This visitor weblog was written by Brandon Weigand, the 2025 Charles Labatiuk Scholarship Award Winner. Brandon is a graduate pupil within the School of Forestry on the College of British Columbia.
Although we don’t usually notice it, the animals dwelling in our cities are a few of the most tenacious on the planet. They have to repeatedly adapt to our calls for, negotiating the perils of the city matrix to feed and forage, their lives evolving in fixed synchrony with the very environments that maintain and endanger them. And but, regardless of all their ingenuity, city species are sometimes reviled or ignored, typically even absent within the collective mythos that attracts conservationists towards defending wildlife within the first place. Love them or hate them, they share in the identical delicate dance between survival and adaptation that each one animals do, ourselves included.
Writer Brandon Weigand with certainly one of his water depth and atmospheric monitoring devices in Vancouver’s Everett Crowley Park.
We frequently overlook the animals that transfer amongst us, but our presence means every thing to them. Confronted with numerous hurdles distinctive to the city setting, the wildlife right here have carved out ingenious toolkits, evolving intelligent variations to the pressures of our personal design. Take into account one of the vital emblematic types of city wildlife: pigeons. These birds can memorize the most secure routes by way of crowded streets, timing their actions to attenuate threat whereas maximizing reward. They will even acknowledge particular person people, distinguishing between those that feed them and people who may threaten them. Many different species, similar to raccoons, crows, coyotes and squirrels, possess traits which have made them remarkably profitable: unflinching curiosity, spectacular risk-taking, the intelligence to study and bear in mind, and the adaptive bravery to show the scraps of our world into alternative. These qualities have made these animals not simply survivors, however blueprints for what it means to persist in an more and more urbanized world.
Brandon Weigand teaches others to carry out aquatic insect collections at certainly one of Vancouver’s most beloved pond websites, Jericho Seashore Park.
Nonetheless, I’ve usually heard folks dismiss city staples like pigeons as “flying rats,” a phrase that slurs what’s, in reality, a rare survival story. However it’s their opportunism – the strategic flexibility that enables them to thrive alongside us – that appears to gasoline the broader indifference I’ve seen towards city wildlife as an entire, casting many species into obscurity by way of our collective irritation, or by way of our discomfort in recognizing that scavenging can truly be a type of calculated ingenuity. Carl Jung as soon as mentioned the darker, suppressed elements of human psychology are revealed within the methods we deal with animals. I usually marvel if so with our so-called “flying rats.” Pigeons lead exceptional lives, as do different city creatures like sparrows, raccoons, opossums and, after all, rats. But we’re fast to dismiss them as a pestilence or nuisance, typically fearing and even hating them. Definitely, some creatures like bats, bugs, and snakes can harbour actual risks, and warning is smart. However many of those animals are merely fellow survivors, compelled to adapt in landscapes we claimed from them and remade for ourselves. If we may study to note them with curiosity as a substitute of contempt, we’d discover their resourcefulness somewhat inspiring.
And maybe the very phrase “flying rats” exposes a deeper conundrum about conservation itself. If we wrestle to see the resilience of pigeons or the resourcefulness of raccoons, how can we hope to nurture an sincere appreciation for species past our concrete borders? Endangered animals like rhinos and gorillas unquestionably deserve safety, however why not prolong a few of that wild creativeness and environmental ethic to the on a regular basis creatures that reside alongside us? Is it a query of rarity or assets? Or have we inadvertently narrowed conservation to a paradigm that favors the distant whereas quietly dismissing the acquainted?
Brandon Weigand delivering a presentation on city warmth and biodiversity to metropolis stakeholders in Kelowna, BC.
“City” Does Not Imply “Safe”
The guts of my work lies not in offering definitive solutions to those advanced questions, however in including nuance and perspective that may transfer the dialog ahead. My goal is straightforward: to provide city wildlife the eye it deserves, not just for its resilience and flexibility, however for its intrinsic price as a part of our shared ecosystems. As biodiversity declines globally, I usually marvel if the species in our cities may turn into our final bastion of nature preservation. To arrange for that chance, we have to perceive how city inhabitants reside, thrive and, too usually, perish inside these quickly altering landscapes. As wetlands give technique to pavement and local weather extremes pressure already-limited habitats, we’re reminded that the wildlife closest to us can disappear as all of a sudden because the endangered species we combat to guard elsewhere.
I examine the lives of 1 notably susceptible city species: bats. Although usually imagined as distant creatures of caves and forests, many bat species discover refuge in cities, making their roosts in buildings and houses. Removed from being distant phantoms, they’re truly a few of our nearest neighbors, typically extra widespread than different types of city wildlife. The truth is, if you happen to glimpse a fleeting silhouette after sundown in your metropolis, there’s an excellent likelihood it’s a bat. They’re masters of evasion, slipping past our consciousness by way of their nocturnal habits. Rising at nightfall and vanishing by daybreak, they take to the skies with unbelievable effectivity. Only one bat can devour hundreds of pest bugs in a night.
Brandon Weigand helping the Wildlife Society of Canada’s efforts to watch threatened bat species in Vancouver. He’s holding a Yuma myotis, a typical species discovered all through town.
