Wild Animals In The City

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Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World,  Dan Werb

published by crown books of penguinrandomhouse.com

Smart nature writing, urban planning ideas, and clear-eyed conversations about conservation and public health

Nature is moving into the city, and it is not waiting for our permission. I sit down with award-winning writer and epidemiologist Dan Werb to talk about Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World, a book that reframes urban life as something far more alive than we usually notice. Once you learn the word synanthropy, you start seeing it everywhere: wild species living “together with humans,” adapting to our buildings, our routines, and our blind spots.

 Why are cities are no longer “biological deserts,” and why urban is ecology  forcing a correction in how we think about biodiversity and conservation?. Dan shares stories that make the science feel personal, from bats thriving in the built environment to the startling discovery that giant Pacific octopus can be more common near the most industrial parts of Seattle’s waters. That leads to a bigger realization: the reach of urban development does not stop at the shoreline. Our roads, rail, and waste reshape land and water, and that reshaping creates winners, losers, and unexpected new neighbors.

Because Dan is also an infectious disease researcher, we also talk openly about zoonotic disease spillover, outbreaks, and what pandemic surveillance can realistically do to reduce risk without turning wildlife into a scapegoat. We keep coming back to practical coexistence: why garbage is often the real “wildlife management” issue, how simple infrastructure changes reduce conflict with rats, raccoons, baboons, bears, and coyotes, and why fortress conservation alone cannot solve human-wildlife tension in a crowded world.

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Transcript

Welcome, Book Pick, And Guest

Michele McAloon 0:01

Hello, you're listening to Crossword where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word. And my name is Michele McAloon. You can find out more about me and this podcast at BookClues.com have a winner of a book, a really fun, interesting book. It's called Wild Familiars. It is about how animals are coming into our urban space, how that is interesting, a problem, how we're going to solve it. It is a great book, would be a great book. And I know my list grows, but that's because the U.S. is producing such great narratives right now. But this would be a great book for Father's Day. It's full of great nuggets of information, cocktail party conversation and big ideas. I don't know what else more you could want from a book. Folks, happy listening. And if you can, a like and subscribe. It helps those numbers. And find out more about me at bookclues.com. Thank you. God bless. Happy listening. Okay, folks. I think this book that we're about to talk about is probably the most interesting book that I have had this year. And this has been a year of fabulous interesting books. But folks, there's deep knowledge here, a great cocktail party conversation. So you really want to listen to this interview. It is with the author Dan Werb. He has written Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World. It's put out by Crown Books, a uh division of Penguin Random House. Hello, Dan. Welcome to the show.

Dan Werb 1:45

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Michele McAloon 1:47

Dan is an award-winning writer and an epidemiologist whose work, which primarily investigates the link between the spread of disease and social conditions, has appeared in the New York Times, The Salon, The Believer, and many other outlets. He is an assistant professor and the Division of Infectious Diseases of Global Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, and the Dalilana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Mr. Werb is the author of two previous books. Dan, congratulations on this book because it is it's just a fascinating read.

Dan Werb 2:24

Oh, thank you so much. I'm so glad you liked it.

Michele McAloon 2:27

Yeah, I really do. So let's talk about the animals in our backyard, the animals that are living in our city. And you kind of open up with a really interesting statistic. As of 2007, more people live in urban areas than rural areas. And that's significant, isn't it?

Dan Werb 2:50

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I think like a lot of people, I found that living in a city, it's very easy to feel like you're disconnected from nature. When I was writing my last book, The Invisible Siege, which is about how coronaviruses emerged and about how the kind of science evolved to respond to them,

