Richard Collins: Not quite zebras crossing, but animals are taking to city life
On Collins: Picture: Been Thrives Centuries Richard Bounties It Persecuted " Now With Yui Wire And "the Mok/pa Fox, Parks Suburbs Head, Its City In For Had
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid — Isaiah.
The peregrine was "more fortunate than the eagles", wrote Richard Ussher and Robert Warren in 1900: "The bird fairly holds its own wherever cliffs afford it suitable haunts."
Fifty years later, organo-chorine pesticides arrived. Of 16 peregrine territories visited in 1964, only three had successful breeders. When the poisons were banned, peregrine numbers recovered. There were 60 pairs in Cork by 2006.
A pair nested on Swansea’s guildhall during the 1980s. Soon, peregrines were commandeering ledges on buildings worldwide.
What an extraordinary turn-about! These predators had been poisoned, gin-trapped, and shot on sight by game-keepers. Eyries were raided by egg-collectors and chicks taken for falconry. Racing pigeon enthusiasts wanted them dead. Such persecuted birds, you’d expect, would keep well clear of people. Instead, they were setting up shop inside the lion’s den.
Amy Lewis, writing in magazine, outlines the peregrine love affair with Dublin. In a two-fingered Churchilian gesture to their former persecutors, they nested on the Gasometer, now demolished, on Liberty Hall and on the twin chimneys of Poolbeg power station.
Nor was the peregrine the only predator to do so. The sparrow-hawk did likewise. The fox, with bounties on its head, had been persecuted for centuries. It thrives now in city parks and suburbs. Magpies colonised Dublin in the 1850s. Herring gulls now nest on city buildings. Living in concrete jungles, deprived of contact with nature, people welcome these prodigal sons.
In cities elsewhere, even dangerous creatures are tolerated. The Rudraprayag Leopard, shot by Jim Corbett in 1926, had killed 125 people. Yet leopards now frequent crowded Indian cities.
Mtn lions in LA deal w/ roads, habitat fragmentation, wildfires, & rodenticides- even small changes to activity may add stress to an already stressed pop. But their flexibility in diel activity likely helps support coexistence between lions and recreating people. 4/5 pic.twitter.com/dlOjxoIAds
— Ellie Bolas (@ecbolas) November 15, 2024
A paper just published suggests that yet another Pauline conversion is underway.
The mountain lion, the most widely distributed big cat in North and South America, is highly adaptable, hence its many names; ‘puma’, ‘cougar’, ‘panther’. An elusive ambush predator, it keeps a low profile. Humans are not on its usual menu, but 130 attacks on people were recorded in North America in the last 100 years. There were 28 fatalities, mostly of children. A Canadian park ranger once advised me not to ‘play dead’ should I encounter one. "If your do", he said, "it will eat you". A jogger, attacked in 2019, strangled one to death, but wrestling big cats is not in my skill-set.
Researchers from the University of California Davis fitted GPS trackers to 22 mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains — an area home to 18 million people.
These predators are most active, normally, at dawn and dusk. But the GPS results showed that, in areas frequented by hikers, cyclists, and joggers, they confined their activities to the hours of darkness. Those living in highly populated area were more nocturnal than those living elsewhere. Mountain lions have learned to coexist with people by taking the nightshift.
That we have a timeshare agreement between man and beast suggests that the old apartheid ways may be changing.
"Mountain lions are doing the work so that coexistence can happen," says lead author Helen Bolas.