This article was taken from the January 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Here's a way to deal with invasive animals such as grey squirrels: eat them. "I want to open up a more active relationship with our foods, the pests in the city as well as the people who contact these animals," says Lisa Ma, a London-based designer and researcher. "The aim is to broaden the black and-white emotional sensations towards animals.
The current policies are to remove, destroy and prevent the trajectory in our future urban ecosystem, but I want to change that attitude by proposing to take advantage of it." Also on the menu in the name of biodiversity: Canada geese, carp, bullfrogs, crayfish, rabbits, crabs and jellyfish.
Ma likes pointing out the glitches in systems. Previously, she's created a spa in a cat lady's home (based on the theory that parasitic toxoplasmosis infection from cats can cause women to appear more attractive, sociable and intelligent), helped conspiracy theorists who believe tap water is poisoned go door-to-door filtering residents' tap water for free, and initiated a project that turned Chinese workers in a joystick factory (heading for obsolescence) into part-time farmers.
This new project, called Invasive, has introduced Ma to other eccentric subcultures: she has been wild-boar hunting in Berlin, visited illegal pigeon-farms in the UK, toured the abandoned rabbit-factories of Catalonia and chased Canada geese with a catapult. The next step, Ma hopes, is suburban invasive farming, where householders can feed up invasive animals for slaughter. "Suburbs can be used as regions where people nurture blooms and plagues to bring the invasive animals 'into season'."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