Synanthropy And Urban Connection

Dan Werb 3:10

I came across this phenomenon called synanthropy. And synanthropy is refers to wild animals living in urban habitats. And in the context of that book, it was really about, you know, why are there so many pandemic risks right now? And it's, you know, apparently what scientists have realized is that it's because there is this flood of wild animals into our cities. I found that fascinating. You know, even just aside from the sort of viral implications of it, I just thought, wow, what a cool word, first of all. And as a writer, you know, I'm always attracted to cool words. What an interesting phenomenon that I really haven't thought about in depth before, synanthropy. And there's synanthropy, which is this sort of like phenomenon, and then specific wild animals that live in cities are synanthropes. And synanthrope is basically ancient Greek for together with humans. So what I point out in the book is that in 2007, that is the year where humanity kind of tipped from majority rural to majority urban. But it's also the year that for the first time, a social media site, MySpace, was the most visited site on the internet. So on the one hand, you've got humans that are flocking to cities that feel disconnected from nature. And then you've got humans flocking online to feel more connected to each other. It's this kind of connection and lack of connection that I think is brought about by cities that I found that I find really interesting. On top of that, you know, the more you delve into synanthropes and the wild animals that are around us, I realize that there is all of this connection all around us. Like we are, as urban dwellers, we are part of a very real ecosystem in which we interact with plants and animals and they interact with us and each other in really, really complex ways and in rapidly evolving ways all around us. And so that's really what the book is about. It's about how these incredible creatures flock to our cities, how they're remaking them, and what the implications are for how we understand our connection with nature, which is even in the heart of the heart of the city far, far more intense than we might actually understand.

Michele McAloon 5:34

It's incredible. You're right. Nature's accelerating towards us. And never thought about this before. But as I look out my window now, I'm in Germany, I see a parrot. Why is a parrot here in Germany? Right. And we have a lot of parrots here in Germany. There's all kinds of urban myths about how a parrot ended up in Germany, supposedly after World War II, the zoos were bombed and the parrots got out. I don't see elephants walking around, so I'm not sure that that is really true. But it is. It's just it's amazing. And you're right that 22% of endangered plants are actually in cities, and a third of the birds that are endangered are actually in cities. That's pretty amazing.

Dan Werb 6:19

That kind of movement of endangered and threatened species into cities is accelerating also. For I think a long time, ecologists have described cities as biological deserts, which basically means places where biology doesn't really happen, right? Like it's not a place where animals or plants thrive. It's a place where creatures and organisms go to die. But that is not the case. And there's been this real correction recently as urban ecologists have worked to kind of explore cities and towns as ecosystems in and of themselves. What we're realizing now is that, in fact, as you say, it's not just that cities are full of animals, they're increasingly full of some of the most rare animals on earth. The upshot of that is that we can't ignore cities when we're thinking about how do we want to protect nature? How do we want to protect species at risk? We actually have to see cities as sites of conservation. To me, that's really cool, right? Because we can all sort of take a part in that and think about, okay, well, how would I want to remake my city? And what kind of city would I want to live in if it's a city in which animals and species aren't just coming here to eventually go extinct, but where they might actually thrive and where we might actually be able to save them and preserve them.

Michele McAloon 7:49

Yeah, one of the things that your book does, it really gave me the opportunity to look at a lot of things on the web

Cities As Unexpected Conservation Hotspots

Michele McAloon 7:55

that I didn't know. Guys, there are just so many facts here. There's so much knowledge in this book. But I just this morning was looking at the Singapore, the 150 foot trees, the tall trees, the fake trees that they've made, and they've planted them with all kinds of vegetation and birds and little animals and stuff like that. So I think in a lot of ways, we are limited by our creativity. And you bring out a character named Joyce Wang who does the bats of buffalo. And I didn't know bats were endemic to Buffalo.

Dan Werb 8:28

I mean, bats are, by one measure, the most successful order of vertebrate synanthropes in the world. There are about, I think, 80, slightly more than 80 bat species that inhabit cities all across the world. All across the world, except for Antarctica. Their ability to adapt to cities is really remarkable. Buffalo, New York is such an interesting example because, on the one hand, it's between two lakes, giant Great Lakes. It's along a river, the Niagara River, of course, right near Niagara Falls. And its population is about half the population that it had in the middle of the 20th century. And so you've got tens of thousands of vacant buildings and homes that are perfect roosting places for bats. Joyce Wong is super interesting. She's an architect, and she, you know, the way this book is set up is basically every chapter introduces you to a new city and a new animal and shows you kind of how the specifics of that city influence the capacity of a specific animal to adapt to it. And so it's a bit of a travelog. And along the way, we meet lots of interesting people. In the Buffalo chapter where we focus on bats, Joyce is an architect, but she's not your traditional architect. She doesn't build buildings for humans. She actually builds these beautiful, what look like sculptures or public art projects that are actually these exquisitely designed habitats for non-human species. Her way of thinking about materials and the kind of forms of buildings and how you can use buildings to actually support biodiversity in cities and not only support biodiversity in cities, but also make cities really beautiful by creating these incredibly sophisticated and elegant structures that kind of, again, look like these public art projects. Like one of them that she has is called the Bat Tower. And it sort of looks like this bizarre, you know, something like a that a wizard would live in. It's these three three-dimensional wooden triangles that are kind of stacked on top of each other. And she designed it not just to look beautiful, but to actually be a roosting place for bats to help support that biodiversity in in Buffalo. When you think about all these animals coming into cities, they've also created all of these reactions among our own species and different ways that people uh and communities are are trying to relate to animals and and be closer to them.

