There were viral reports of dolphins in the canals of Venice, Italy, and pumas in the streets in Santiago, Chile. But new research shows
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320721002275) that the true effect of suddenly removing people from so many environments has turned out to be much more complex.
“It was surprising how variable the responses were,” says Amanda Bates, an ecologist at Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador who led an international team of more than 350 researchers in an effort to study how lockdowns have affected the natural world. “It’s impossible to say,” says Bates, whether the consequence of people’s sudden disappearance “was positive or negative.”
The team collected and analyzed data from hundreds of scientific monitoring programs, as well as media reports, from 67 countries.
28 May 2021, 3:15 pm
