Cities can be designed and managed to support wildlife welfare, reducing urban-wildlife conflict and improving quality of life for the animals sharing our urban environments.
Urban wildlife welfare has emerged as an important field precisely because the scale of harm inflicted by poorly designed cities is enormous. A single glass-covered office building can kill dozens of birds per week during migration — multiplied across thousands of buildings in a single city, the toll is staggering. Urban wildlife also suffers from resource unpredictability, exposure to rodenticides through secondary poisoning, and chronic stress from noise and human disturbance. Cities that actively manage for wildlife — using bird-safe glass, reducing unnecessary lighting, maintaining native plant corridors, and managing cats and rodenticides — substantially reduce this toll. Urban rewilding initiatives in European cities have demonstrated that biodiversity and human wellbeing are compatible goals that reinforce each other.