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Ashley McNeill
ENC 3331-0001
Thomas Wright
February 15, 2015

Animal Expeditions into the Great Unknown of Urban Orlando

While there are a multitude of issues currently happening in Orlando, one of the most
recent issues is the problem of animal encroachment into the highly populated areas of the city.
Due to this problem, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of animal sightings, and in
some cases attacks, in the surrounding area. This issue then brings up the question: Is it time to
stop development and instead time to start looking towards natural conservation?
In order to prove that this is an issue actually worthy of being addressed, there needs to
be solid evidence to prove so. So in order to provide this evidence, I am first going to put out a
survey to see how much information the community already has on this issue. Once this has been
established there are multitude of things that can be researched to help people better understand
this problem. Some such things can include maps that provides a detailed depiction of how much
Orlando has expanded in the past few years, as well as all of the natural parks that have been left
available. On top of this it is also important to be able to provide statistical evidence. In this case
it would most likely be the amount of expansion that has occurred, both statistically to past
expansion as well as in ratio to the entire state, as well as the estimated statistics of the ever
increasing animal population. Hopefully, by providing this information it will be able to show
how the animal population far exceeds the amount of land they have to utilize. Thus, it will bring
attention to the fact that the animals have no choice but to start moving inland. Another

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important part of evidence for this project would be to actually interview some of the people who
have witnessed such a situation, this will help to show how these incidents actually affect the
community.
For this project there is going to both be a long term and a short term goal. For the time
being it would be acceptable if the issue is just acknowledged by the general public. While they
themselves cannot do anything about the issue, they can use their ability to petition a person of
higher governmental power. In this case my hope would be to petition the mayor, who could
bring this knowledge to the attention to the entirety of the city, and maybe someday even
influence other urban areas. However, this is a goal that is set far in the future, so for the purpose
of this project it would be acceptable to stop when there is at least a general awareness of the
issue.
While this is a fairly recent issue, there should still be plenty of media support. As a
matter of fact there has already been some acknowledgment of this issue by the local news.
While at this time their interest seems to be focused solely on the increase in black bear sightings
in the local neighborhoods, it should eventually broaden out to sightings of other animals, such
as foxes, coyotes, and Florida panthers. On top of support from the news, there is also plenty of
support that can be found on the internet for this issue.
After gathering this information, it can be displayed through several mediums. However,
at this time it seems logical to display this evidence through a blog or maybe a video, as these are
things I personally have some experience in. Also, in order to make it more appealing to the
audience it is going to be important to be able to provide a lot of visual support. Such as pictures
and graphs; things that people can look at quickly and understand the issue. Hopefully, by
displaying these images it will become possible to work with peoples pathos. By establishing

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this emotional connection, the community will hopefully become more interested in the issue and
be more willing to participate in some way.
While the issue may seem to be fairly new and not as important as others that have been
going on for years, it is definitely something worth considering now, because what is just a small
issue now may grow to be a true problem in the future.

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