Article explores how urban wildlife is more common than we think
Most of us assume wildlife stays out in the wild, but a fascinating piece by Jeff Turrentine for the NRDC challenges that assumption. From mountain lions roaming Los Angeles's Griffith Park, to wild boars foraging in Berlin backyards, to leopards prowling the streets of Mumbai, urban wildlife is far more common than we think. Turrentine highlights the National Park Service's L.A. River Wildlife Camera Project, an initiative using motion-activated cameras to document the animals quietly sharing our city spaces — and to build the public awareness needed to protect them.
His takeaway is a powerful reframe: we didn't build into nature, we built onto it. The land was never solely ours to begin with, and understanding our wild neighbors is both an ecological responsibility and, he argues, the truest form of neighborliness.
