It is almost August, and the "broken nose family" of Asian elephants in Yunnan is still active in the woodland near longwu town in Shiping County;
The leopard that escaped from Hangzhou Wildlife World is still missing.
In recent years, the encounter between humans and wild animals in cities has become more frequent:
In the 16th month of their journey northward, the 16 wild Asian elephants covered almost half of Yunnan Province, and were as recently less than 100 kilometers from Kunming; wild boars in Nanjing rushed down the Purple Mountain and ran into milk tea shops; weasels in Beijing broke into office buildings and stole bread crumbs from keyboards...
As cities continue to expand and encroach on wildlife territory, how can people and wildlife coexist in harmony? We have sorted out the relevant media reports and public materials in the past 10 years, and combined with the existing academic achievements, we have tried to explore the way people and wildlife in the city get along.
"Permanent Residents" and "Unexpected Visitors"
When people and animals are about to meet in the city, what is the public's attitude towards this?
We selected two news stories from CCTV and People's Daily, crawled through relevant comments, and found that public attitudes were not uniform. Many people's attitudes tend to be romanticized, some people see elephants going north as "eating tour groups", and some people welcome elephants to their hometowns.
Behind the tongue-in-cheek "tricks" and jokes, netizens can hardly hide their freshness and curiosity - after all, this is the first time that large wild animals have swung and "brought their families and mouths" to step on the main road of Chinese cities.
But in fact, people and wild animals have long encountered frequently in cities. In the past decade, media reports have recorded a total of 265 wild animals entering the city, and there are 36 times in the three first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Some of these wild animals who venture in the city are "accidental visitors" who stumble into human living areas, such as wild elephant herds, and some are "residents" who have been wandering in the city for a long time.
We selected six typical "adventurers" and made ID cards for them. Among them, there are owls and wild boars that frequently break into the city, as well as raccoons, leopards, Asian elephants and small civets that have attracted public attention.
Compared with unexpected visitors, residents tend to be petite and have weak attack power. The "tonnage" of Asian elephants that accidentally break in can reach 4,000 tons, which is 500 times that of raccoons.
Among the permanent residents, the little spirit cat is the most expensive "rare guest", and the owl is the "veteran" who bravely breaks into the city. In June 2020, before the little cat appeared at the Jiangwan campus of Fudan University, it had disappeared in Shanghai for nearly 10 years, and the owl family was frequently encountered.
Among the unexpected visitors, Asian elephants have an overwhelming comprehensive "strength". Wild boars also frequently "cause trouble", and in the past decade of media reports, a total of 11 incidents of injuries have been caused, and crops, police cars, poultry, etc. have also been "tragically killed".
Why "move"?
Wild animals "move" into the city for a reason. We selected raccoons as "residents" and Asian elephants as "unexpected visitors" to analyze why they "moved".
From 2019 to 2020, Wang Fang, a young researcher at Fudan University, arranged 58 infrared cameras in Shanghai to record the traces of this group of "permanent residents".
In the process of stepping into human society step by step, the "permanent residents" gradually mastered the skills of urban life. The raccoons in Fengxian District even learned to estimate the time when the barbecue stall would leave work, squatting by the grill and rushing to pick up the steaming chicken bones on the ground.
However, Wang Fang is also worried, "It is precisely because its adaptability is particularly fast, so once we are guided in the wrong direction, it will also quickly change in the wrong direction." If there is no human interference and inducement of the raccoon's habits, the "permanent residents" have the opportunity to coexist peacefully with people.
Unlike the mild-natured raccoon, the "unexpected visitor" represents the wild Asian elephant, which is cute in appearance but extremely aggressive. This time, the Asian wild elephant herd moved all the way north, sleeping in groups during the day, rushing to the road at night, "knocking" on the door of villagers' homes from time to time to find food, "eating and drinking" in the cornfield, playing and playing... But their extremely destructive power cannot be ignored either. According to statistics, the elephant herd has caused 412 accidents, directly destroying 842 acres of crops, and the preliminary estimate of direct economic losses is nearly 6.8 million yuan. In order to avoid human-elephant conflicts as much as possible, the local government has taken a variety of measures from monitoring and early warning to fence protection to insurance claims.
In fact, in nature, the long-distance migration of Asian elephants is not common. The reason why this group of "accidental visitors" trekked hundreds of kilometers to the city is because the population is expanding, but the habitat on which it depends is decreasing.
Research by Zhang Li, a professor at the School of Life Sciences of Beijing Normal University, shows that the distribution range of Asian elephants is mainly contiguous natural forests, but in the past 40 years, the area of tea gardens, rubber plantations and farmland has expanded by a total of 4,126 square kilometers, equivalent to 570,000 standard football fields. At the same time, natural forest areas are constantly fragmenting. As a result, Asian elephant herds had to "flee" from protected areas, and human-elephant conflict intensified.
The way of "hospitality" still needs to be explored
As more and more wildlife entered the city, citizens were amazed, but conservation workers gradually realized the seriousness of the problem and began to gradually turn their attention to the issue.
Wang Fang summed it up as "the transformation of Nature Conservation in China": Since 1949, zoologists have first focused on endangered animals like giant pandas and golden snub-nosed monkeys. In recent years, gaps in the study of wildlife in cities, especially mammals, have gradually been filled.
Related environmental protection NGOs are also increasing at an average rate of about 1 per two years, working with the academic community to promote urban wildlife conservation.
In fact, what kind of "hospitality" to adopt for wild animals is not just a question that China needs to explore. Around the world, people behave differently with their "animal neighbors" in cities. Some are beautiful encounters, some are tough games.
When the British fox appeared in the subway station, the pedestrians in Berlin made way for wild boars, the Nara deer in Japan were protected by legislation, the penguins in South Africa swung on the road; when the Asian elephants in Xishuangbanna, China, were watched by the ubiquitous electronic eyes, the wild boars in Nanjing were "played with" by the whole people, and the citizens of Hong Kong looked for mothers for the little wild boars... The continuous improvement of biodiversity in cities has brought new challenges to urban governance.
In the long history of the continuous expansion of industrial civilization, human beings may have forgotten that the land under their feet does not belong to themselves. The "romance" and "cuteness" of animals cannot cover up the suffering of leaving home and the hardships of survival in the cracks. Whether it is to send "unexpected visitors" back to their natural homes unharmed, or to live in harmony with "permanent residents", how to create a more livable environment for "animal neighbors" is still a proposition that we need to constantly explore.
Data Analysis and Information Visualization Course Works, School of Journalism, Fudan University Instructors: Zhou Baohua, Xu Di, Cui Di
Data collection and analysis| Duan Mingmiao, Zhang Zouyuan, Jiang Xinyi, Li Ke, Fu Jijing
Copywriting| Duan Mingmiao, Zhang Zouyuan, Jiang Xinyi, Li Ke, Fu Jijing
Visual Cartography | Lin Meichen jiang xinyi
Column Editor-in-Chief: Zhang Mo Text Editor: Li Tongtong
Source: Author: School of Journalism, Fudan University