Session description: We live in a biosphere impacted by dense urban settlements and human activities with repercussions far beyond city boundaries coupled with growing societal concerns about loss of biodiversity. As cities encroach on rural or forested areas we increasingly find ourselves cohabiting with urban wildlife who live in our midst or migrate through our regions. Beginning with Jennifer Wolch’s Zoopolis, there has been a growing interest in geography about wildlife in cities and, in particular, ways to manage human wildlife encounter and to coexist with non-human others. Urban areas exhibit a proliferation of contact zones and hotspots, sites of encounter between humans and wildlife that manifest at a variety of scales. In spite of this, habitat fragmentation is one of the leading factors leading to extirpation and extinction of species.
Against the backdrop of growing awareness of the impacts of climate change, and the imperatives of the 6th extinction, urban residents are increasingly aware of the contradictory role cities play in enhancing and destroying the biodiversity in our midst. As a result, a complex assemblage of institutions, government, NGO, and volunteer organizations have emerged to manage the relationship between urban wildlife and urban citizens.
We invite papers addressing the theme of human wildlife encounters in urban regions across the globe and welcome a wide range of papers from the more conceptual to case-specific empirical studies. Topics might include: a focus on a particular species within an urban location; reactions to wildlife encounters from urban residents; critical and de-colonial perspectives on our relation to urban wildlife; policies, regulation and management, and/or policing of urban wildlife; politics of care in urban wildlife protection; mapping and spotting urban wildlife; everyday practices of urban wildlife care; planning and design for urban wildlife, such as the creation of wildlife corridors; biophysical wildlife routes; urban indigenous communities and interactions with wildlife.