The United States is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, mainly due to its size which supports a wide range of habitats and species. Urban areas are typified by everyday pests such as pigeons, rats, and squirrels, but after reading the handbook, I was thoroughly surprised that our metropolitan area was home to some species that cannot be found anywhere else. New York City’s biodiversity is often promoted for marketing or aesthetic reasons, but as inhabitants, it is crucial to our survival; for example, without the hundreds of different types of bees to pollinate our flowers, we would not have clean air to breathe or fresh crops for food, home products, or other manufacturing purposes. Furthermore, Times Square may be the “Crossroads of the World” in an entertainment and cultural sense, but according to the handbook, New York City is located along the paths of many migration routes for birds and the boundaries of forests, salt marshes, freshwater marshes, and beaches. Without its unique geography, topography, geology, and weather patterns, our area would likely never have been colonized and became one of the most important cities on the globe.
As has been the case with most of our other readings, as humans, we seek to extract nearly everything from our surroundings to satisfy our ever-increasing needs, and these environments have taken a toll, namely through pollution, the introduction of invasive species, habitat destruction, and other factors. Preserving our unique set of ecosystems – not just for our sake but for all of their respective flora and fauna as well – is described in great detail in the handbook. The authors narrowed down biodiversity in general to biodiversity in cities and then specifically New York City; they outlined issues and ways for all of us to get involved. For example, in the section titled “How to Perform a Habitat Assessment”, the table is divided into categories of habitats and species to document, and non-expert and expert roles. This emphasizes how everybody already has the capability and the basic knowledge to lay the foundations for a more biodiverse and eco-friendly city for many generations to come. Also, the quote “By the time species have become rare enough to be listed statewide or nationally, recovery can be impossible” (Kiviat and Johnson 33) highlights the urgency of doing something about threats to biodiversity now, and can be connected to the listing of habitats and species in the back that may be actually rare in the common sense but not classified as such after going through a long, tedious, and risky bureaucratic process.
As well-organized, coherent, and easy-to-follow as this handbook was, I felt that the authors did not stress how some species may actually be harmful to us, and are most likely not worth conserving. They did mention how some man-made products are actually shelters to snakes, salamanders, and other reclusive animals, and how tall skyscrapers can harbor many rare species of birds. However, many of these species, especially birds and insects, can transmit diseases, some of which are probably not well-researched. They alluded to invasive species in the sense that some species threaten the welfare of other species, but not how they have been invasive to us. At the same rate, we humans are a vital part of nature as well, and like all other species, we have a role to ensure equilibrium; we just have not found the right balance yet.
