Meet Joe Gomez. He’s got high school on lock – good grades, a cool band, and girls digging his vibe. But just when he’s got the world figured out, he goes and turns into a saber-toothed tiger. A shape-shifting nature spirit known as a Chimera, to be specific. Now Joe needs every single one of his new powers to help save the human race – whether he wants to or not. Meet Joe Gomez. He’s got high school on lock – good grades, a cool band, and girls digging his vibe. But just when he’s got the world figured out, he goes and turns into a saber-toothed tiger. A shape-shifting nature spirit known as a Chimera, to be specific. Now Joe needs every single one of his new powers to help save the human race – whether he wants to or not.
We tend to think of cities as a realm apart, somehow separate from nature, but nothing could be further from the truth. In Feral Cities, Tristan Donovan digs below the urban gloss to uncover the wild creatures that we share our streets and homes with, and profiles the brave and fascinating people who try to manage them. Along the way readers will meet the wall-eating snails that are invading Miami, the boars that roam Berlin, and the monkey gangs of Cape Town. From feral chickens and carpet-roaming bugs to coyotes hanging out in sandwich shops and birds crashing into skyscrapers, Feral Cities takes readers on a journey through streets and neighborhoods that are far more alive than we often realize, shows how animals are adjusting to urban living, and asks what messages the wildlife in our metropolises have for us.
The city includes opportunities as well as constraints for humans and other animals alike. Urban animals are often subjected to complaints; they transgress geographical, legal as and cultural ordering systems, while roaming the city in what is often perceived as uncontrolled ways. But they are also objects of care, conservation practices and bio-political interventions. What then, are the "more-than-human" experiences of living in a city? What does it mean to consider spatial formations and urban politics from the perspective of human/animal relations? This book draws on a number of case studies to explore urban controversies around human/animal relations, in particular companion animals: free ranging dogs, homeless and feral cats, urban animal hoarding and "crazy cat ladies". The book explores ‘zoocities’, the theoretical framework in which animal studies meet urban studies, resulting in a reframing of urban relations and space. Through the expansion of urban theories beyond the human, and the resuscitation of sociological theories through animal studies literature, the book seeks to uncover the phenomenon of ‘humanimal crowding’, both as threats to be policed, and as potentially subversive. In this book, a number of urban controversies and crowding technologies are analysed, finally pointing at alternative modes of trans-species urban politics through the promises of humanimal crowding - of proximity and collective agency. The exclusion of animals may be an urban ideology, aiming at social order, but close attention to the level of practice reveals a much more diverse, disordered, and perhaps disturbing experience.
Animal Cities builds upon a recent surge of interest about animals in the urban context. Considering animals in urban settings is now a firmly established area of study and this book presents a number of valuable case studies that illustrate some of the perspectives that may be adopted. Having an ‘urban history’ flavour, the book follows a fourfold agenda. First, the opening chapters look at working and productive animals that lived and died in nineteenth-century cities such as London, Edinburgh and Paris. The argument here is that their presence yields insights into evolving understandings of the category ‘urban’ and what made a good city. Second, there is a consideration of nineteenth-century animal spectacles, which influenced contemporary interpretations of the urban experience. Third, the theme of contested animal spaces in the city is explored further with regard to backyard chickens in suburban Australia. Finally, there is discussion of the problem of the public companion animal and its role in changing attitudes to public space, illustrated with a chapter on dog-walking in Victorian and Edwardian London. Animal Cities makes a significant contribution to animal studies and is of interest to historical geographers, urban, cultural, social and economic historians and historians of policy and planning.
From the bestselling author of Crow Planet, a compelling journey into the secret lives of the wild animals at our back door. In The Urban Bestiary, acclaimed nature writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt journeys into the heart of the everyday wild, where coyotes, raccoons, chickens, hawks, and humans live in closer proximity than ever before. Haupt's observations bring compelling new questions to light: Whose "home" is this? Where does the wild end and the city begin? And what difference does it make to us as humans living our everyday lives? In this wholly original blend of science, story, myth, and memoir, Haupt draws us into the secret world of the wild creatures that dwell among us in our urban neighborhoods, whether we are aware of them or not. With beautiful illustrations and practical sidebars on everything from animal tracking to opossum removal, The Urban Bestiary is a lyrical book that awakens wonder, delight, and respect for the urban wild, and our place within it.
Urban Wildlife Habitats was first published in 1994. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In cities, towns, and villages, between buildings and parking lots, streets and sidewalks, and polluted streams and rivers, there is ever less space for the "natural," the plants and animals that once were at home across North America. In this first book-length study of the subject, Lowell W. Adams reviews the impact of urban and suburban growth on natural plant and animal communities and reveals how, with appropriate landscape planning and urban development, cities and towns can be made more accommodating for a wide diversity of species, including our own. Soils and ground surface, air, water, and noise pollution, space and demographics are among the urban characteristics Adams considers in relation to wildlife. He describes changes in the composition and structure of vegetation, as native species are replaced by exotic ones, and shows how, with spreading urbanization of natural habitats, the diversity of species of plants and animals almost always declines, although the density of a few species increases. Adams contends, however, that it is possible for a wide variety of species to coexist in the metropolitan environment, and he cites a growing interest in the practice of "natural landscaping," which emphasizes the use of native species and considers the structure, pattern, and species composition of vegetation as it relates to wildlife needs. Urban habitats vary from small city parks in densely built downtowns to suburbs with large yards and considerable open space. Adams discusses the opportunities these areas--along with school yards, hospital grounds, cemeteries, individual residences, and vacant lots--provide for judicious wildlife management and for the salutary interaction of people with nature. Lowell W. Adams is vice president of the National Institute for Urban Wildlife in Columbia, Maryland.
Livestock in a Changing Landscape is a collaborative effort by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI); FAO Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative (LEAD); Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE); Swiss College of Agriculture (SHL), Bern University of Applied Sciences; French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD); and Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.--COVER.
In 1980 a group of scientists censusing marine mammals in the Bay of Fundy was astonished by the sight of 25 right whales. Until that time, scientists believed the North Atlantic right whale was extinct or nearly so. The sightings electrified the research community, spurring a quarter century of exploration, which is documented here.
