6 ms·

Urban nature: What kinds of plants and wildlife flourish in cities?

47 points by Mz 9y ago

throwanem 9y ago
I live in Baltimore, and have seen some of the described research work going on. I also spend a lot of my free time tramping deer trails and generally wandering all over creation. Those who don't are regularly surprised to learn just what extent of wildlife our city supports! To the author's question of how city dwellers find green space and ecodiversity improvements of this sort - I think it's going to be hard to find anyone who feels these efforts and their results other than a material improvement in quality of life. What concerns me, though, is that we're recently seeing a pattern, in a lot of neighborhoods, where formerly vacant - and thus vegetated, if not always ideally so - spaces are being bought up cheaply from the city by developers who proceed to fill them to the edges with housing that does not fit the neighborhood, is not welcomed by established residents, and is priced out of reach of anyone save the sort of rich formerly urban professional who has found downtown life insufficiently welcoming once a first child comes along. That such people do not wish to move to soulless suburbs, I understand - but they seem fine with converting long-extant neighborhoods, with their own unique microcultures and community lives, into exactly that which they seek to avoid. And they seem unconcerned with inflicting the closure and privatization, of what have been de facto common spaces for in many cases decades, to whatever extent is necessary to achieve this short-sighted, ill-conceived, and universally destructive goal. If anyone has a suggestion on how to deal with that problem, I'd love to hear about it...
- brianzelip 9y ago
  Love finding deer in the city! Druid Hill Park is great for it, especially in the early morning.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Wyman Park, too, although perhaps not so much and not so friendly, I think because people let their dogs run loose. I was out there this last weekend and ran across a fox who'd fallen lethally foul of something, at any rate, and a dog seems by far the likeliest candidate - I keep hearing about coyotes, but it doesn't seem likely they would be much more difficult to observe than foxes, of which I've seen a goodly number. In any case, it's not as though whitetail are hard to find around here in general! In spring and fall, I often cross paths with them during my commute, and it's a rare peregrination on which I don't see at least one or two. If you really want to see wildlife, don't go to a park - put on your sturdy shoes and go find you some woods that don't look like they have people in them often, and it won't be long before you start finding deer trails to follow. (I know some very good places, but I hesitate somewhat to mention them publicly, because we have a fair number of fellow Baltimoreans here - while the local whitetail don't much care about people, foxes most certainly do, and they're hard enough to spot and photograph as it is! If you're interested enough, hit me up at the email in my profile, and we can talk about it some more.)
  - rb808 9y ago
    Dont you have Lyme disease in MD yet? Deer look pretty until you see people end up crippled by tick borne diseases. We need a serious cull in the NE.
    - cafard 9y ago
      Lyme disease has been around Maryland for years. I have known people to get it in the DC suburbs, one in his own back yard, one in a park. The US Park Service has culled deer in Rock Creek Park (Washington, DC) the last two or three winters. The neighborhood email list gets an invitation to join a candlelight vigil against this each fall. (No, I don't join.)
      - throwanem 9y ago
        > The neighborhood email list gets an invitation to join a candlelight vigil against this each fall. The venison from deer so culled goes to feed homeless folks in their town. From [1]: After reduction operations, the National Park Service tests the deer to make sure they don't have Chronic Wasting Disease before the venison is donated to local food banks. The NPS has donated approximately 7,300 pounds of venison to DC Central Kitchen since beginning deer management in 2013. I wonder if the vigileers know that. Or whether they care. Or whether they'd even approve. [1] https://www.nps.gov/rocr/learn/management/white-tailed-deer-management.htm https://www.nps.gov/rocr/learn/management/white-tailed-deer-...
        cafard 9y ago
