SAN DIEGO: AMERICA’S WILDEST CITY Key Art for PBS NATURE | ©2024 PBS

San Diego, California, is famous for many things, but it’s generally not heralded for its free-roaming wildlife.

But perhaps it should be, according to the PBS NATURE documentary SAN DIEGO: AMERICA’S WILDEST CITY, which premieres on PBS Wednesday, November 6.

During PBS’s portion of the summer 2024 Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour in the somewhat less wild city of Pasadena, CA, SAN DIEGO: AMERICA’S WILDEST CITY writer/director Nate Dappen and PBS NATURE executive producer Fred Kaufman sit down to talk about their geographically contained but biologically epic film.

Dappen is especially intrigued by the intersection of wild creatures and human construction, but he says he’s fascinated by animals no matter what they’re doing. “I love nature. I love wildlife of all kinds.”

However, “Our company, Day’s Edge, specializes in science and nature stories, but I would say eighty percent of our work is about humans and our place on this planet, what we’re doing to transform the planet. So, working on SAN DIEGO: AMERICA’S WILDEST CITY was our second urban ecology film, but we also produced a six-hour science series for PBS called HUMAN FOOTPRINT, which is all about how humans transform the planet. We’re in the second season of that now, too. So we’re particularly interested in stories about humanity and what our role is here, how we fit into nature, how we shape it, how it shapes us.”

A study about why sharks were coming closer to shore found that this was tied to where sewage pipes run into the ocean. New microflora has been created by the runoff, clustering around where the pipes meet the water. The micro species attract small fish, who attract larger fish, and so on, ultimately bringing sharks.

“We don’t think about those things, right?” says Dappen. “Our show HUMAN FOOTPRINT is all about the unintended consequences of the way we shape the world. We’re not trying to increase sharks, we just have human waste, and the waste runs off, and it turns into a [micro species].”

Similarly, “We weren’t trying to bring crows into San Diego, we weren’t trying to [cause] hummingbirds be eaten by roadrunners. We just changed the environment, nature shifts around, and then we transform how it all operates.”

Were Kaufman and PBS NATURE already thinking about a program like SAN DIEGO: AMERICA’S WILDEST CITY, or did Dappen come in and pitch it?

“He pitched it,” Kaufman replies. “I did not have it in mind. And I couldn’t understand it. I was like, ‘Nate, why are we doing San Diego? Why not San Francisco? Why not Los Angeles? What is it about San Diego?’ I was just missing it. I didn’t understand it. It certainly didn’t feel like a marquee city. But I must say, they came with an outline of what they were going to do, and it was pretty compelling, and it’s in the film. In your [Dappen’s] proposal, you said it was the most biologically diverse county in the United States, and so that was the line that sold it to me.

“It’s everything from offshore – the grunion spawning, these [small fish] that come ashore to breed, the orcas and the dolphins, the roadrunner, the hummingbird – there was just one thing after another. And then you stop and you think about these ecosystems, these habitats – the mountains, the deserts, the city, the water – it’s like, all of a sudden, I see this being a very diverse cast of characters. But at first, I go, ‘Really? Is this something we’re going to do? What other ideas do you have?’” Kaufman laughs.

Dappen adds, “I think the answer to that question is that it could be L.A., it could be San Francisco, it could be New York, it could be Miami. Obviously, I wanted to learn about San Diego, but I think that the stories are representative. It’s a story about how we shape water. It’s a story about how we shape the coast. It’s a story about urban sprawl. It’s a story about highways. It’s a story about the way we think about and look at nature. This happens everywhere. And so, for me, I feel like I’ve watched a lot of urban wildlife films. I think this one does a good job of presenting how humans shape a landscape, and how that has impacts on wildlife. But it could be anywhere, right?”

Kaufman agrees. “What we do is basically dedicate the time and the equipment to linger. Because if you go out, you’re going to get glimpses of everything, but give yourself two weeks, and get there in the morning at sunrise, and you might see some of these behaviors. This is all accessible. You just need to be there and dedicate your time to seeing it, because so much of the footage and the sequences, the background, the context, are accessible places. Parks and the bioluminescence, anybody could watch that. People just don’t take advantage of what they have in front of them.”

Dappen and Day’s Edge’s first urban wildlife film was 2022’s MIAMI WILD. “It was for the Smithsonian Channel,” Dappen explains. “It’s all about Miami’s urban ecology. Miami is a unique place, because there are so many exotic species. Obviously, there’s already a ton of biodiversity there, but pets have been brought in that have been released into the wild, and are now thriving, everything from peacocks and parrots to pythons.

“And so, it’s a story about animal immigrants that have been brought to a new land, and have to make a living there, sometimes at the expense of some of the native species, but native species are also thriving. So, it’s about natural resilience in a landscape transformed by humans.”

Does being observed by the camera change the behavior of any animals?

