finding more or less the same thing here.

  “One of the things we really expected to find in our data was that we would see fewer deer in sites where we see coyotes. Well, not true at all. The sites that have deer tended to also have coyotes.

  “We think it’s just that habitat is so limited and resources so limited that if you’re a deer trying to decide where you are going to browse, you may have coyotes in your patch but leaving involves going across several roads and highways. It’s a hazardous journey and it’s uncertain if you will find another patch, and even then that patch may have coyotes too.”

  This, he explains, is not how deer and coyotes behave in more natural habitats. “We have this thing there called the ‘ecology of fear’ where the deer move around and coyotes sort of track them. But that’s not how it works in urban systems.”

  Eventually the institute hopes to build a model for how urban ecosystems work that can explain how the wild residents of cities interact with one another, whether that’s how coyotes and red foxes fight for territory or the influence of particular plant species on local birdlife.

  That model is some way off, but Seth’s hope is that by understanding these systems better, we can start using cities to protect species we value. “In the long term we want to have a thorough conservation strategy that can conserve all types of species,” he says. “To do that we need to learn to manage human-wildlife conflict in urban areas, so we can use these areas as part of our strategy for conserving species.”

  The idea of using cities as places of conservation divides urban ecologists. “There is a schism between people who think all we can do is focus on managing the species that move into cities and the people who feel that we can use cities as an important component of conservation if we change the way we build our cities. I fall into the latter camp.

  “I think that taking the view that cities are an evil, that anything that happens in the city is unimportant, is quite short-sighted, because I don’t see any trends that we’re going to stop urbanizing the world.”

  Besides, he adds, we’re running out of options. “Our rate of finding land to preserve is dwindling, so at some point we’re not going to have any more preserves. But we will always have more city.”

  The Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo may be a deliberate attempt at conservation within the city, but even when we don’t act, urban areas are supporting many threatened species. The rebound in the number of peregrine falcons across the world is largely due to their success in cities, and as we’ve seen, Los Angeles has more Mexican red-head parrots than the part of Mexico they originated in, while the city of Jodhpur helped Rajasthan’s Hanuman langurs endure drought.

  Stockholm golf courses are also helping at-risk species. Close to two-thirds of the Swedish capital’s golf courses boast bird and insect diversity equal to or better than that within nature reserves and can attract declining species like red-headed woodpeckers.

  One shining example of urban conservation is the city of Bakersfield, California, which is helping the San Joaquin Valley kit fox survive. This rare sub-species of kit fox has been facing extinction due to habitat loss but, somewhat ironically, has found refuge in Bakersfield, where they live in shipping yards, parks, golf courses, and undeveloped land.

  Life in Bakersfield is good for these small buff-furred desert foxes, which look as if they evolved to be muses for Japanese anime artists with their short snouts and their extra big pair of ears that keeps them cool in the heat. There are fewer predators to worry abou
t, plenty of sites for dens, and a steady supply of human food, insects, and ground squirrels to eat. All of which has led to the kit foxes of Bakersfield living longer and breeding more than those outside the city.

  The kit foxes rarely cause problems for people, either. They are quiet and rarely knock over trash cans. Their most heinous crime is nothing more serious than occasionally stealing golf balls during play. That and getting themselves tangled up in soccer nets.

  Their fox cub looks and lack of antisocial behavior has won them plenty of supporters. Some Bakersfield residents have taken it upon themselves to defend the foxes, stopping people from disturbing the animals and even installing artificial dens on their property for them to use.

  The urban kit foxes have also rallied the locals to their wider cause. Most residents who have seen the kit foxes now support efforts to protect them, compared to 40 percent of those who haven’t had a firsthand encounter. By fueling support for their conservation and maintaining their population, the Bakersfield kit foxes could prove crucial in helping the sub-species survive both in the city and beyond.

  The idea of using cities for conservation is, however, easier said than done. The Mexican red-head parrots might be abundant in Los Angeles, but what’s the point of shipping them to northeast Mexico to rebuild the original population if the problems that caused their decline there remain? But having cities that act as life rafts for troubled species does at least offer a potential means of doing that.