        Yes, they know. I doubt they approve. Are those at the vigils all vegetarians? I have no idea.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      We do, and I've heard rumors of Rocky Mountain spotted fever as well. Don't get me wrong - I'm not in favor of letting whitetail breed explosively, unmolested by hunters; quite aside from the issue of tick-borne zoonoses, it's a waste of good venison.
- theandrewbailey 9y ago
  Pittsburgh has lots of wildlife as well. There have been so many rabbits this year. Almost any park is full of them, bike through and see them scatter. I've seen lots of turkeys around, and even walked up on one on the sidewalk.
- mabbo 9y ago
  > If anyone has a suggestion on how to deal with that problem, I'd love to hear about it... My knee-jerk reaction is to call you an anti-development NIMBY, but that's not actually solving any problem. So let's set that aside. Your neighbourhoods have benefited from the existence of this vacant land. The city, meanwhile, has costs to maintain that land, police it, etc and have even more costs to maintain the infrastructure of low-density housing in such neighbourhoods. Cities need to increase density, and they need to be able to afford to maintain themselves[0]. Selling vacant land removes a cost and creates desperately needed income in times where all a politician is allowed to do is lower taxes (or else their opponent next election will say that they will lower taxes and get elected). If you want to have low-density residential areas with lots of green space, you need to petition your government to raise your taxes so that you can pay for it. Campaign for politicians willing to invest rather than lower taxes. Have them convert the land into a local park, using your increased taxes to maintain it. [0] See everything on https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/
  - xkcd-sucks 9y ago
    Does policing and maintaining vacant lots actually incur any meaningful costs on a city? Do undeveloped zones within a high density area help mitigate any externalities of high density development, by providing habitat for predators of urban wildlife, dense plant growth to improve air quality and soak up stormwater, etc.?
    - mabbo 9y ago
      > Does policing and maintaining vacant lots actually incur any meaningful costs on a city? Vacant, unmaintained lands tend to attract crime. I say this from first hand experience- I was a teenager once, and we went to vacant, unmaintained land to commit crimes. We were good kids, mostly, but we weren't the only ones there. > by providing habitat for predators of urban wildlife, dense plant growth to improve air quality and soak up stormwater, etc.? I'm all for having dense forests near high rises (more birds! more plants! yes!) but that land is expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, expensive in terms of lost tax revenue. I simply argue that someone has to pay those costs, and getting mad at the city of being fiscally tight when politicians are elected promising exactly that is silly. You want to have a park/forest/whatever? Fine, but acknowledge that it's expensive and then pay your fair share of it.
- Mz 9y ago
  If anyone has a suggestion on how to deal with that problem, I'd love to hear about it... I am an Environmental Resource Management major who had plans to become an urban planner, and then life got in the way. Have you attended any local board meetings? Do you know what the policies are? Have you looked up any not-for-profits or think tanks that have an interest in such issues? This is going to tend to be solved by things like zoning laws, good review processes and advocates actively trying to preserve open space, build parks and protect neighborhood character.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Not gonna lie, I have no idea about any of that; I've only very recently become aware of the problem. But now I know where to start, or at least one possible place, and I thank you very kindly for that!
wcummings 9y ago
NYC has the highest concentration of Peregrine Falcons anywhere in the world. Lots of tall buildings for nests and lots of rats.
- twobyfour 9y ago
  My understanding is that the falcons prey more on pigeons than on rats. Of course, we've got plenty of pigeons, too.
  - wcummings 9y ago
    I stand corrected.
    - o_nate 9y ago
      The general rule of thumb is that falcons prey on other birds and hawks prey on land animals.
      - twobyfour 9y ago
        I thought the red tailed hawks (enjoying a resurgence in NYC recently) also were thriving on pigeons?
- 6stringmerc 9y ago
