According to new research published in the journal Science, wildlife responses to human activity are shaped not just by altered landscapes, but by the physical presence of people nearby. Researchers from UC Santa Barbara, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, and Yale University combined GPS tracking information from 37 animal species with neighborhood-level cellphone location data to discover that 57% of studied species are affected by a combination of human presence and landscape modification.
COVID-19 Lockdowns Created a Rare Wildlife Tracking Experiment
The COVID-19 pandemic altered societal movement patterns, creating what researchers termed the “anthropause.” According to co-lead author Scott Yanco, a research ecologist at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, the team examined weekly GPS records from 4,581 individual mammals and birds across the continental U.S. during matching periods in 2019 and 2020. Public data tracking human locations is typically restricted by private companies, making the pandemic-era mobile geolocation data a unique resource for quantifying how human presence impacts animal movement, as noted by Yanco.
How Habitat Modification and Human Presence Interact
The study evaluated how human activity influences both the physical area used by individual animals and their environmental niches. According to co-lead author Ruth Oliver, an assistant professor in UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, humans exert complicated effects on wildlife through physical presence and habitat alteration, and researchers cannot understand the full impact without data on both. The analysis revealed that human presence was associated with changes in territory or niche size for 67% of mammal species and 68% of bird species. Furthermore, 67% of mammal species and 41% of bird species contracted their used habitat when facing both human presence and landscape alteration, with sensitivities heightened in less developed areas like national parks.
Wolves, Deer, and Cranes Show Divergent Behavioral Shifts
Wildlife reactions to human proximity are not uniform across species. According to Oliver, every species has distinct habitat requirements and behavioral tendencies. For instance, wolves expanded their habitat use in response to humans, which may reflect a history of pressure and a behavioral drive to move away from human activity. Meanwhile, white-tailed deer expanded their environmental niches as landscapes became more modified, yet contracted their space use when human presence increased. Sandhill cranes displayed the reverse response to these pressures.
Did You Know?
The broader collaboration behind this research involved 600 partners who assembled 1 billion location records from roughly 13,000 animals to study how human activities influence wildlife in the Anthropocene.
Frequently Asked Questions
What data did researchers use to track human presence?
According to the research team, scientists used anonymized cellphone geolocation data with neighborhood-level resolution, marking the first time such data have been used to examine how human presence affects animal movement.
Did all animals react the same way to people?
What is the next step for this research group?
According to Oliver, the team is currently investigating whether these human-driven behavioral changes help animals adapt or serve as indicators of stress, specifically asking if animals altering their behavior face higher or lower survival risks.
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