Michele McAloon 11:18

One of the things I think too, we have to sort of get over a fear of this relationship, right? I mean, bats are scary. Thank you. Thank you, Dracula, right? You know, bats are scary. You have the raccoons of Toronto, instead of thinking of them as pests that eat your garbage, right? Or that get into your garbage. We have to kind

Building Habitat Into Urban Design

Michele McAloon 11:40

of change our understanding as the this nature does come into our city. And your book really shows how how that is a problem. It's not a problem. We had the innovation to figure something out, whether it's a baboon or a rat or a raccoon, or it's it's interesting.

Dan Werb 12:01

Yeah, I mean, this is also part of it, right? Is because most humans now live in urban areas and have since 2007. First of all, we feel disconnected from nature. And then that slowly grows into a fear of nature. And when we feel disconnected from something, and honestly, when we fear it as well, I think the urge to protect it, you know, on an emotional level, set aside the rational level, but on an emotional level, the desire to actually protect the natural world starts fading. And of course, when we're living in an era when human-driven climate change and sprawl and habitat destruction is a real threat to the future of the planet, I think we need to start back at first principles and understand how close we are and how intimate we already are with animals and how much joy they bring us, even if we don't quite realize it yet. And so when I was writing this book, it's it's really like it's a love letter to nature and it's and it's also kind of a how-to guide in a way. I mean, I'm definitely not prescriptive, but just in the kind of journey that I took in writing it, I think it really made me at least realize that, you know, there is intimacy everywhere. Like I don't have to go to a natural park to feel connected with nature. I just have to change my rhythm a little bit when I move through the city. And suddenly in front of me, there are all these animals and plants that, you know, I previously ignored. And I can feel how close I am to them. I can understand that when animals look at me, like we are interacting. We are part of an ecosystem. And for me, you know, that's a really good place to start when you're thinking about, okay, well, how do I want to make the world a different place? And and what kinds of things are important to me.

Michele McAloon 14:02

I think that's really true. It's interaction. And I sort of thought about so I'm a Catholic theologist, about dominion and what dominion means. And dominion means that of creating a world that allows us to interact with animals. You talk about the giant Pacific octopus, and that is an amazing story. That really to think of that, to think of an octopus as basically he is an urban dweller or she is an urban dweller, just on a different kind of dimension. That's when I I told my husband about this, he said, How is an octopus an urban dweller? And I said, Well, you have to do that.

Dan Werb 14:46

You gotta read the book.

Michele McAloon 14:47

Yeah, read the book, right?

Dan Werb 14:49

Yeah, that that was really that was an amazing, amazing journey into understanding that and exploring that. There's a specific researcher, an urban ecologist named Eliza Heary, who discovered that in her, you know, in the city that she lives in, Seattle, that octopus, giant Pacific octopus, which are these incredible

