The surveyor of nature
Wang Fang knew he should not have fed the raccoon, but he could not help it.
It was seven years ago and Wang was a post-doctoral student working for an office of the Smithsonian Institution in Virginia.
The unexpected guest knocked at the door of his laboratory, begging for food.
“As an animal researcher I knew humans should never feed wild animals, but faced with this adorable creature, I couldn’t help but grab some cat food for it,” Wang said.
The raccoon returned a few days later, only to be chased away by a broom-wielding Wang, who wanted to teach the animal that approaching humans for food can be dangerous.
Unfortunately, the raccoon did not learn the lesson. Several days later the same creature broke into the laboratory, damaged a fridge and was electrocuted after chewing on a live wire.
“This incident taught me that we should not indulge our curiosity and spoil wild animals with human love because it can be deadly and harmful for both parties,” he said.
With this incident leaving an indelible impression on him, Wang made it a point to study a similar looking creature, the raccoon dog ( Nyctereutes procyonoides), when he returned to China to work as a researcher at Fudan University in Shanghai in 2018.
Raccoon dogs first started surfacing in the city’s residential neighborhoods around 2001, though sightings were sporadic and they hardly caused any trouble. But in 2018, with their population having grown significantly, these animals were fast becoming a menace to society.
In July this year as many as 80 raccoon dogs were found in a community in Songjiang district of the city, and some had even attacked residents.
“Frequent and large-scale human feeding has resulted in the surge of raccoon dogs in this community,” Wang said.
Such conflicts are not native to China, he said. Raccoon dogs have also created headaches for farmers in Japan. In
London, foxes can sometimes become a societal nuisance, too.
His investigation led to the discovery of raccoon dogs in 137 residential quarters of Shanghai.
“The number is growing, and it could have hit 150 quarters by now.”
In September Wang’s research entered the second phase. His team will now place GPS collars on some raccoon dogs to help study how they travel between places, the human activities that have led to their proliferation and the potential hotspots for conflicts between these animals and humans.
“We hope to know precisely what environment changes are needed to help humans and wild animals coexist peacefully, what changes could benefit animals, and what kind of human activities, such as feeding, should be prohibited to protect animals.”
These studies, Wang said, are part of efforts to build a detailed management plan for the city’s biodiversity, which includes monitoring the density of several key species, and protocols for handling animals when their population gets out of hand.
Wang’s focus on using mathematics to solve conflicts between humans and animals started during his doctoral studies at Peking University when he accompanied his adviser to evaluate the impact of a new development project on the panda population.
Wang noticed that a lack of comprehensive data about panda activities had resulted in decisions being made to build highways and railways that might damage panda habitats. While construction companies could estimate just how much pollution the project would emit and how much GDP it would generate, they could not provide data on how their project would affect the behavior of pandas, he said.
“I started to think that our understanding of wild animals should be quantified so it is precise and repeatable, and with the increase of data and improvement of algorithms, our evaluation can get better and better.”