When they compared the springtime movements of the collared animals between March-June of 2019 and March-June of 2020, they saw something surprising.Īnimals immediately responded to the lack of human activity. ![]() Scientists worldwide submitted radio collar data to the core team and into the largest database of animal movement ever assembled. About “4.4 billion people were under some sort of COVID-19 lockdown, so half of the planet stopped moving.” “This was a natural experiment in unfortunate circumstances,” said Diego Ellis Soto, a Yale graduate student studying the movements of animals who provided technical assistance and expertise on the project. Many large mammals including elk, pumas, ibex, elephants, deer, grizzly bears, giant anteaters, moose and wolves are subjects of conservation research and wear radio tracking collars. “It’s a great example of how we can work together to use existing data to examine new questions.” “I reached out to my network to see who had GPS devices on animals and would be interested in being involved,” Marlee Tucker, a professor of environmental science at Radboud University in the Netherlands and main author of the study wrote in an email to CT Insider. ![]() So what did that drastic change in human activity mean for wildlife?Įcologists spread across dozens of institutions worldwide realized they could get answers by assembling a large group of researchers into a global team to study the impact of humans on animal migration and general roaming.
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