Study Shows That Animals Respond Directly To Physical Presence Of Humans

A 2026 study (attached) has demonstrated that animals respond directly to the physical presence of humans and that human presence has the greatest impact in landscapes that are less modified, such as national parks. GPS tracking data from 37 animal species, paired with cellphone location data from across the United States, was used for the study. The data showed that animals’ responses to landscape modification related to urbanization, agriculture, transportation, and energy infrastructure, as well as human presence varies widely from species to species.

The researchers used data from 2019 and 2020 in order to take advantage of changes in human presence and movement to observe animal responses during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study is a part of the COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative, which brought together researchers from around the world to investigate how wildlife responded to COVID-19 lockdowns, a period they termed the “anthropause.” 

“The cell phone data we used was made available to researchers during the pandemic to help reveal the impacts of COVID-19 shutdowns,” said Scott Yanco, a research ecologist at the Zoo and co-lead author of the study. “Typically, these data are difficult or expensive to access, which made this a rare opportunity for us to quantify how human presence impacts wildlife.”

As humans restricted their movements during the pandemic, about two-thirds of the mammal and bird species studied exhibited changes in the size of either the area they occupied or their environmental niche, according to the researchers. Sixty-seven percent of mammal species and 41 percent of bird species responded to human activity by shrinking their habitat, with human presence having the greatest impact in landscapes that were less modified, such as national parks.

Gray wolves were an exception to this, as they responded to humans by expanding their habitats. The study points out that this may be due to their fraught history with humans and their desire to spread out and away from human activity.

Human presence and landscape modification had opposing effects on the niche sizes of white-tailed deer and sandhill cranes, demonstrating the variety of responses seen in the study. White-tailed deer, expanded their environmental niches with increasing landscape modification but contracted their niches with increasing human presence. Sandhill cranes showed the opposite response.

“These findings highlight the critical importance of species-based conservation,” said Ruth Oliver, an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a co-lead author on the study. “Every species has different habitat requirements, has its own behavioral tendencies and faces unique threats. Effective conservation requires that we understand the particular challenges that each species faces."

“Although climate change and habitat loss will continue to place extreme pressure on wildlife populations, our results indicate that progress toward human–wildlife coexistence may be achieved through recognizing, and mitigating, the distinct effect of human presence,” states the study.