How has a year of lockdowns affected wildlife?

More than a decade after Alan Weisman published "The World Without Us," the global COVID-19 pandemic has come the closest of any recent event to bringing to life the book's seemingly far-fetched scenario: what if humans suddenly disappeared from the earth?

"While I was reporting this book, epidemiologists and ecologists explained to me that nature always seeks a balance, and it's going to happen," said Weisman in an interview interview with Medium's GEN publication last March. "We think of diseases and epidemics as something really bad. For nature, it's just a tool."

The non-fiction bestseller details what life would be like if the human species were to instantly disappear from the face of the earth. While many of our cities and structures feel permanent, science shows that the natural world would overtake them almost entirely if we weren't there to maintain them.

So far, the pandemic has shown that at least one conclusion from the speculative book seems to be true: nature can be incredible at self-healing. Even Raoul Manenti, a zoologist at the University of Milan studying Italian wildlife health during the pandemic, was taken aback by how quickly the country's lockdowns affected animal behavior.

"For me, it was surprising that even given a short time of an absence of a direct human impact, we're able to change some patterns of the native species," said Manenti. "This is a clear sign that our pressure on the environment is really, really strong and even a short period of reduction of this pressure can really change things."

Wildlife researchers have proposed that this unique period of reduced human activity, enforced by lockdowns, shutdowns, and stay-at-home orders be called the "anthropause." It is a period unlike any other in recent history, and the drastic worldwide change has provided researchers with an unprecedented opportunity to see which specific human activities have concrete, measurable effects on wildlife, at least in the short term.

This reduction of pressure has been beneficial to many species, however the anthropause has negatively affected others. Most importantly, it has illustrated just how damaging systems of regular human activity are on wildlife. Scientists believe the lessons of the anthropause can teach us how to move forward with the best interests of wildlife in mind as we gradually enter a post-pandemic world.

One species which experienced a recent uptick in numbers is the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, of which there are only about 360 individuals left in the world. The 2020 to 2021 birthing season was the best since 2015, which scientists attribute to their natural relocation into waters with more abundant resources, according to the Associated Press.

But Right Whales' low birth rate is not their biggest problem. They die largely from human causes like entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with boats and ships. Based on data since 2017, some researchers believe that these deaths may actually outnumber Right Whales' birth rate, leading many conservationists to support regulations to reduce vertical fishing lines and modify seasonal restricted areas.

Reduced shipping during the pandemic may have affected the lower number of confirmed Right Whale deaths in the past year. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in 2019, there were 10 confirmed Right Whale deaths in American and Canadian waters. In 2020, there were just two confirmed deaths. The first three months of 2021 also saw just two reports. At least half of these deaths each year were due to human causes.

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as of March suggests that reduced shipping during the pandemic might have reduced North Atlantic Right Whale deaths.

However, the anthropause does not seem to have affected the number of seriously injured Right Whales. Data from the NOAA shows that there was at least one seriously injured Right Whale in the U.S. and Canada in 2019, four in 2020, and three more in 2021 (as of March). All of these serious injuries were due to human causes such as vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.

On the other side of the country, Ari Friedlaender, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is researching how humpback whales fared during the pandemic in order to determine which regulations would most benefit the species. His team has been sampling the stress hormones of humpback whales in Monterey Bay and analyzing how they are affected by various types of marine noise.

"The hypothesis is very simple. It's as you reduce sound in the ocean, you will see a drop in stress hormone levels for these animals," said Friedlaender. "And the reason is because more sound in the environment makes it more difficult for animals to communicate with each other, which means that the social bonds between animals may get stressed. There may be ways that animals communicate about foraging grounds that could get stressed, and it just takes more energy to communicate in a louder environment than it does a quieter one."

Friedlaender and his team collected samples in March and October of last year during lockdowns, when marine noise was reduced due to the anthropause, and will be heading out again next week to collect their first round of samples for comparison now that activity has ramped back up. They are hoping to connect specific types of marine noise to specific stress responses in humpback whales, and recommending regulations for different types of boating that will benefit the species.

"I don't want to tell people what to do. But I want people to be aware of how our behavior impacts these animals," said Friedlaender. "The more focused and specific we can be about how human activity impacts animals, the better, and the more likely we are to be able to make change."

