A new Penn Vet study is finding where the wild things are

A new project at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine called the Accessing Urban Nature Initiative (AUNI) has started capturing images of seldom seen but decidedly special city dwellers—wild animals—with the ultimate goal of making life better for animals and people alike. 

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“We want to make it possible for humans and animals to be able to safely co-exist in city areas,” says Julie Carol Ellis, a wildlife ecologist who is the AUNI project leader, adjunct associate professor of pathobiology and associate director of One Health at Penn Vet, and interim faculty director of Penn’s Environmental Innovations Initiative. The AUNI is an inaugural recipient of the University of Pennsylvania’s 2025 Draw Down the Lightning Grant.

So far, the project has set up a little over a third of the approximately 30 motion-triggered cameras its leaders intend to position in locations around the Philadelphia area, including parks, cemeteries, forest preserves, or private land. The cameras aren’t set up in uber-urban areas, but rather more habitat-like locales.

Although Philadelphia’s initiative is relatively new, its documented creatures—besides raccoons, herons, and mink—already include groundhogs, red foxes, gaggles of geese, and lots of deer. Among the critters seen strutting their stuff is a buck with a full rack of antlers.

Karen Verderame, assistant director of outreach education at Penn Vet Shelter Medicine and Community Engagement, says she is working with partners who want to expand their involvement even beyond being camera hosts. Their plans include educational programs and community outreach. For example, students at Saul High, a Philadelphia public school, are helping to manage the camera on their property, but the information they obtain from it will be used to expand their curriculum and provide experiential learning.

The AUNI project is still in its early stages, and partners say they have been surprised by the photographs the cameras have come up with so far.

How wild animals are faring can have an impact on their human neighbors. While urban areas like Philadelphia are expanding and the number of people projected to live in cities is growing, Ellis says biodiversity and proximity to nature have been shown to have overall benefits for human health and well-being. “One of my main goals is to understand how wildlife is using the Philadelphia region’s ecosystem, where they are, and what we can do in that landscape to promote healthy wildlife,” she says.

This story is by Rita Giordano. Read more at Penn Vet.