Mapping New York City wildlife
A Columbia University research team is working to document and understand the wildlife sharing New York City with its human residents. Led by disease ecologist Maria Diuk-Wasser and carried out largely by graduate students, the project uses 40 camera traps placed along a 50-kilometer transect spanning Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau County, alongside live trapping, radio collaring, and disease sampling.
The work recently joined the Urban Wildlife Information Network, connecting it to a collaborative of roughly three dozen cities across the US, Canada, and beyond. The research aims to understand not just which animals are present, but how they move, what they eat, and how they might play a role in transmitting tick and insect-borne diseases to humans.
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn serves as one of the project's key research sites. The 478-acre historic cemetery provides substantial habitat in the middle of a dense urban neighborhood, and researchers estimate it supports around 500 raccoons alongside a variety of other species. The article follows graduate student Myles Davis through a day of fieldwork across the boroughs, offering a detailed look at the realities of conducting wildlife research in one of the world's most densely populated cities.