A number of land animals also showed significant improvement during lockdown. Manenti's research in Italy revealed increased activity for several wild animals. "Some species had that positive effect, especially in suburban areas or agricultural areas, we had [...] a positive affect both in terms of more activity, more sightings and also in the possibility to use hours of the day different from those that were usual for their species." Nocturnal mammals, in particular, seemed to be positively affected by evening curfews.

Manenti also noted that the decreased ability of agricultural workers to spray pesticides led to increased caterpillar proliferation. "It was not possible to make these treatments to the plants, so we had more of these caterpillars and also more of the predators of these caterpillars."

According to Manenti, a specific species of bird that appears to have benefitted from the anthropause was the Kentish Plover. "It's very, very sensitive to human disturbance because it makes its nests in open areas on land at the ground level," he said.

"With this species we saw clearly that they had higher breeding success this year," said Manenti, "and also in better developing the spatial distribution of its nests because it was able to disperse them better around the beach. This for sure increases the possibility to have more prey, more food, and also higher breeding success."

The ground-nesting Kentish Plover experienced an improved breeding season during the COVID-19 pandemic due to reduced human activity.

Many other birds benefitted from the anthropause as well due to reduced air traffic. According to the Federal Aviation Administration's Wildlife Strike Database, the ten-week lockdown period between March 25th and June 7th saw a 61% decrease in the number of times wildlife was hit by air traffic compared to the same period in 2019.

Aircraft wildlife strikes include land animals which were hit during takeoff and landing, but are predominantly birds struck while in flight. Reduced aerial wildlife strikes during the pandemic lead some researchers to encourage enacting aerial reserves post-pandemic.

While the FAA's data shows an increasing trend in previous years, the anthropause caused a sharp decrease in aircraft wildlife strikes in 2020.

It seems that people took note of the improved bird activity during the pandemic too. An American birdwatching database, eBird, saw an increase of bird checklists submitted to the site since April of last year.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, more Americans have been submitting birdwatching data to the eBird database.

It's no surprise that Americans feeling trapped indoors would flock to outdoor hobbies like birdwatching. Boat and RV sales increased significantly during lockdowns as well. According to the National Marine Manufacturers Association, U.S. boat sales reached a 13-year high in 2020, and 2020 was the fourth-best year on record for RV sales since the industry began, according to the RV Industry Association. Both sources predict that this boom will continue through 2021.

Boats and RVs are also both relatively fuel inefficient, further harming wildlife in the longterm. Personal boats average three to five gallons of fuel per hour at cruising speed, while RVs average 18 to 25 miles per gallon at best.

So, while stay-at-home orders reduced human activity in some ways, they actually increased human activity in many local outdoor areas. Rachael Crawford, a volunteer at the Lakeside Nature Center in Kansas City, Missouri and the lead organizer of Bird by Birds Kansas City Birding Meetup, expressed concern about the number of visitors at the nearby Shawnee Mission Park during a lockdown.

"It was almost like a festival was going on — like that many people wandering around," said Crawford. On the one hand, she sees it as encouraging because "you're getting people outside who are excited, which hopefully gets them excited to preserve nature."

Crawford is also concerned, though, that being stuck inside has drawn people outdoors who either don't know or don't care how to respect of nature.

"Are these people genuinely going to protect the environment, or are they going to go out and make a mess, leave garbage, tear up the environment, tear up the trails, and not take care of things?" Crawford worries.

Unfortunately, her fears have materialized in many nature preserves, even 700 miles from her at Sugarloaf Cove in Minnesota. According to Noel Larson, a Sugarloaf Cove Nature Center environmental educator, trips to the center increased from 15,000 visitors in 2019 to 24,000 visitors in 2020. This increase was problematic in part because the pandemic also prompted staffing cuts to the center.

"If you have that many additional people coming to an area and then you don't have enough employees to come and maintain everything because there's been cuts, then all of a sudden there's this lack of infrastructure to host everybody and deal with all the waste and the garbage that they bring with them," said Larson. "And they weren't all behaving safely, like they weren't wearing masks. But not only that, they didn't have this established outdoor etiquette."

Crawford, the birdwatcher from Kansas City, experienced some of these same staffing issues as a volunteer at the Lakeside Nature Center. During lockdowns, the center had to stop volunteers from coming in, leaving only a paid staff of about a dozen people to deal with all of the center's tasks.

