Pathways between people, wildlife and environmental justice in cities

Abstract Wildlife are increasingly recognized as critical to urban ecosystems, but the impacts and benefits of wildlife on people in cities are poorly understood. Environmental justice scholarship has concluded that elements of the urban environment can create or exacerbate social inequity, but human–wildlife interactions have not been considered through this lens. We conducted a literature review on urban wildlife, human–wildlife interactions and environmental justice. We triangulated between these three bodies of literature to identify trends, gaps and research needs. We identified six pathways through which wildlife presence or absence, wildlife management and human–wildlife interactions in cities may lead to social injustice for people. Our review shows that wildlife affect nearly all aspects of urban life for people, including economics, participation in decision‐making, patterns of urban space, human health, psychological well‐being and cultural discourses. Through these six pathways, urban wildlife management disproportionately impacts marginalized and vulnerable communities and benefits affluent urban residents. Contemporary intersections of urban planning, wildlife management and histories of systemic bias exacerbate existing injustices in cities. Synthesis and applications . Though wildlife are often characterized as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on their effects on people, we conclude that this dichotomy perpetuates injustice for people and wildlife. Instead, we argue that a ‘just city’ fosters healthy wildlife populations through equitable decision‐making. The pathways we lay out here offer a road map for incorporating environmental justice into urban wildlife management. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.