Introduction
The world is rapidly urbanizing with more and more people moving to major cities. The United Nations estimates that roughly 66% of the global population will be located in urban environments by 2050 (UN, 2014). Across the globe, people are congregating to the developed urban centres of the world and as a result these cities are expanding to keep up with an ever growing demand. With more and more land being converted into urban environments, we are beginning to see an increasing response from organisms as their natural habitats begin to shift. Urbanization and the issues that arise from it are currently at the forefront of the field of Landscape Ecology.
Figure 1: A graph displaying the proportion of each country's population that are located in urban areas during 2014 (produced by the United Nations).
Birds in particular are vulnerable to urbanization and are currently at risk from changing land conditions. Bird populations are facing tremendous pressures as drivers like habitat loss, an increase in mortalities from building collisions and predation from household pets such as domesticated cats are all driving bird populations into decline. Despite these pressures there is evidence to suggest that birds are adapting to urban environments in unique and unconventional ways. In the documentary, Planet Earth II, an episode revolving on animals living in Cities showed how a species of Peregrine Falcon are able to thrive in urban environments despite losing a majority of their original habitat (BBC, 2017). The towering skyscrapers of New York provided the ideal conditions these birds required fly unconstrained while hunting their prey. As developed cities continue to grow, it is becoming more and more important that bird populations learn to coexist in these new environments or face extirpation. Inspired by all this I wanted to investigate how urban environments were impacting bird populations here in Vancouver and to research which locations in the city would provide the best conditions for these birds to succeed.