Like pigeons, bats have carved out a particular place inside our cities, adapting nicely to the challenges we’ve afforded. However whereas pigeons endure disdain, bats carry a longstanding archetypal terror, one which too usually overshadows their true evolutionary marvel. Bats are the one mammals to have developed true flight, and the one ones to make use of echolocation to hunt, navigate, and talk in the dead of night. Many bat species kind thriving social communities, with dynamic household bonds, cooperative care, and layered hierarchies that mirror our personal. Their intelligence permits them to study, bear in mind, and resolve issues, whereas their aerial precision is unmatched within the animal kingdom, able to maneuvers so breathtaking they would depart even Cirque du Soleil performers in awe.
And but, bats stay reviled. Centuries of folklore have solid them as sinister predators, when in actuality they’re amongst our most cautious neighbours, skimming the evening with a cautious discretion intent on avoiding us solely. Like many types of city wildlife, they’re opportunists, however theirs is especially distinctive, thriving within the niches our nightly lives present. Whereas we sleep, bats inherit a quieter metropolis, the street-lit skies theirs to freely navigate, their voices carried in ultrasonic cries we can not hear. If pigeons are a blueprint for city survival, bats could be its triumph. Nonetheless, if there may be one creature that personifies our wrestle to embrace city wildlife, it’s the bat.
It’s that very issue that makes their future all of the extra fragile. Vancouver’s little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) have, for now, withstood the looming arrival of White-nose Syndrome, a devastating fungal illness that has decimated greater than 90% of colonies throughout Jap North America. Whether or not by way of luck or some yet-unknown issue, they’re holding on—however I don’t count on this may final. The precursors of White-nose have already been detected uncomfortably near town, and it could solely be a matter of time earlier than it reaches our Western shores. In that slim window of time lies a particular accountability: to review how Vancouver’s bats reside, so we’re not left solely to review how they die.
Realizing Targets
For me, finding out city bat ecology is as a lot about guaranteeing their survival as it’s about inspiring others to worth what we nonetheless have. To do that, we have to understand how bats navigate town, what they eat, and the way they prioritize choices underneath altering circumstances. Meals webs can range tremendously between cities, and in Vancouver, the connections between insect prey availability and insectivore survival stay largely a thriller. What we do know is that city life provides each dangers and alternatives, shaping when, the place, and the way these animals can discover sustenance. When our inexperienced and blue areas are disrupted or misplaced, whether or not by habitat degradation, contamination, or rising local weather extremes, bats and different aerial insectivores could also be compelled to journey farther, compete more durable, and expend vitality they’ll hardly afford, particularly in the course of the breeding season. My analysis explores these pressures in tandem, emphasizing that the destiny of city wildlife relies upon not solely on their capability to adapt, but additionally on the integrity of our shared environments.
However that is solely the primary stage of my analysis. The 2025 summer season discipline season was an opportunity to refine strategies and glimpse the connections at play, however subsequent 12 months I hope to widen the lens significantly. As I enter my PhD program, I additionally need to incorporate extra holistic measures to grasp how each bats and different threatened insectivores, like barn swallows, maneuver round threats like warmth islands and the way they choose prey throughout time and area. The Charles Labatiuk Scholarship is a pivotal basis for this work and plenty of different efforts, equipping my analysis group with the instruments we’ve lengthy envisioned. With its help, my group at UBC will assist develop a community of cutting-edge sensors to trace insectivorous species throughout Vancouver, linking meals webs, habitat well being, and motion ecology right into a fuller image of how wildlife actually lives in our metropolis.
Brandon Weigand venturing into the pond margins of Vancouver’s Trout Lake to retrieve discipline gear.
Dispelling the myths surrounding city wildlife can be a precedence, which implies making their existence seen to the general public. To that finish, I lead bat walks by way of Vancouver’s parks, collaborate with the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, and volunteer with the Wildlife Conservation Society of Canada to research probiotic resistance to White-nose Syndrome. One effort already underway is a ardour challenge to revive UBC’s severely diminished barn swallow populations, involving a number of stakeholders, companions, and neighborhood members in creating tangible, hands-on alternatives to study extra in regards to the metropolis’s threatened fauna. These efforts are about creating lasting encounters; moments when folks can see, hear, or think about the lives of animals that always slip previous us unnoticed. From these efforts, I hope to depart behind not simply information, however a shift in perspective, a recognition that the animals sharing our streets and skies are a part of the identical conservation story as these in far-off locations. By making their presence seen, I hope to show others that defending the acquainted is inseparable from defending the uncommon, not as a result of the acquainted is any much less exceptional, however as a result of it’s surprisingly simple to develop detached to their wonders.
And maybe that’s central to discussing sincere conservation. If pigeons remind us that ingenuity occurs in plain sight, and bats problem us to understand what we worry, then as a substitute of defining the boundaries of conservation, possibly we should always work to blur them. Possibly we may study to easily go searching us, to see alternative the place others see nuisance, to acknowledge resourcefulness the place others see intrusion, to ponder the unstated ire in phrases like “flying rats” after we see pigeons alongside the road. Valuing the neglected and close by needn’t diminish the distant and extraordinary, however as a substitute situate them inside a richer story of resilience and survival. City species could not match the standard mythos of wildness, however maybe that’s precisely why they matter. They remind us that survival shouldn’t be solely taking place elsewhere, but additionally right here, quietly, within the periphery of our each day lives.
You’ll be able to learn Brandon’s essay under: