The Wild Side of Town

In 1986, the book “The Wild Side of Town” authored by British broadcaster and environmentalist Chris Baines was published. The book coincided with a popular BBC television series and had a major impact on people’s appreciation of urban wildlife in Britain. Baines wrote: “The green space in towns and cities is much more than a simple, slightly degraded duplicate of pre-war farmland. For a great many species, the town is a much better place to live in than the countryside ever was.” (Baines, 1986, p. 29). Various studies have confirmed that urban areas often harbour a perhaps surprisingly high variety of species of plants and animals (e.g. Cornelis & Hermy, 2004; Gustavsson et al., 2005; Alvey, 2006; Lorusso et al., 2007). A recent magazine article (Theil, 2006) confirms that there is a place for nature even in the most urbanised area. It refers to research by Munich’s Technical University which found more species and more diverse habitats in selected big cities than in any national park of nature reserve. Berlin is home to two-thirds of all bird species in Germany, while Zurich hosts ten times more foxes, hedgehogs and badgers per square kilometre than the surrounding countryside. Part of the explanation is that cities offer a mosaic of habitats and microclimates, from pond-filled gardens to industrial brownfield sites and, of course, city forests. Moreover, urban green spaces harbour a large number of exotic species. A study of South-African towns, for example, found two-thirds of all woody plant species to be alien species (e.g. McConnachie et al., 2008).