As the quarantines came one after another, incredible things happened in our cities. For example, wild animals returned to empty streets that previously did not dare to step into the noisy chaos, the air became cleaner with the disappearance of cars, and bird sounds could finally be heard in quiet cities, water quality improved due to the decrease in water quality. Industrial waste and anthropogenic load on water bodies and the disappearance of large numbers of boats have driven dolphins and fish back to the shores. All this gave rise to jokes that nature had become so clean that dinosaurs returned to the streets, gladiators to the Colosseum, and emos to human culture.

Not everything is as good as we want

This narrative of nature’s healing has given us hope for consolation in uncertain times of the pandemic.

I can understand why we want to believe this. What did the animals do in response? [зникнення] people were extremely variable and that surprised us a bit,
– says conservation biologist Cole Burton from the University of British Columbia.

Using 5,400 camera traps installed around the world, Burton and his colleagues found: In some places the activity of mammals increased, in others it decreased. Using data from 102 sites in 21 countries, researchers compared mammal activity across more than 300,000 observation days before and during the pandemic. They found that animal activity increased by about 25 percent in habitats altered by humans. “This activity was more nocturnal, indicating that animals surviving in these developed environments, despite their attraction to anthropogenic resources, were still looking for a way to minimize encounters with humans by dividing their time.”– researchers write in their article.

For example, the number of cougars increased when people were away during quarantine, but their use of the park decreased when the park reopened. This caused the black-tailed deer population to decrease in number during the quarantine, but began to increase again when the park opened.

The team found this Hunters’ presence increased as our activities decreased. In 2021, iNaturalist public science data also found an increase in cougar sightings in urban areas during the 2020 quarantine. It turns out that predators are most sensitive to changes in human activities. As our activity increased, hunters moved away and became more nocturnal.

Research shows that in urban areas and less developed areas, it may be beneficial to regulate our activity levels at night. This will provide space for species to carry out important interactions that help maintain the functioning of ecosystems, such as hunting.

Unfortunately, wild areas are under increasing pressure from popular outdoor recreation, tourism, poaching and resource extraction.