Octopus Cities And Ocean Spillover

Dan Werb 15:10

animals. I mean, they're 20 feet long, tentacle to tentacle. They have nine brains, one in each of their tentacles and one in their kind of the head part of their body. These are creatures that have, you know, our most common recent ancestor branched off about 350 million years ago. And they're some of the most highly intelligent animals on Earth. So we're talking about a creature that is so distinct from us that independently developed this high level of intelligence in a way that is so alien to us. We think of these as extremely exotic creatures, but what Eliza Heary discovered is that in and around the bays of Seattle, so Seattle's really kind of this, it's it's effectively an island, right? It's almost entirely surrounded by water, by the Pacific Ocean. And she discovered that in areas that were closer to Seattle, and in fact, not only in not only closer to Seattle, but the waters around the most urbanized areas of Seattle, the ones with the most roads, the most railroads, the most industrial manufacturing, these giant Pacific octopus were more likely to be living compared to pristine areas of the ocean further away. And the reasons behind this are fascinating. I don't want to give too much away, but basically, these creatures have found a way to leverage the trash that people have thrown into the water to improve their capacity to live and to hunt beyond just being just absolutely bizarre example of synanthropy. What I really appreciated this and what I learned was we think about cities as really terrestrial, right? We think about them as places that are on land. But really, see cities all over the world are often founded in the most fertile places, and those places are almost always next to water. If we're talking about dominion, like the dominion of the city does not end at the shoreline. It actually extends into the water. Cities reshape waterways just as much as they reshape land. And so again, you know, thinking about just what I've really enjoyed about writing this book is that as is about how much it's made me rethink not only what a city is, and really I think about cities as ecosystems now, just like any urban ecologist would, but the fact that they extend far, much farther than I previously understood, like far beyond the land, but into the water as well.

Michele McAloon 17:55

Fair. It just, it's, it's fascinating. It's absolutely fascinating. There's one thing because you are an epidemiologist. Let's talk about disease now, too, because that is also an issue that's become an issue that people think of more since the bats and the coronavirus. And now we're looking at the huntavirus and Ebola. And these are serious human issues now. And what is that relationship with animals? You bring out some really good points on that.

Dan Werb 18:31

Yeah. Just so your listeners understand, I mean, the like 90% of this book is about the the joy of experiencing wild animals and plants in cities and and understanding just how complex the natural ecosystems we live in are, even if we don't, you know, totally understand them at first glance. But there are some implications here, as you said. And one of the reasons why epidemiologists like me have been concerned is that we're seeing an increase in viral spillover events leading to epidemics. And in fact, there have been more of these epidemics caused by novel pathogens in the first 20 years of the 21st century compared to the entirety of the 20th century. What that means is that our risk of epidemics, outbreaks, and unfortunately pandemics as well has actually increased. And basically the reason is the primary driver is more interaction between wild animals like bats, either directly with humans in urban areas or indirectly through a secondary vector like another animal. This is probably how the COVID-19 pandemic started. This is how the SARS pandemic started. There's been outbreaks of avian flu

Disease Risk Without Animal Panic

Dan Werb 19:55

over the past two decades, small outbreaks among humans, massive, what are called, I mean, basically pandemics in wild birds from avian flu over the past two decades. All of these are driven by increasing frequency of humans and wild animals. So does that mean we have to fear wild animals? No, not necessarily. But I think what it means is that we have to account for the fact that there are more wild animals in our midst and think about, okay, you know, how can we, what do we need to do to protect ourselves from that? I mean, one of the things that I think is probably the single most important thing that we can do is support biological surveillance and pandemic surveillance around the world. Absolutely. Unfortunately, we've seen the US really take a step back from that.

unknown 20:45

I know.

Dan Werb 20:46

But, you know, that's that's the key to stopping a pandemic. We can't stop the flow of wild animals into urban areas, but we can monitor better. And really, once you monitor things, it can really make sure that any outbreak that happens doesn't transform into a pandemic. There's a brilliant virologist named Barney Graham who once told me every pandemic starts as an outbreak. Every pandemic starts as a local outbreak. And so you need to be able to equip every basically part of the world where we think these outbreaks are most likely to occur with the necessary surveillance infrastructure so that when an outbreak occurs, it doesn't inevitably turn into an epidemic and potentially a pandemic, but it can be contained. That's scary, but if we're able to do that, we're not doomed to a repeat of COVID. And in the meantime, you know, we can make sure that our relationship with wild animals is intact. We don't have to fear them. We just have to be prepared.

Michele McAloon 21:48

At the end of your book, or towards the end of your book, you talk about there's some really simple solutions, talk about the bab, yeah, the baboons about, you know, locking uh trash containers, right? Locking or The rats in New York City. Once once they started changing the human behavior, right? And being responsible for the trash and making sure that it is contained, because you know what? We think and they can and and animals think too, but we're supposed to be the ones that find the solutions, right? And we can find those solutions that make it advantageous for an animal and make it advantageous for a human being. What your book really shows is that we've got to think through the spectrum. It's not, it's not just apex, predator, human. We've got to think through the interaction of the whole biodiversity that we live in. We don't just get to single ourselves out of it.

