THE ANTHROPAUSE EFFECT AND THE LANDSCAPE OF FEAR

The instinctive habits of wild animals are dictated by what scientists call a “landscape of fear”. Since humans are the most prolific killers, our habitats feature overwhelmingly on these mental maps – but with our species removed from so many areas over the past year, there have been reports of towns, cities and public areas effectively being “rewilded”.

While the cost of the pandemic has been huge in human terms, wild animals have benefited from this period of relative peace – the “anthropause” – in ways that few could have predicted.

The International Bio-Logging Society, which coined the term anthropause and is based in Scotland, has been analysing animal movements throughout the Covid era. “We are crunching huge volumes of data from across the globe,” said Prof Christian Rutz, the society’s president, “and we hope our research will lead to a better understanding of human-wildlife interactions.”

In the meantime, a frenzy of social media reports has been keeping us informed – or misinformed – about unexpected wildlife sightings. Swans

Streetwise: from left to right, mountain goats have been seen in Llandudno, Wales; swans have appeared in the Burano lagoon, Venice; and there have been wild boars in Barcelona

apparently returned to Venice, likewise wild elephants got drunk on tea in Yunnan (not exactly true); coyotes were seen in car parks in Yosemite and mountain goats in a small town in Wales (true, but far from unique occurrences).

Foxes became increasingly visible on

the deserted streets of London, while in Tel Aviv and Barcelona residents reported sightings of wild boar. And when India’s Ranthambore National Park reopened, naturalists were surprised to see the area’s famous tigers frequenting the main access roads.

Wildlife experts in Kenya’s Maasai Mara reported that cheetahs (daylight hunters) were having a heyday as uninterrupted hunts brought higher kill rates. Lions prowled abandoned golf courses in South Africa while, in the city of Santiago de Chile, the authorities

captured seven mountain lions. Sea otters reclaimed abandoned territories on Malaysia’s tourist island of Langkawi and were seen basking on beaches in Ranong, Thailand.

In the United States, while national parks were off limits, black bears and coyotes wandered freely through Yosemite Village; and in the San Francisco Bay Area, researchers witnessed white-crowned sparrows changing the structure of their songs as a reaction to reduced traffic noise.

Off the developed south coast of Bali, Indonesia, whale sharks were spotted in areas where local fishermen said they had not seen the behemoths in living memory. The north coast supports a normally thriving fleet of dolphin watching boats that some say are intrusive.

Oceanographers are now measuring submarine conditions there, so that noise pollution – and its effect on the behaviour of the area’s vast pods of spinner dolphins – can be properly assessed when things return to “normal”.

Researchers are adamant that the anthropause has provided an unprecedented opportunity to learn about our impact on wildlife.

“We have to concentrate on largescale research now,” said Dr Rodney Westerlaken of the Bali-based Westerlaken Foundation, “because this silence might not come again.”