  Of course urbanization itself has pushed out plenty of species, a good proportion of which now face extinction, but the realpolitik of the situation is that cities are not going to vanish or stop growing unless there’s some cataclysmic nuclear war. We might not be able to reverse the damage already done by urbanization, but that’s no reason not to use cities to supplement our wider efforts to help struggling species, especially when there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that they can do this.

  The reasons to use our cities in this way don’t just stop with maintaining biodiversity. Having urban areas that are more wildlife friendly makes cities and towns better places to live in. Urban wildlife can sometimes be irritating or messy and, in cases like the leopards of Mumbai, genuinely scary, but for the most part these unexpected encounters with the animals among us are positive, a cheering reminder that we are not alone and that our cities are far from sterile or divorced from nature. It’s hard not to have your day brightened by a glimpse of a bushy-tailed fox running down the street or a flock of monk parakeets flying across the skyline or a wild boar with piglets in tow holding up traffic.

  Their presence might even make us healthier. More and more studies are finding connections between contact with nature and better mental health or reduced stress levels. Some studies even suggest that more exposure to nature can improve children’s school grades.

  Working out how we can engineer wilder cities is tricky, though. Urban ecology has gone understudied for many years and, as Seth’s work shows, much of what we know about how ecosystems function in the wild or in rural areas just doesn’t apply in cities. More funding for urban ecology research is going to be needed before we understand city environments well enough to really start designing cities that encourage wildlife effectively.

  But that research need not be confined to the halls of academia. The efforts of groups like the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors have, through their dedication and studious recording of bird strikes, proven the effectiveness of Lights Out programs and helped both architects and urban planners make cities more bird-friendly. Citizen science studies, like Mark’s cockroach investigation and the Arthropods of Our Homes project, offer people a way to learn about what animals live around them while also helping to increase our wider understanding of urban wildlife. From bird counts to indoor bug hunts, universities, animal charities, and natural history museums are running citizen science initiatives that can involve everyone.

  But while our understanding of urban wildlife is incomplete, we already know that some approaches to fostering urban wildlife work. One approach with plenty of evidence behind it is the creation of green or brown roofs. The idea of creating rooftop wildlife gardens started in Germany back in the 1970s, and the worldwide movement that followed has plenty of success stories to tell. In the Swiss city of Basel, where green roofs are now compulsory on new flat-roofed buildings, these rooftop gardens have become home to significant numbers of rare beetles and spiders. Brown roofs of crushed brick and concrete also take much of the credit for the return of the black redstart, a robin-sized bird with gray-black plumage, to London.

  Yet the full potential of green roofs has yet to be realized, says Clare Dinham, brownfield conservation officer at the British arthropod conservation charity Buglife. “The odd green roof here and there will provide some habitat, but it’s limited,” she says. “However, if you do it on a great scale then it can become really important.”

  The potential is huge. If a small number of brown roofs in London can bring back the black redstart, just imagine what a city full of green and brown roofs could achieve. And what if we embraced Berlin’s long-held vision for “coherent greenery” and started linking green roofs and green spaces together via green walls? We could also think about the Bakersfield kit foxes and cliff swallows in Lincoln Park Zoo and create artificial dens and nesting sites for the wildlife we want to encourage in our parks and yards.

  But before we can do any of this, we’ve first got to stop thinking of cities as barren, anti-nature zones. This environment we’ve built, this urban biome, is teeming with life, but all too often we just blank it out. “I was in a meeting just yesterday and a woman was there from another zoo, and she made this statement that ‘I love it when kids come to the zoo. For many of them it’s the first time they’ve ever seen a wild animal,’” Seth tells me as we sit on that bench looking out over Chicago.

  “I just had to stand up and say, ‘That’s not true! They have all seen squirrels, they have all seen pigeons, and the fact that you don’t think of them as wildlife does not mean they aren’t wildlife. It’s just that you are so attuned to them being around, you no longer think of them as wildlife.’”

  And as I sit with Seth, I see the evidence all around us. The cliff swallows under the bridge. The rare black-crowned night heron standing in the water. The squirrels scampering up the trees. And out there in the city, beyond the zoo, there are crows hunting dazed indigo buntings on the streets, ants nesting under the sidewalks, spitting spiders roaming apartments, pigeons pecking at crumbs, and coyotes snoozing unseen in the bushes.