Among one of the Lakeside Nature Center's most important tasks is helping injured animals. Normally, the center only turns away animals if they were found outside of the center's legal jurisdiction. Since the pandemic, the reduced staff means having to turn away every single person who brought an injured animal to the center for help.

"That was really heartbreaking, to know that all that work got put on hold because of the pandemic," said Crawford.

Decreased oversight during lockdowns also led to the increased illegal killing of animals, according to Raoul Manenti's research. "Because the activity of people making controls was limited, and is still quite limited," said Manenti, "the reporting of illegal killing is for sure higher than in the past years."

And without human intervention, invasive species were able to breed more during the pandemic. One example of this is the Wels Catfish, which is indigenous to eastern Europe but is now an invasive species across much of western Europe.

"The breeding success of this species was quite high," said Manenti. "Now probably next year, the species will be more abundant, and it's possible that it will be necessary to make stronger efforts to control it."

However, the negative effects of the anthropause do not stop there.

For instance, many conservation efforts are funded through tourism. The COVID-19 pandemic, which shut tourism down almost completely, helped demonstrate why that model of funding is simply not sustainable.

Matt Brown, Africa's Regional Managing Director for The Nature Conservancy, has long had qualms with the tourism funding model for conservation. "When it works it's great but there are times when it doesn't work — political cycles, terrorism, global pandemic, a volcano in Iceland — there are a lot of reasons why tourism is not stable."

According to Brown, around half of most reserves' revenue comes from tourism to fund wildlife protection and pay for operations, rangers, and security. The loss of these funds can lead to a number of devastating consequences.

"The drop in tourism hurts the abilities of the reserves to have good defense mechanisms against poaching, but the drop in the global economy and the loss of jobs raises the risk that people may become desperate, which may lead to consumption of, or trading in, wildlife as a way to feed their family," said Brown.

According to George Owoyesigire, the director of the community conservation sub-directorate of the Uganda Wildlife Authority, the period between February and May of 2020 saw 367 cases of poaching, compared to 163 for the same time period the previous year. Experts cite that as one reason tourism economy-dependent conservation funding is unsustainable.

The Nature Conservancy's Matt Brown thinks conservationists need to learn from the corporate world. "Diversification is a core business practice. Why aren't we applying that better to wildlife management in Africa? We need to," he said.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a global authority on nature active in over 160 countries, agrees "it is critically important to find alternative mechanisms for funding wildlife conservation beyond those that rely on international travel."

Example of alternatives to tourism-funded conservation efforts include debt-for-nature deals, carbon offsets, and trust funds for nature. For instance, Carbon Tanzania's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) projects are already succeeding at this kind of diversification by funding local hunter-gatherers who preserve the forest.

What's next?

Hear wildlife experts explain why the research coming out of the anthropause is so vital, what findings surprised them, and most importantly, how we can benefit species in the future.

The anthropause was such a unique period in human history that researchers want to be certain that the world doesn't forget the lessons we learned from it when the pandemic ends. Francesca Cagnacci, a behavioral and conservation ecologist at the Edmund Mach Foundation, is still working with other researchers across the world to determine what the best plan for wildlife moving forward is.

Cagnacci's work with the COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative aims to connect specific reduced human activities during the anthropause with specific wildlife improvements, which is a difficult task. It requires that researchers gain access to data from roads, trains, and other movement indexes and find evidence to tie them to specific animal behavior metrics.

"It is extremely important to really disentangle what disturbance we are talking about, because that is going to take us to more concrete actions," explained Cagnacci. "Any answer is not going to be a trivial one."

And the impact of every human is also important. As Minnesota environmental educator Larson encouraged, "if everybody just did one step to improve habitat around them, that wildlife will have a better chance of surviving. And it's not just about one species, it's about diversity of all species. We want that food web to stay strong."

In the upcoming months, more research will likely be published on what the best routes forward for conserving wildlife might be. Researchers' recommendations will likely include time-specific or seasonal restrictions on activities like commercial shipping, recreational boating, air traffic, and other forms of travel on land, along with specific protected wildlife areas, some of which may require new official rules or legislation.

The University of Milan's Raoul Manenti hopes that the data gathered during the pandemic can inform which restrictions on human activity might benefit wildlife over the long term without disrupting human daily life too much.

"We all experienced that it's not so necessary to do everything everywhere, and we can also survive if we have some limitations," said Manenti. "So I hope that at least some limitations in some specific areas justified for conservation purposes for some endangered species could be more accepted by people."