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Wild Mammals Roamed Further During the COVID-19 Lockdown
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-humans-strict-lockdown-wild-mammals.html [phys.org]
At one point in 2020, 4.4 billion people—more than half of the world's population—were under lockdown restrictions to stem the spread of COVID-19. This was such a sudden and substantial event that it has become known as the anthropause.
[...] It was around this time when people started to report animals appearing in unusual places. For example, cougars were seen prowling through the suburbs of Santiago, Chile, golden jackals became more active during the day in Tel Aviv, Israel, and dolphins appeared in the normally busy harbor of Trieste, Italy.
[...] A group of animal movement researchers came together in 2020 and formed the COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative, which I joined in 2021.
The initiative includes researchers who were already studying animals before the pandemic, and who were using bio-logging devices, such as GPS tags, to record animal movements.
[...] By pooling data from over 2,300 individual tracked mammals, from 43 species including elephants, giraffes, bears, deer and cougars, we were able to look at how their behavior and movement patterns changed during the lockdowns in 2020 compared to the same period one year earlier.
[...] We found that mammals were 36% closer to roads during lockdown, and that their movement distances over ten days were 73% longer during strict lockdowns compared to the same period one year earlier. It may be that mammals ventured closer to roads with reduced levels of traffic, while the absence of humans in the environment may have allowed them to explore new areas.
[...] These findings are important as they tell us that humans moving in the environment directly influence animal movements and behavior, in addition to the effects of the built environment. With this knowledge we can start to think of new ways to change our behavior that will positively impact wildlife. For example, we could adjust traffic flows in areas important for animal movement—in some national parks you can only drive during the day to avoid disturbing animals at night.
This article is republished from The Conversation [theconversation.com] under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article [theconversation.com].