  I frequently get to watch Red Tailed Hawks in Downtown Dallas floating brilliantly on the air pockets. Big birds. http://dfwurbanwildlife.com/2011/12/21/uncategorized/red-tailed-hawk-going-downtown/ http://dfwurbanwildlife.com/2011/12/21/uncategorized/red-tai... https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-kE6nP4Cogvs/VMb9uqWxgaI/AAAAAAAAYoA/EFe5Jl-f3Ho/s1600/lmharlans-11-3-13-grayson-mcameron.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-kE6nP4Cogvs/VMb9uqWxgaI/A...
- spaceisballer 9y ago
  Planet Earth II did an episode about Cities, I found it fascinating. They definitely talked about the Falcons in NYC. But even more interesting was the fish that eat pigeons.
newswriter99 9y ago
Some of the less developed areas immediately surrounding downtown Houston have raccoons, opossums, rabbits, turtles, you name it. There's even been an armadillo or two. This is primarily thanks to the bayous running through the city, as well as large swaths of empty/overgrown lots, mixed with a few unoccupied buildings/warehouses here or there. As far as plants go, there's all kinds of flora blossoming in the city, some of which is edible, though the pollution/contamination factor leaves me suggesting that it is NOT a good idea to eat anything growing wild.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Can't speak for Houston, but we have about a million raspberry bushes in this town, and I never pass one in ripe fruit but I pick off a few to snack on as I walk. Hasn't poisoned me yet, but I would be curious to see what a mass spectrometer would reveal about their elemental composition. Unfortunately, it's been years since I had even colleague-of-a-colleague access to any lab that'd be likely to have the requisite equipment and expertise on hand. Perhaps I might get in touch with Dr. Swan? Judging by his article and the nature of his work, this seems like it'd be the sort of investigation that might pique his curiosity.
briga 9y ago
While my city has destroyed the environment of the majority of animals, there are some notable exceptions. Crows, ravens, pigeons, rabbits, squirrels--all of these animals seem to flourish in a city environment. They live in a much higher concentration than the animals you see outside of the city. Over time I think the story is going to change. These are just the first animals that have adapted well to a city lifestyle, and they will be selected for as time goes on. If we could lose our obsession with monocultures, i.e. grass lawns, I think a lot of the world's biodiversity could be preserved. Are there any notable startups devoted to making our cities more habitable for plants and animals?
- arethuza 9y ago
  Grey squirrels and foxes seem to thrive in UK cities - sadly I've never seen a red squirrel in a city.
justforFranz 9y ago
STDs.
grasshopperpurp 9y ago
My favorite thing about St. Pete (FL) is the plants and wildlife. Today, when I arrived at work, I was greeted by a Wood Stork - just hanging out in front of the office. It walked around out front for about ten minutes before leaving. I hear mockingbirds from 5 am to 10 pm (sometimes later). About 150 yards from our backdoor, there is a Norfolk Island Pine, which is the tallest tree on the southeast skyline, and there is always a mockingbird singing at the top. Every minute or two, the mockingbird's song overflows into a spinning leap. We never get tired of it. We also see blue jays, mourning doves, ibises, and cardinals daily. Jacarandas are very common, as are banyan trees and frangipanis. It's also normal to see great egrets hanging out at the corners of busy (by St. Pete standards) intersections or on front lawns. The actual city, as you'd think of a city, is small, so no matter where you are in St. Pete, you're 10-20 minutes from relatively undisturbed nature, where you can see alligators, manatees, gopher tortoises (one of my personal favorites), and other fun stuff. In our yard, we have wildflowers like spiderwort, climbing dayflowers, and pink wood sorrels, among others. Oh, and if you've never been to Florida, there are tons of lizards - mostly varieties of anoles More than the specific types of plants and animals, as cool as they are, the density of plants and wildlife makes it vibrant. We talk about moving, but we always derail that conversation with talk about the nature we'd miss.
michaelleslie 9y ago
Even smaller parks in San Francisco, like Buena Vista, have surprisingly large amounts of wildlife despite being in dense areas. I've seen coyotes and raccoons in my neighborhood. In preserved areas like the Presidio and the Headlands, I've seen Bald Eagles while cycling.