Dan Werb 22:43

Yeah, I mean, I'm glad I'm glad you mentioned the baboots because it is such a crazy situation.

Michele McAloon 22:49

Wow.

Dan Werb 22:50

Yes, for one of the chapters of this book, I traveled to Saudi Arabia. And while most of Saudi Arabia is desert, there is an area in western Saudi Arabia that is mountainous, and it's called the Sarowat Mountains. This is an area that is really different in terms of the environment. Like it's very cloudy. It's it's not quite humid, but there's more humidity than a desert. And it's an area where it's pretty fertile. It's also a place where baboons have been living for over 100,000 years. They live in this pretty narrow band of territory because they need to stay in the mountains in this kind of sweet spot where there's enough humidity so they can survive, they can, you know, have enough moisture and water to drink and enough fruits and other small animals to eat. And what's happened over the past 60 years or

Waste, Baboons, And Raccoon Lessons

Dan Werb 23:45

so is that as Saudi Arabian society moved from kind of nomadic herdsmen to sedentary farmers, baboons did too. As cities and towns built up in this area in the Sarowat Mountains, the baboons realized, you know what, we don't have to wander around for food anymore. There is this daily routine of uncovered garbage that we can just go out and eat. And when I went to this town called Al Baja, which is one of the towns that's most overrun by baboons, you know, you've got troops of hundreds, upwards of 600 baboons that roam around this town at any time of the day, overturning garbage cans, sometimes attacking people. There are these really intense videos of these massive baboon troops attacking a girls' college as well, there, and just terrorizing students, stealing their bags, scratching them, biting them. It's a really intense situation. From a baboon's perspective, it's awesome, right? Because you are given access to free food every day that you don't really have to work for at all. And so over time, where the baboons have slept has gotten closer and closer and closer to the middle of the town. And nowadays they sleep on these cliffs that are right underneath the center of town. And within two minutes in the morning, they can run up and basically gorge themselves on food wastes that are in these like giant dumpsters. As you said, Michelle, the solution is really simple. It's not to try to, you know, and this is the case for any city and any animal that feels like it's overrun by pests. So you mentioned rats. This is a huge problem in New York City, baboons in Al Baja, raccoons in Toronto. I mean, every single city basically requires the same solution, which is humans, and it's a very simple one, humans managing their own waste in ways that don't attract animals. Seems absurdly simple, but for for some reason it's taken a very long time. And in some places it hasn't even happened for humans to just realize this and set up the infrastructure so that, yeah, you're never going to rid yourself of all of the rats in New York City, or potentially all of the baboons in in Al Baja and in Mecca and other cities in Saudi Arabia. But you can reduce their access to garbage in very simple ways that makes that relationship a lot more sustainable and a lot less scary or disturbing, or, you know, in the case of rats for some people, disgusting. It just takes a little tweaking, as you said, of human behavior rather than thinking of the animals themselves as a problem. These are problems that are really driven by the ways that humans have established and influenced the ecosystems that they live in.

Michele McAloon 27:00

That's interesting. My family's from South Alabama. And thinking of, so we have a problem now with bears in South Alabama. Bears have come into South Alabama. We have a problem with wild hogs in South Alabama, wild uh boars. Yeah. Yeah, terrible. I'm just kind of thinking, what can we do? And one of the first things is what do the bears come in for? They come in for garbage, right? And it's making bear-proof containers. So I guess if they can't get food, they won't come in, right? They won't be as close in, they're not as interested. They lose and they go find food elsewhere. Do they go food, find food back out in the wilderness? But the city has now grown, so their wilderness has taken over. And how does that situation work out?

Dan Werb 27:46

Yeah, I mean, look, it's super challenging. It's super challenging when you've got cities sprawling to envelop natural habitats of animals because those animals are forced to adapt. Right. This is one of the reasons why we've seen coyotes spread so much into cities in North America. And as you say, like the challenge of even larger predators like bears, you know, part of it is just establishing okay, if we're going to allow cities to extend into wildlife areas, what are some of the regulations that we can apply, first of all, to how dense everything can be out there? And also how far can they extend? And but the other challenge here, and I think that you kind of you touched on it, is make sure that everything is protected against this the particular animal. So, yeah, bearproof garbage is very important. Bearproof garbage cans. You're not going to be able to totally eliminate the incursion of wild animals into cities.

