How Can We help?

Here are some ideas for work on urban animals:

• A global non-profit on urban animals , doing research, precedent interventions, and accumulation of all the worldwide knowledge about improving life for the urban multi-species society. This also includes helping wild animals passing through urban areas, such as migrating birds; more than one billion birds collide with glass windows in the U.S. alone each year. Some solutions are surprisingly simple, such as placing visible markers or decals on windows so birds can recognize the glass and avoid collisions.
• A nonprofit focused solely on animals and transportation from a global perspective. It would push for technologies that help autonomous vehicles detect and avoid animals, including small animals near or under the vehicle. One Chinese self driving car demo already shows an underbody camera that can help avoid animals while leaving a parking space. The organization would also promote better road design, including wildlife crossings, underpasses, fencing, warning systems, and future transportation alternatives that reduce harm to animals.
• Architects for animals: The architect Dan Hasson argues that animals are the blind spot, the lacuna, of the field of architecture. “Architecture is supposedly a humanistic discipline, but it revolves only around human beings. This practice does not see animals and does not think about them, even though planned spaces always affect animals as well. Animals are supposedly irrelevant " (source). Architects for Animals is a guild of experts who develop ideas and initiatives to design, build, and renovate cities, buildings, parks, and public spaces from the perspective of Ekho: not only for humans, but for every being.
• Here are some Research ideas that some of these non-profits, academics, and independent researchers can work on. We actually know quite little about urban animals, there is a lot of basic work to be done:
  • How many urban animals are there globally? How many vertebrates, how many insects?
  • What are the main suffering causes of urban animals, and how they compare to animals suffering from natural causes?
  • How many animals worldwide die from direct vehicle collisions, why does this happen, and which species are most affected? Answering these questions could help shape future regulation of autonomous vehicles and push the self driving car industry toward technologies that better detect and avoid animals.
  • The creation of human environments via the destruction of wild ones: does it reduce the number of beings on earth?