Yale University doctoral students Siria Gamez, and Aishwarya Bhandari, rear, work on a wildlife camera that had been attached to a tree in a Detroit park on Oct. 7, 2022.
Harris and colleagues have placed trail cameras in woodsy sections of 25 city parks for the past five years. They’ve recorded thousands of images of animals that emerge mostly at night to roam and forage, revealing a wild side many locals might not know exists.“We’re getting more and more exposure to wildlife in urban environments,” Harris said recently while checking several of the devices fastened to trees with steel cables near the ground.
The U.S. Forest Service estimates 6,000 acres of open space are lost daily as cities and suburbs expand. More than two-thirds of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050, the U.N. says. In a September report, the society noted rewilding in metropolises such as Singapore, where a 1.7-mile stretch of the Kallang River has been converted from a concrete-lined channel into a twisting waterway lined with plants, rocks and other natural materials and flanked by green parkland.