  The city is alive. The wild is here, right on our doorstep, in our streets and inside our homes.

  All we have to do is open our eyes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A great many people made this book possible, not least my ever-supportive husband Jay Priest, my fantastic agent Isabel Atherton, and Yuval Taylor and the rest of the Chicago Review Press team.

  Thanks also to my sister Jade for joining me in Berlin, Tom Homewood (and his assistant Ben Milne) for the illustrations, and my German interpreter, Nancy Chapple.

  A big thank you also goes to all of the people who generously shared their time and expertise as I delved into the world of urban wildlife: Vidya Athreya. Daniel Bajomi. Steve Baldwin. Carol Bannerman. Eric Barna. Liz Barraco. Matt Bertone (with further thanks for the edits). Brian Brown. Adrian Diaz. Scott Diehl. Mohammad Dilawar. Hoang Dinh. Clare Dinham. Rob Dunn. Erle Ellis. Mark Fagan. Captain Jeffrey Fobb. Omar Garcia. Jane Griffin Dozier. Dallas Hazelton. Derk Ehlert. Mason Fidino. Blair Fyten. Kimball Garrett. Stan Gehrt. David Gummer. Paul Hetherington. Lila Higgins. Wes Homoya. Bryan Hughes. Kate Kuykendall. Garry Lafaille. Liza Lehrer. Judy Loven. Seth Magle. Graham Martin. Anne Maschmeyer. Shane McKenzie. Holly Menninger. Zeeshan Mirza. Alex Muñoz (who needs an extra thanks for making my trip to Miami so productive). Armando Navarrete. Maria Németh. Gilda Nuñez. Miguel Ordeñana. Justin O’Riain. Gregory Pauly. Will Peach. Annette Prince. Curt Publow. Gregory Ran
dall. Ian Rotherham. Tiffany Ruddle. Amy Savage. Dawn Scott. Laurel Serieys. Sarah Sharpe. Vincent Sheurer. Rob Smith. Ruth Smith. Vernon Smith. Angela Speed. Mark Stoeckle. Michelle Trautwein. Jill Turner. Wilfredo Valladares. Tim Webb. Paul Wilkinson. Mary Winston. Karen Wise.

  REFERENCES

  1. Hot Tub Snakes

  Albert, Josh. “Pituophis catenifer.” Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan, 2008. http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Pituophis_catenifer.

  Argos, Greg. “Javelina Encounters in Phoenix Area on Rise.” CBS 5 KPHO, January 7, 2014. www.kpho.com/story/24390727/javelina-attack-womans-dog-encounters-on-the-rise.

  Arizona Game and Fish Department. “Living with Javelina.” Accessed August 20, 2014. www.azgfd.gov/w_c/urban_javelina.shtml.

  BBC News. “Fox Lived in the Shard Skyscraper at London Bridge.” February 24, 2011. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12573364.

  Best, Jessica. “Man Discovers a Fox in His Bed After Rolling Over to Give His Girlfriend a Cuddle.” Mirror, August 27, 2013. www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/man-discovers-fox-bed-after-2227937.

  Channel 4. “A Short History of the Urban Fox.” Accessed August 20, 2014. www.channel4.com/programmes/foxes-live-wild-in-the-city/articles/all/a-short-history-of-the-urban-fox.

  Devenish-Nelson, Eleanor. “Sarcoptic Mange in Red Foxes: The Role of Fox Behaviour.” Mammal Research Unit, University of Bristol. Accessed August 20, 2014. www.bio.bris.ac.uk/research/mammal/fox_mange.html.

  Gehrt, Stanley D., Seth P. D. Riley, and Brian L. Cypher, eds. Urban Carnivores: Ecology, Conflict and Conservation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

  Harris, Stephen. “Culling Urban Foxes Just Doesn’t Work.” New Scientist, February 20, 2013. www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729050.200-culling-urban-foxes-just-doesnt-work.html.

  Hough, Andrew. “Twin Girls in Hospital After Fox Attack at London Home.” Telegraph, June 6, 2010. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7807232/Twin-girls-in-hospital-after-fox-attack-at-London-home.html.