The Impact of Systemic Racism on Nature and Wildlife in Cities

How these canids survive among city skyscrapers and sidewalks. And what that can teach us about saving the planet.

In April of 2007, a coyote walked into a Quiznos in downtown Chicago. It walked inside the front door, right into a fast food restaurant full of people. And then, it sat in a soda cooler for an hour. It was an event so rare, it made the evening news. 

Why did the coyote walk into the Quiznos? How was it so tolerant of people? It's not normal for a wild animal to be less than six feet away from a human without a care. 

Sometimes you start to think about a story that you want to tell, but the story itself takes you to unexpected places … in this case to some of the biggest questions of our time about urban ecology, race, and our future relationship with nature. This is one of those stories.

Today, we’ll look at how a coyote in a refrigerator can teach us to rethink our entire relationship with nature: from deep in the wilderness, to deep downtown in our cities.

Clarification, 2:30 p.m., 6/6/2023: Sam Kreling is a PhD student working with Laura Prugh, Associate Professor of Quantitative Wildlife Sciences at the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. Professor Prugh is the principal investigator of the Seattle Coyote Project.

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