As global population becomes increasingly urban, opportunities for people to experience nature have decreased. Counteracting this trend is a key challenge for future urban development as interactions of urban people with biodiversity support human health and wellbeing, and may also result in positive attitudes towards biodiversity conservation. Collecting edible plants in urban surroundings, especially outside of gardens (“urban foraging”) is a traditional interaction with nature, based on knowledge about multiple uses of plants. Although some studies exist from different cities around the world, urban foraging has been revealed as a critically understudied phenomenon. We now analyze (i) the relevance of this human-nature interaction in Berlin, one of Europe’s metropolises, (ii) how people’s sociocultural background matters in attitudes of urban foragers vs. non-foragers towards this activity, and (iii) whether urban foraging may lead to conflicts with biodiversity conservation. Our survey revealed urban foraging as a relevant human-nature interaction with a high potential to grow: 33% of 535 respondents already collected edible plants outside of gardens and another 38% would be doing so given certain conditions, e.g. when contamination risks can be excluded. Many sociocultural groups (differing, e.g. on gender, age, childhood experience) shared attitudes towards foraging and existing barriers. Risks to biodiversity seem to be manageable as neither native species nor rare species were over-foraged in relation to species’ abundance in the local flora, with more abundant species being collected more frequently. We conclude that urban foraging can be a powerful tool for connecting urban people to nature without putting native biodiversity at risk. We make a claim for integrated approaches towards environmental policy, environmental education and greenspace management: these should aim on keeping potential health risks at a minimum, and should support urban foraging as a biodiversity-friendly and sustainable human-nature interaction in the cities of tomorrow.

随着全球人口日益城市化，人们体验自然的机会减少了。应对这一趋势是未来城市发展的关键挑战，因为城市人与生物多样性的相互作用支持人类健康和福祉，也可能导致人们对生物多样性保护持积极态度。基于对植物多种用途的了解，在城市环境中，尤其是在花园之外收集食用植物（“城市觅食”）是与自然的传统互动。尽管来自世界各地的一些城市已有研究，但城市觅食已被发现是一种严重未被研究的现象。现在，我们分析（i）在欧洲大都市之一的柏林，这种人与自然互动的相关性，（ii）人们的社会文化背景对于城市觅食者与非觅食者的态度如何相关，以及（iii）城市觅食是否会导致与生物多样性保护的冲突。我们的调查显示，城市觅食是人与自然之间相互作用的相关因素，具有很大的增长潜力：在535个被调查者中，有33％的人已经在花园外收集了食用植物，而在某些条件下（例如可以排除污染风险的情况下），另外38％的人会这样做。 。许多社会文化团体（例如，在性别，年龄，童年经历方面存在差异）对觅食和现有障碍持相同态度。生物多样性的风险似乎是可控的，因为无论是本地物种还是稀有物种都不会因当地植物群中物种的丰富而过度觅食，更丰富的物种被更频繁地收集。我们得出的结论是，城市觅食可以成为将城市人与自然联系起来而不会使本地生物多样性面临风险的强大工具。我们要求采取综合措施来应对环境政策，环境教育和绿色空间管理：这些措施应旨在将潜在的健康风险降至最低，并应支持城市觅食，将其作为未来城市中对生物多样性友好且可持续的人与自然的互动。