47 points by Mz 9y ago

I live in Baltimore, and have seen some of the described research work going on. I also spend a lot of my free time tramping deer trails and generally wandering all over creation. Those who don't are regularly surprised to learn just what extent of wildlife our city supports! To the author's question of how city dwellers find green space and ecodiversity improvements of this sort - I think it's going to be hard to find anyone who feels these efforts and their results other than a material improvement in quality of life. What concerns me, though, is that we're recently seeing a pattern, in a lot of neighborhoods, where formerly vacant - and thus vegetated, if not always ideally so - spaces are being bought up cheaply from the city by developers who proceed to fill them to the edges with housing that does not fit the neighborhood, is not welcomed by established residents, and is priced out of reach of anyone save the sort of rich formerly urban professional who has found downtown life insufficiently welcoming once a first child comes along. That such people do not wish to move to soulless suburbs, I understand - but they seem fine with converting long-extant neighborhoods, with their own unique microcultures and community lives, into exactly that which they seek to avoid. And they seem unconcerned with inflicting the closure and privatization, of what have been de facto common spaces for in many cases decades, to whatever extent is necessary to achieve this short-sighted, ill-conceived, and universally destructive goal. If anyone has a suggestion on how to deal with that problem, I'd love to hear about it...

brianzelip 9y ago
Love finding deer in the city! Druid Hill Park is great for it, especially in the early morning.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Wyman Park, too, although perhaps not so much and not so friendly, I think because people let their dogs run loose. I was out there this last weekend and ran across a fox who'd fallen lethally foul of something, at any rate, and a dog seems by far the likeliest candidate - I keep hearing about coyotes, but it doesn't seem likely they would be much more difficult to observe than foxes, of which I've seen a goodly number. In any case, it's not as though whitetail are hard to find around here in general! In spring and fall, I often cross paths with them during my commute, and it's a rare peregrination on which I don't see at least one or two. If you really want to see wildlife, don't go to a park - put on your sturdy shoes and go find you some woods that don't look like they have people in them often, and it won't be long before you start finding deer trails to follow. (I know some very good places, but I hesitate somewhat to mention them publicly, because we have a fair number of fellow Baltimoreans here - while the local whitetail don't much care about people, foxes most certainly do, and they're hard enough to spot and photograph as it is! If you're interested enough, hit me up at the email in my profile, and we can talk about it some more.)
- rb808 9y ago
  Dont you have Lyme disease in MD yet? Deer look pretty until you see people end up crippled by tick borne diseases. We need a serious cull in the NE.
  - cafard 9y ago
    Lyme disease has been around Maryland for years. I have known people to get it in the DC suburbs, one in his own back yard, one in a park. The US Park Service has culled deer in Rock Creek Park (Washington, DC) the last two or three winters. The neighborhood email list gets an invitation to join a candlelight vigil against this each fall. (No, I don't join.)
    - throwanem 9y ago
      > The neighborhood email list gets an invitation to join a candlelight vigil against this each fall. The venison from deer so culled goes to feed homeless folks in their town. From [1]: After reduction operations, the National Park Service tests the deer to make sure they don't have Chronic Wasting Disease before the venison is donated to local food banks. The NPS has donated approximately 7,300 pounds of venison to DC Central Kitchen since beginning deer management in 2013. I wonder if the vigileers know that. Or whether they care. Or whether they'd even approve. [1] https://www.nps.gov/rocr/learn/management/white-tailed-deer-management.htm https://www.nps.gov/rocr/learn/management/white-tailed-deer-...
      - cafard 9y ago
        Yes, they know. I doubt they approve. Are those at the vigils all vegetarians? I have no idea.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    We do, and I've heard rumors of Rocky Mountain spotted fever as well. Don't get me wrong - I'm not in favor of letting whitetail breed explosively, unmolested by hunters; quite aside from the issue of tick-borne zoonoses, it's a waste of good venison.
theandrewbailey 9y ago
Pittsburgh has lots of wildlife as well. There have been so many rabbits this year. Almost any park is full of them, bike through and see them scatter. I've seen lots of turkeys around, and even walked up on one on the sidewalk.
mabbo 9y ago
> If anyone has a suggestion on how to deal with that problem, I'd love to hear about it... My knee-jerk reaction is to call you an anti-development NIMBY, but that's not actually solving any problem. So let's set that aside. Your neighbourhoods have benefited from the existence of this vacant land. The city, meanwhile, has costs to maintain that land, police it, etc and have even more costs to maintain the infrastructure of low-density housing in such neighbourhoods. Cities need to increase density, and they need to be able to afford to maintain themselves[0]. Selling vacant land removes a cost and creates desperately needed income in times where all a politician is allowed to do is lower taxes (or else their opponent next election will say that they will lower taxes and get elected). If you want to have low-density residential areas with lots of green space, you need to petition your government to raise your taxes so that you can pay for it. Campaign for politicians willing to invest rather than lower taxes. Have them convert the land into a local park, using your increased taxes to maintain it. [0] See everything on https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/
- xkcd-sucks 9y ago
  Does policing and maintaining vacant lots actually incur any meaningful costs on a city? Do undeveloped zones within a high density area help mitigate any externalities of high density development, by providing habitat for predators of urban wildlife, dense plant growth to improve air quality and soak up stormwater, etc.?
  - mabbo 9y ago
    > Does policing and maintaining vacant lots actually incur any meaningful costs on a city? Vacant, unmaintained lands tend to attract crime. I say this from first hand experience- I was a teenager once, and we went to vacant, unmaintained land to commit crimes. We were good kids, mostly, but we weren't the only ones there. > by providing habitat for predators of urban wildlife, dense plant growth to improve air quality and soak up stormwater, etc.? I'm all for having dense forests near high rises (more birds! more plants! yes!) but that land is expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, expensive in terms of lost tax revenue. I simply argue that someone has to pay those costs, and getting mad at the city of being fiscally tight when politicians are elected promising exactly that is silly. You want to have a park/forest/whatever? Fine, but acknowledge that it's expensive and then pay your fair share of it.
Mz 9y ago
If anyone has a suggestion on how to deal with that problem, I'd love to hear about it... I am an Environmental Resource Management major who had plans to become an urban planner, and then life got in the way. Have you attended any local board meetings? Do you know what the policies are? Have you looked up any not-for-profits or think tanks that have an interest in such issues? This is going to tend to be solved by things like zoning laws, good review processes and advocates actively trying to preserve open space, build parks and protect neighborhood character.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Not gonna lie, I have no idea about any of that; I've only very recently become aware of the problem. But now I know where to start, or at least one possible place, and I thank you very kindly for that!

wcummings 9y ago

NYC has the highest concentration of Peregrine Falcons anywhere in the world. Lots of tall buildings for nests and lots of rats.

