Coyotes in NYC ? and the Urban Nature Debate (Spencer Mottley)

  

     This evening I was scrolling on New York Times looking for a good article to write my first blog on for

 this class. I didn't have to look long until I found the perfect article."An Evening with the Central Park

Coyotes" by Dodai Stewart, and yes for anyone wondering this article is about real coyotes residing in

New York City not the human sumuglers you often hear about on the news in realtion to the U.S - Mexico

border. The two coyotes being documented in New York's Central Park by photographers David and

Jacqueline are nicknamed Romeo and Juliet by Mannhatan locals, due to the fact they are often seen near

a theater in the park where the iconic play Shakespeare is often preformed. Despite the fact they live in the

epicenter of America's largest city the coyotes seemed to have no trouble with finding food with prey

rangeing anywhere from rodents to gesse. The photographers also noticed through their observation that

these coytotes where very warry of pepole, almost always going out of there way to avoid human contact

 despite this natural warryness however the photographers warned readers against feeding and attempting

to interact with the coytoes and mentioned that on multiple occasions in the past coyotes that set-up camp 

in centeral park where persected against. 

  After reading this intriguing article I was left with many thoughts and questions lingering in my mind.

The most pressing thought being the fact that many pepole would see the title "An Evening with the

Central Park Coyotes" and without further context assume the journalist involved with this story were

documenting cartel members lurking around central park instead of actual coyotes. This highlights to me

how disassocited our big cities have become from nature in the minds of many. Cities are often veiwed as

being sepreate from nature and being biologically setrile places devoid of much life at all. But upon 

reading this article the common assumption that cities aren't a part of nature is obvesiously false. Even

if you took all the biotic components out of the equation, cities are still a part of nature due to all the

abiotic components of our planet still being present in the built world includeing the laws of pysics, light,

sound, atomic matter you name it, it's still there like it's always been. For me to fully grasp this I

had to think back to class when we disscused the concept of Phenomenology which is the idea that to 

truely understand someing you have strip it of it's construction and observe/describe what actually exist.

Which in this case would be striping the word city of it's construction and describeing what actually exist

in these places. Moreover some questions that poped into my mind after this reading include, is warryness

in NYC's coyotes a result of natural selection (warryness being a favored trait due to agressive or curouis

indivuals being culled over decades) or a result of learned behavior (humans = danger) or a result of

both?, do humans have an obligation to allow wildlife to live in our cities?, How do we determine which

species/indivuals get to live in our cities and which we should remove?, What's the best way to

manage predtor populations in a urban setting?, Do certain constructions/sterotypes

surrounding nature in cites harm urban restration efforts? Regarding question three I personally belive we

should only remove a species or indviual from a urban setting if it poses a large danger to humans or pets

unproveked or if it is highly distrctive to property. In response to question four, I would say castration is

the way to go in most suitations. (dispite it being really expensive to do at any scale) due to the fact that

hunting/culling tends to be a big taboo in more urban settings and a potental cull could also potentialy

pose a safety risk (stray bullets). 



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