Coyotes, Wolves, Tigers, And Coexistence

Dan Werb 28:50

But what you want to be able to do is make it kind of impossible or unappealing for these larger animals in particular to kind of establish themselves right in the cities and get into a routine of moving into the city. Right. Because once you do that, it's almost impossible to dislodge them. You know, in the case of coyotes, there's so much research on urban coyotes now. As I said, because they've moved into cities in such abundance all across North America, really over the past like 40 years. And what people have realized is really, you know, once once coyotes start doing incursions into cities or, you know, the fringes of cities, you can scare them away. Like you can be aggressive, you can be bold, you can make sure that they stay skittish and that they don't want to spend too much time around humans. But if they have a litter in urban areas, like if they're so established in urban areas that they feel comfortable giving birth in them, that next generation of coyotes is going to be less skittish than its parents. And the next generation is going to be less skittish. And you're going to see these increasingly bold, emboldened coyotes and other large predators basically not fear humans anymore. And that's where things get really, really challenging. The reality is we have we are seeing, as I said, this flood of new species into cities. And some urban ecologists are calling this a great urban shift, where you're seeing like literally thousands of new species move into cities and towns, you know, really any urban areas all over the world. You can't stop that. But you can take steps to make sure that those incursions, you know, their experience in cities is kind of more minimal, right? Like it's it's more like they'll move in and out of cities rather than establish themselves in the middle of it. And really that comes back down to kind of urban design and and the steps that we as humans can take to make sure that we retain as healthy relationships across these urban ecosystems as we possibly can.

Michele McAloon 31:07

Absolutely. I'll tell you what happened here in Germany. They introduced the gray wolf, which the gray wolf had gone to the point of extinction and they introduced them in Europe, but they didn't really work with the people where they were introducing them to. And it kind of reminded me a little bit of the story of the Bengali tigers, in which is another fabulous story. The S the Sud Durbans? What do you call it?

Dan Werb 31:32

The Sundarbans, the Sundurbans, yeah, in um south of Kolkata, in the the southeast of India.

Michele McAloon 31:40

Everybody wants uh the Bengali tiger to live, but tigers and humans don't really live well together. And you know what? Gray wolves and livestock don't live well together. So how do we bring balance to that? So the these beautiful animals don't go to extinction and the people that are really well intended, but also respecting uh both the animal space and human space. And this is where I think I think this is a challenge.

Dan Werb 32:09

Oh, yeah, it's a huge challenge. I think what we've learned is that these eradication campaigns, on the one hand, if you've got something that's now seen as vermin like coyotes or wild boar, simple eradication campaigns are not going to work. You can't simply, or rats, or you know, you name it, you can't just kill animals and expect that, you know, because again, think about a city as an ecosystem. Ecosystems have niches and animals and in some cases plants move into cities, move into towns, they identify those niches and they adapt themselves to them. If you simply remove all those animals through eradication, extermination campaigns, that niche is still there. So animals are going to continue to fill that niche. It's only when you shift the urban design, when you shift the ecosystem itself and potentially reduce the size of that niche or reduce that niche altogether that you can actually make a change. And so, you know, at the abstract, that's that sounds very simple. Right. Yeah. You know, your example of great wheels and livestock, that's tricky, right? Like, what are you gonna do? Stop doing animal husbandry, like stop keeping livestock. No. So what you need to do in these situations is really recognize that every urban ecosystem is really unique. Like there are some, of course, similarities across all cities and how they function and how they how they function as ecosystems. But to solve the particular problems of populations out of control or too much conflict between species, you have to look at the particular specific examples of that city or town and adapt the solution to that one. I know that's maybe not like a very satisfying answer in the abstract, but it's it's really the only way you can do it. Like you have to look at the specifics of the problem if you want to solve them. And in the case of Bengali tigers, or you know, the Bengal tigers, it's sort of the opposite problem. India, there are under a thousand of these Bengal tigers left. They are these incredible majestic creatures. They're also living in areas that are almost entirely densely urbanized. The additional challenge is that they are man-eating tigers. Like they eat people, they hunt people, and they eat them. And so you've got this challenge where, yes, there is this area called the Sunderbins, where it's an archipelago of islands that flows into the Bay of Bengal. It's south of Calcutta, a city of tens of millions of people. And you've got these stressors of increasing urbanization at the boundaries of this protected area for these tigers. This is a situation where, on the one hand, tigers are feeling encroached upon. So they do sometimes enter into these urbanized areas, but these urban areas are also some of the poorest in the world. And people who live there enter into the protected forest area to gather firewood, to fish, to catch crabs, to get honey. And when they're in these forests, they are at risk of being eaten and killed, or killed and eaten by tigers. And what this has led to is a legion of thousands and thousands of what are known as tiger widows. Yeah. Women that have lost husbands to tiger attacks, and who now have to navigate this, again, this really challenging space of economic uncertainty alone. And so there are no easy answers here. I think what is clear, though, is that approaches that only focus on what's known as fortress conservation, which is like you take an area and you essentially either literally or sort of figuratively fence it off and don't allow anybody in, that can't be our only solution to protecting species at risk. We have to recognize that cities are sites and urban areas are sites of great biodiversity. On balance, cities are often more biodiverse than the areas that surround them, which is an unlike an unbelievable thing. I learned early on in working on this book, but it's it's actually true. And so we have to think about aside from this fortress conservation approach, how do we create cities that are sites of conservation themselves? And to me, that is such a joyful challenge, right?

