Planning for animals: Jungle City

Supervisors:

• Adriana Mattos
• Angelica Caiza

Over 50% of the Earth's human population now lives in cities. As urban populations expand, so does the urban landscape, contributing to biodiversity's disappearance.

In countries densely populated like the Netherlands, it is typical for the total size of the urban space to exceed the full extent of natural protected areas. As a result, wildlife species are forced to migrate to other regions, including populated areas like cities and towns.

Biodiversity in urban areas plays an essential role. For instance, it provides critical environmental services (e.g., pollination and insect control) and improves human quality of life (mental health). At the time of the sixth extinction, climate change, and fast urbanization, local efforts to address urban wildlife conservation are precious.

Cities are highly fragmented environments, a mosaic of patches of various sizes and land-use types, from green infrastructure to private properties. Urbanization alters plant and animal species diversity, presence, and behavior. Sometimes, species can adapt and survive in urban environments, but other species (less resilient) will disappear. Wild animals living in cities are under anthropogenic pressure, often under-appreciated and misunderstood, which leads to conflict between residents and wildlife.

The dilemma is how to address humans and wildlife needs in urbanized areas. If humans and wild animals can live together, how do they?

Urban wildlife overlaps conservation research, conservation policy, and public support. In this project, you will works as a wildlife city adviser. By contributing to the development of solutions from a multidisciplinary and creative perspective. In this project, you will participate as a group with a specialist from a nature research-advisor company to:

• Conduct a research project on one animal species conservation (matching the companies projects)
• Participate on field work (if that applies)
• Create a “conservation program” (program, installation, infrastructure design. etc.) to communicate the research findings and possible solutions for the species you are researching, to the company and a broader audience.

In the first part of the project we will focus on the research project.

In the second phase of the project, we will focus on the “conservation program” based on the research findings.