ABSTRACT
There was a time when museums and zoos provided people with the only opportunity of seeing wild animals they had read about in books. They were collectors’ items, curiosities to be marvelled at for their size, ferocity, brightly coloured posteriors or strange shapes. Today, they are depressing reminders of a growing number of species that have vanished from the scene. Zoos have become more sophisticated in the way animals are exhibited, and are more enjoyable as entertainment; and some have breeding programmes that are aimed at preserving endangered species. Yet they represent a view of nature that is remote; external and disconnected from human affairs. On this John Livingston comments:
Television and the internet have raised the educational level of the public with a host of informative programmes and websites on the nature of the living world. But one may question whether the urban experience of nature is still not largely focused on the exotic bird in a space frame cage and the elephant and tiger secure without bars behind the well-designed moat. Most of our knowledge comes to us secondhand through the media. Direct contact with nature and the animal world, apart from resident urban house sparrows, starlings and pigeons, is confined to non-urban, or for that matter, non-local experience. It is to be had from the weekend at the cottage, or on occasional school visits to the rural interpretive centre. Most of us know little about wildlife in the places where we mostly live. Can the city itself provide us with a direct experience of wild nature? To what extent does the city provide habitat for wildlife? How are these questions important to the quality of the urban places in which we live? These are some of the concerns that will be explored in this chapter. To do so, we must review some aspects of natural process with respect to food and habitats, how these are altered by the city, the specific requirements for sustaining wildlife species in various urban environments, and how cities have shaped attitudes and perceptions towards the non-human life that shares habitat with us.
