Of course it’s complicated. But in some cases, nature really missed humans, researchers found.
Brian Owens is a freelance science writer and editor based in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine. SHARES Ocean noise dropped during the pandemic, including in BC’s Nanaimo Harbour where it fell by 86 per cent. But lockdowns weren’t all good for the natural world.
Photo via Shutterstock.
As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold last spring and people around the world went into lockdown, a certain type of news story started to spring up the idea that, in the absence of people, nature was returning to a healthier, more pristine state. There were viral reports of dolphins in the canals of Venice, Italy, and pumas in the streets in Santiago, Chile.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold last spring and people around the world went into lockdown, a certain type of news story started to spring up the idea that, in the absence of people, nature was returning to a healthier, more pristine state. There were viral reports of dolphins in the canals of Venice, Italy, and pumas in the streets in Santiago, Chile. But new research shows 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.”