Reframing urban “wildlife” to promote inclusive conservation science and practice

Abstract

Cities are home to both a majority of the world’s human population, and to a diversity of wildlife. Urban wildlife conservation research and policy has importantly furthered ecological understanding and species protection in cities, while also leveraging wildlife conservation to connect people to urban nature. Thus, urban wildlife conservation intersects conservation research, conservation policy, and the general public in cities worldwide. Yet, species that are often framed as “urban wildlife” are often of higher trophic levels, including birds and mammals that serve as “flagship” species for public support. Other forms of urban life including plants and invertebrates are often largely ignored, producing a normative urban wildlife concept that may bias urban wildlife conservation research and policy, and sentiment in the general public. To develop new strategies in urban wildlife conservation for the urban era, we need to move towards a more inclusive and holistic framing of urban wildlife for both research and the public. In this article, we discuss the normative framing of urban wildlife and how this framing may bias urban conservation efforts, and argue for a holistic approach to urban wildlife inclusive of all life forms for future research, publicity and policy interventions.

The native - exotic plant choice in green roof design: using a multicriteria decision framework to foster urban biodiversity

“…obs.). This confirms the "close identity between plants and place", a key aspect of the plants' signature concept of Robinson (1993), that could be useful to reframe urban wildlife (Egerer and Buchholz, 2021). Ruderal, formerly "weeds", can be reframed as "pollinator attractive plants'' and "beneficial insectary plants" (i.e.…”

“…In this regard, and considering that two annual species here tested were able to reseed without regular watering and that adding annuals has positive effects on green roof arthropods (e.g., Salman and Blaustein, 2018), we sustain that the relative success of a given species should be considered in a broader sense, integrating the potential of a given species to foster urban biodiversity. Urban environments are usually characterized by their restricted value for animals (Apfelbeck et al, 2019), especially for insects (Egerer and Buchholz, 2021;Fenoglio et al, 2021). Therefore, the idea that only minimal interventions are needed to favour arthropods is especially attractive for their conservation in cities.…”

It Is a Wild World in the City: Urban Wildlife Conservation and Communication in the Age of COVID-19

“…In their review, Collins et al [34] note the growth in publications on urban social science and disease ecology and the ongoing bias toward studying mammals and birds, mostly in rich countries-problems repeatedly noted in conservation science in general. The need to include vegetation and invertebrates in urban studies, as we are doing here, has also been emphasized by Egerer and Buchholz [49]. Finally, the need to improve urban wildlife health surveillance was brought up, just before the irruption of COVID-19, by Stephen [50].…”

Moving past the challenges and misconceptions in urban adaptation research

“…This is not to say that urban ecosystems are qualitatively “good,” nor are they more appropriate than non‐urban systems for adaptation research. In fact, how humans interact with and influence nature cannot be extricated from wildlife conservation practices (Bergey & Whipkey, 2020 ; Egerer & Buchholz, 2021 ; McKinney, 2006 ). Even so, cities provide the opportunity to study ecological interactions and evolutionary outcomes that may uniquely result from the dynamic interactions that include humans.…”