Animals flee the countryside

Julia Voss reports on a new wave of immigration, namely that of many animals from the countryside to cities. Only recently scientists started referring to cities as biotopes. "Contrary to all predictions birds are breeding in the midst of the deafening noise from airplanes, building nests on bell towers or making themselves at home under train bridges and among cavalcades of lorries. Rare plants are blooming in asphalt cracks, foxes stroll through city centres and kestrels soar above tower blocks as if they were ravines. From nature's point of view the cities' main attractions are a plentiful supply of food, the absence of many natural enemies and above all higher temperatures - which means they can also serve as a model for global warming... Not only is nature moving to the city, it's abandoning the countryside, which has become increasingly uninhabitable owing to the spread of industrialised agriculture. Nature is fleeing from agriculture - from toxins, over-fertilisation, monocultures and contaminated water."

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