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This advanced textbook moves beyond a basic scientific comprehension of urban ecosystems to understand the essential details of how scientists, policymakers, and practitioners develop solutions to effectively manage urban biodiversity. Such efforts necessitate unravelling the complex components that bolster or constrain biodiversity including human-wildlife interactions, resource availability, climate fluctuations, novel species relationships, and landscape heterogeneity. However, key to an understanding of these processes is also recognizing the tremendous social variation inherent within and across urban areas. The diversity of urban human communities fundamentally shapes how society designs, builds, and manages urban landscapes. This means that urban environmental management unavoidably must account for human social variation. Unfortunately, urban systems have a history and continued legacy of social inequality (e.g., systemic racism and classism) that govern how cities are both built and managed. This novel text not only highlights these connections, but also illustrates the interdisciplinary approaches needed for advancing a new, justice-centred approach to nature conservation.
Urban Biodiversity and Equity is suitable for graduate-level students and professional researchers from both natural and social science disciplines studying the ecology, conservation, and management of urban environments and their biodiversity. It will also be of relevance and use to a broader audience of urban ecologists, urban planners, and urban wildlife practitioners.
1. The Imperative of Urban Conservation / Max R. Lambert and Christopher J. Schell
Section 1: Urban Nature's Social Fabric
2. Escaping the Practice of Exclusion: Conservation, Greenspace, and Urban Planning in the Age of Environmental Justice / Fushcia-Ann Hoover and Rachel Scarlett
3. Human Motivations and Constraints in Urban Conservation / Kelli L. Larson and Jeffrey A. Brown
4. Conservation on the Urban Fringe: Sustaining Biodiversity and Advancing Equity in Suburban Ecosystems / Liba Pejchar and Sarah Reed
5. Portland's Conservation Organizations: Acknowledging Racial Inequity and Responding with Community-Informed Solutions / Laura Guderyahn and Mary Logalbo
Section 2: Innovative Approaches for Understanding and Prioritizing Equitable Urban Conservation
6. The Role of Urban Tree Canopies in Environmental Justice and Conserving Biodiversity / Dexter Locke, J. Morgan Grove, and Steward T. A. Pickett
7. Participatory Science for Equitable Urban Biodiversity Research and Practice / Deja J. Perkins, Lauren M. Nichols, and Robert R. Dunn
8. Conservation Through Multi-City Ecological Networks / Seth Magle, Mason Fidino, Liza Lehrer, Tobin Magle, and Myla Aronson
9. Molecular Methods Through an Urban Social-Ecological Focus / Kevin Avilés-Rodriguez, Kimberly Hughes, Jonathan L. Richardson, and Jason Munshi-South
10. Urban Flagship Umbrella Species and Slender Lorises as an Example for Urban Conservation / Kaberi Kar Gupta, Madhusudan Khatti, Vidisha Kulkarni, Hari Prakash J. Ramesh, Harshitha C. Kumar, Kesang Bhutia, Soumya Kori, Rajeev Bacchu, and Arun P. Visweswaran
11. Animal Behavior, Cognition, and Human-Wildlife Interactions in Urban Areas / Lauren A. Stanton, Christine Wilkinson, Lisa Angeloni, Sarah Benson-Amram, Christopher J. Schell, and Julie K. Young
Section 3: Emergent Urban Planning and Management Frameworks for Addressing Societal and Conservation Goals
12. Urban Places Create Unique Health Spaces for Wildlife, People, and the Environment / Kaylee A. Byers, Maureen H. Murray, and Joanne E. Nelson
13. Developing a Toolbox for Urban Biodiversity Conservation / Erica Spotswood, Max Lambert, Selena Pang, and Jonathan Young
14. Making Nature's City: An Applied Science Framework to Guide Evaluation and Planning for Urban Biodiversity Conservation / Bronwen Stanford, Kelly Ikyanan, Robin Grossinger, Erin Beller, Mathew Benjamin, J. Letitia Grenier, Micaela Bazo, Nicole Heller, Myla Aronson, Alexander Felson, Peter Groffman, and Erica Spotswood
Conclusions
15. Biodiversity for the People: Future Directions for Urban Biodiversity Conservation / Christopher J. Schell, Nyeema C. Harris, Simone Des Roches, Travis Gallo, and Max Lambert
Max Lambert is the Aquatic Research Section Manager at the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, Olympia, USA. A conservation biologist who focuses predominantly on amphibians and reptiles, he has over a decade of experience as a research biologist studying how human activities influence wildlife and how animals subsequently evolve to deal with novel environmental conditions, both in natural environments and in our cities and suburbs. A lifetime member of the Society for Conservation Biology, in 2019 he was awarded a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship which seeks to develop future world leaders and entrepreneurs who are successful at linking conservation science and application. He is currently an editor of Ecological Solutions and Evidence, a new journal from the British Ecological Society that publishes studies from academics and practitioners on conservation.
Christopher Schell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is an urban ecologist whose research integrates evolutionary theory with ecological application to disentangle the processes accentuating human-carnivore conflict. He works closely with underrepresented communities, wildlife managers, cultural institutions, and philanthropic organizations to help foster mutually enriching relationships among people and wildlife. He is a board member of the Urban Wildlife Working Group through The Wildlife Society and is also the Diversity Officer for the Animal Behavior Society.
