Cities have been described as essential to climate change solutions, but they can also raise the kinds of ecologists that will bring us into a more comprehensive biological future.
As a black wildlife biologist from Philadelphia, I stood out among my coworkers. My presence in ecology has challenged assumptions about not only what a biologist looks like, but also where a biologist comes from. In the U.S., ecology was and is mainly white and conducted in rural landscapes, but I had no history of camping, fishing, hunting or hiking. I had yet to recognize that Philadelphia, with its four seasons and richness of squirrels (松鼠), row homes and festivals, was actually my first ecological classroom. There I witnessed wild cats eating birds and rats, people shooting bats from their homes and snakes being killed by lawn mowers (割草机). This is as much ecology in action as anything we witness in fields and forests.
Urban wild animals exhibit many features and behaviors that set them apart from their rural twins: they may be bigger, eat more diverse food sources, are active at different times of the day, move differently and have different personalities. Some biologists argue they are even "smarter". Besides, urban wildlife balances more risks—such as road chemical poisons and diseases from domestic animals—with rewards. Some of those rewards come from humans providing food and some from the distribution of our parks and water bodies.
In our professional lives as biologists, living with such wild animals can make us more tolerant of species diversity, which can benefit the natural world. Nature is no longer only primitive wilderness but includes sounds of human laughter and garbage trucks. We expect more biologists from urban settings because urban environments naturally train keen observers who are the future of ecology.
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