Nature Preserves Are Looking a Lot Like a Concrete Jungle

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then out in the pristine ocean environments that are their natural home range. This is fascinating. Dan Werb is our guest on San Diego's Morning News. His new book is called Our Wild Familiar's How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World? Gosh, I remember during the pandemic, I was working in San Francisco at the time. Nobody was coming to the office. I was seeing coyotes run down the middle of the financial district. Who is adapting? Are the animals adapting or are we adapting? You know, we're now in a period in which humans are really going to have to catch up. Biologists are describing the age that we live in as the great urban shift, where there are now literally thousands of animals that are predicted to move into cities across North America over the next few decades. We're now talking not just about, you know, pigeons and rats and raccoons and animals that we're used to seeing in urban environments, but a lot more rare and endangered animals. are going to be moving into cities and towns all across the continent. And the implication here is that we need to start thinking about how we're going to adapt our urban environments, our cities, how we are going to design cities to minimize conflict, but also how we design them to be sustainable, to promote biodiversity, and to save species that are moving into cities who are really on the edge of extinction. So I know the bad things that animals moving into cities, especially rats. You know, they carry some diseases and they can cause some harm. But what are the positives of animals living so close to us? It really boils down to an opening up of our sense of connection with the world. I love your passion and I hear it loud and clear. It's super cool. I can't wait to get my hands on the book. Dr. Dan Werb, thank you for joining us on San Diego's Morning News. Thanks so much. All right. The new book is called Are Wild Familiar How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World?