“For some species it does, for sure; for others species, not at all,” Dappen says. “I think it helps to work with habituated animals. So, kind of how close you get. Like hummingbirds, if you just sit in a blind, they don’t even know you’re there. Grebes, if you sit in a blind, they don’t even know you’re there. Ground squirrels, they just need to get used to you being there, but once they’re used to you, they do their thing. They’ll run up to you. I’ve had ground squirrels crawling on me; they’ll just treat you like you’re a piece of the landscape.”

Did Dappen and the team find any species they weren’t looking for initially?

“The roadrunner was a story we weren’t planning on doing originally. The dolphin and orca thing was not.”

With the latter, Dappen is referencing footage that SAN DIEGO: AMERICA’S WILDEST CITY acquired of a pod of orcas attacking a group of dolphins. How did this come to Dappen’s attention?

“I was death-scrolling on Instagram, trying to fall asleep, bad social media behavior, and a couple of guys that I follow, they’re marine mammal enthusiasts, and they were reposting stuff about all this.

“I thought, ‘Oh, that’s not something that we can film.’ And then I saw it again somewhere else, and then again, and then again, and again, and there was all this buzz, and they were talking about it on the local NPR station. And when we realized what was happening, it became clear that this was a cool story that [should be covered]. We didn’t have a lot of big animals in the show.”

On the other hand, inability to film the right kind of activity quashed a planned segment on rattlesnakes.

“The story with the rattlesnakes is about invasive mice,” Dappen relates. “When we build urban environments, mice come into the environments, and then we put bird seed out, because we like birds. And when birds feed on bird seed, they knock the seeds out [of the bird feeders], and then the mice come out. And then, that attracts rattlesnakes. So, it was just a matter of the story that we wanted to tell. We got all the footage, except for the predation event.” Because the show was running long, “out of all the other stories we had, we had to cut something, and we cut that.”

Besides predation events, what kinds of behaviors does SAN DIEGO: AMERICA’S WILDEST CITY include?

Dappen explains, “We’re just looking for general natural history stories. So, stories of survival, stories of thriving, stories of challenge. With the grebes, we filmed the grebes doing these remarkable courtship behaviors, building their nests, mating, raising their young – they’ve got this really cool behavior where they put their babies on their back, and then the babies jump back and forth from Mom to Dad as one of the parents searches for food.

“We’ve got hummingbirds raising babies, and we’ve got an underground sequence. Ground squirrels build these really intricate, enormous webs of underground tunnels that are then used naturally by a bunch of different species – burrowing owls, alligator lizards, Western toads, tarantulas, millipedes. So, we filmed this sequence of this underground world that’s right beneath our feet, a really important ecosystem that’s invisible to us.”

San Diego County contains a number of U.S. military bases. Is there anything unique to the bases that creates a certain type of environment which invites, or deters, any particular species?

“I would say the military bases have generally been very positive for wildlife in San Diego,” Dappen responds. “[U.S. Marine Corps base] Camp Pendleton is an enormous piece of land, and without it, there’d just be one big urban sprawl from Los Angeles all the way down to Tijuana. So, it provides an enormous base that’s got a bunch of endangered species on it, endangered species of mice, they have a population of bison living there, tons of coyotes, rattlesnakes, all the different species that people will see in our film.

“There are other places where the development of military bases has caused other sorts of challenges, but if I made a general statement, I think the military bases have had a positive impact on wildlife, compared to the rest of urban development. Obviously, things would be more diverse, richer, without all this development, but I think, considering where we’re at, Pendleton is the only thing stopping absolute sprawl from L.A. to TJ.”

What did Dappen learn about how the most successful species thrive in these surroundings?

“With most of the species that you see,” Dappen answers, “it depends on how you define ‘success.’ They’re all very successful animals. The grebes were [previously] very rare, they’re now very abundant. The hummingbirds, there used to be only one or two species, now there are four or five that are resident. Crows weren’t there, but crows are super-abundant now.

“I think that the key to success is adapting to the world that we live in. A lot of the changes that we make are bad for some species and good for others. If you nest on big lakes, a reservoir is good for you. If you eat flower nectar, feeders and flowers are good for you. So, I think if you’re adaptable, then you’re good. A lot of species are slow to change, and they’re not really going to make it.”

And what would Dappen and Kaufman most like people to know about this program?

Dappen “would most like people to know that nature is happening all around us, all the time, and it’s fantastic, and you can find it. And there are things that we can do to make it better for them, which will make it better for us.”

Kaufman concurs. “I was going to say the same exact thing. The most important thing is, nature shouldn’t be considered as something that’s ‘out there somewhere.’ It’s really all around us, and it’s really amazing and wonderful. And if you stop and take the time and pay attention, you’ll see a lot of this yourself.”

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Article:PBS NATURE: SAN DIEGO: AMERICA’S WILDEST CITY: Director Nate Dappen and NATURE executive producer Fred Kaufman on new documentary – Exclusive Interview

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