Yumi and I attended an event the other day on urban wildlife.
I found some of the discussion disturbing. There was a notion bandied about that perhaps we should wall off our cities from wildlife, to, er, protect the wildlife.
I think the #1 issue about modern city folks and wildlife is the lack of contact, knowledge, and experience.
How do we “help” wildlife by detaching human beings even further from nature?
Yes, of course there are conflicts at the urban-suburban/wild interface. But putting up walls, be they physical or mental, is not going to make this better.
Some brave soul noted the we, humans, are just another species of mammals. Isn’t that obvious?
We humans keep taking up more and more of the land. And when the animals try to do what they’ve been doing for millennia, all of a sudden they’re pests, or they’re dangerous.
I know folks who live much closer to the so-called wild. When they see a bear in their yards, they’re careful, and they let the bear enjoy the apple tree. They don’t call officers to shoot the bear, they don’t shoot the bear themselves.
They live with the bear.