Michele McAloon 36:59

It really is. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. The parrot that's hanging out in this tree, the red squirrel that I keep seeing die. I mean, it makes your life rich. It makes it, and it also gives you perspective because you know what? I may have this human brain. I'm talking to this really smart human being, but you know what? I can't scale up that tree like a squirrel. And I I'm an aviator in the army, but it went through a lot of expense to make sure that I was an aviator and this guy's just flying around here. So it does, it really gives you a lot of a lot of perspective. This book, Dan, the way you wrote this book, it was so lyrical. And you can tell you're deeply well read. It's funny. You have some great references in there. Guys, I know I'm my list is getting longer of great Father's Day books, but this would really be one. It is, I can't tell you how I keep saying interesting. It just there's so many nuggets and facts in it that were just really cool to know. And also, it gives you another way to look at the world. That's invaluable. And that's what a good book should do is to alter the way that you're thinking, to educate the way that you're thinking. So, Dan, congratulations on this book. Oh, thank you so much.

Dan Werb 38:11

Yeah, I mean, look, like I I knew that I wanted to write about the natural world going into this book, deciding what I wanted to write about next. But I also knew that I didn't want to write another book about climate change that basically made readers feel like they were part of the problem. We all have a role to play in protecting the earth. But I don't know if starting from a place of kind of shame and guilt is the best way to motivate people for change. Really, at the top

Wonder, Motivation, And Farewell

Dan Werb 38:45

of my mind, and throughout the writing of this book, there were kind of two rules I set myself. One was never talk down to anybody. This isn't about accusing anyone of not acting sufficiently correctly so that the planet can be saved. And the other was let's not deal in nostalgia. Let's look at the world as it is right now. And when you do that, when you put those two things together, I found that you can experience the world as it is right now. And when you look at it as it is right now, instead of comparing it to some long-lost paradise, that's where the wonder is. That's where you can open your eyes to wonder. And when you don't feel like you're being chastised for your behavior, I think it's actually easier to think about ways that you can change communities for the better. As I said, like joyful changes, joyful challenges. For me, I think is a better way to motivate people than making people feel bad.

Michele McAloon 39:44

And you're successful. You really are, because you know what? I myself, I'm a conservative conservationist and I have a piece of land that I've got to conserve. Yeah, I want to go out and make sure that red squirrel lives now. I want to, you know, I I want I want to make sure my grandkids can interact with. I can't wait to walk through them with cities so we can see what is out there. So just just so interesting. Again, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule. And I just wish I hope this book is a huge success. I really do. It's it's really deserving of one.

Dan Werb 40:17

Thanks, Michelle. It's been so fun to chat with you.

Michele McAloon 40:19

It's been good to talk to you.

Dan Werb 40:21

Children, just think what it would mean if I could talk to the animals.