twobyfour 9y ago
My understanding is that the falcons prey more on pigeons than on rats. Of course, we've got plenty of pigeons, too.
- wcummings 9y ago
  I stand corrected.
  - o_nate 9y ago
    The general rule of thumb is that falcons prey on other birds and hawks prey on land animals.
    - twobyfour 9y ago
      I thought the red tailed hawks (enjoying a resurgence in NYC recently) also were thriving on pigeons?
6stringmerc 9y ago
I frequently get to watch Red Tailed Hawks in Downtown Dallas floating brilliantly on the air pockets. Big birds. http://dfwurbanwildlife.com/2011/12/21/uncategorized/red-tailed-hawk-going-downtown/ http://dfwurbanwildlife.com/2011/12/21/uncategorized/red-tai... https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-kE6nP4Cogvs/VMb9uqWxgaI/AAAAAAAAYoA/EFe5Jl-f3Ho/s1600/lmharlans-11-3-13-grayson-mcameron.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-kE6nP4Cogvs/VMb9uqWxgaI/A...
spaceisballer 9y ago
Planet Earth II did an episode about Cities, I found it fascinating. They definitely talked about the Falcons in NYC. But even more interesting was the fish that eat pigeons.

newswriter99 9y ago

Some of the less developed areas immediately surrounding downtown Houston have raccoons, opossums, rabbits, turtles, you name it. There's even been an armadillo or two. This is primarily thanks to the bayous running through the city, as well as large swaths of empty/overgrown lots, mixed with a few unoccupied buildings/warehouses here or there. As far as plants go, there's all kinds of flora blossoming in the city, some of which is edible, though the pollution/contamination factor leaves me suggesting that it is NOT a good idea to eat anything growing wild.

throwanem 9y ago
Can't speak for Houston, but we have about a million raspberry bushes in this town, and I never pass one in ripe fruit but I pick off a few to snack on as I walk. Hasn't poisoned me yet, but I would be curious to see what a mass spectrometer would reveal about their elemental composition. Unfortunately, it's been years since I had even colleague-of-a-colleague access to any lab that'd be likely to have the requisite equipment and expertise on hand. Perhaps I might get in touch with Dr. Swan? Judging by his article and the nature of his work, this seems like it'd be the sort of investigation that might pique his curiosity.

briga 9y ago

While my city has destroyed the environment of the majority of animals, there are some notable exceptions. Crows, ravens, pigeons, rabbits, squirrels--all of these animals seem to flourish in a city environment. They live in a much higher concentration than the animals you see outside of the city. Over time I think the story is going to change. These are just the first animals that have adapted well to a city lifestyle, and they will be selected for as time goes on. If we could lose our obsession with monocultures, i.e. grass lawns, I think a lot of the world's biodiversity could be preserved. Are there any notable startups devoted to making our cities more habitable for plants and animals?

arethuza 9y ago
Grey squirrels and foxes seem to thrive in UK cities - sadly I've never seen a red squirrel in a city.

justforFranz 9y ago

STDs.

grasshopperpurp 9y ago

My favorite thing about St. Pete (FL) is the plants and wildlife. Today, when I arrived at work, I was greeted by a Wood Stork - just hanging out in front of the office. It walked around out front for about ten minutes before leaving. I hear mockingbirds from 5 am to 10 pm (sometimes later). About 150 yards from our backdoor, there is a Norfolk Island Pine, which is the tallest tree on the southeast skyline, and there is always a mockingbird singing at the top. Every minute or two, the mockingbird's song overflows into a spinning leap. We never get tired of it. We also see blue jays, mourning doves, ibises, and cardinals daily. Jacarandas are very common, as are banyan trees and frangipanis. It's also normal to see great egrets hanging out at the corners of busy (by St. Pete standards) intersections or on front lawns. The actual city, as you'd think of a city, is small, so no matter where you are in St. Pete, you're 10-20 minutes from relatively undisturbed nature, where you can see alligators, manatees, gopher tortoises (one of my personal favorites), and other fun stuff. In our yard, we have wildflowers like spiderwort, climbing dayflowers, and pink wood sorrels, among others. Oh, and if you've never been to Florida, there are tons of lizards - mostly varieties of anoles More than the specific types of plants and animals, as cool as they are, the density of plants and wildlife makes it vibrant. We talk about moving, but we always derail that conversation with talk about the nature we'd miss.

michaelleslie 9y ago

Even smaller parks in San Francisco, like Buena Vista, have surprisingly large amounts of wildlife despite being in dense areas. I've seen coyotes and raccoons in my neighborhood. In preserved areas like the Presidio and the Headlands, I've seen Bald Eagles while cycling.