Unoccupied and desolate, national parks across the U.S. are thriving as citizens find new hobbies in quarantine. Photo credit: Michael Louie
Remember March 2020?
It feels like a century ago, before much of the United States came to terms with the enormity of the coronavirus pandemic. When European nations began shutting down in the early days of the crisis, the news was flooded with stories of the early impact of quarantine on the environment, such as that dolphins were returning to the Venice canals. “Nature is healing; we are the virus,” many people claimed. However, most of these stories were fabricated.
The sentiment has been echoed around the world as people grasp for tidbits of good news, some sign that maybe, just maybe, something good could come out of this pandemic. Unfortunately, a few months of lockdown is not enough time for nature to overrun our cities, or for the climate to stop warming. However, this pandemic has resulted in some unexpected outcomes and tested the resilience of our own communities, including the ecological communities.
I know we are plagued by sad news every day and there will be some challenging facts presented in this article, but I will do my best to sandwich the bad between morsels of good. Nature is resilient, as are we, and the hope is that we will come out of this pandemic with couch sores and a greater appreciation for the world outside our windows.
First, some bad news.
While emissions on the scale of the individual may have decreased during the pandemic, industrial-scale emissions have not abated. Photo credits: Patrick Hendry
For years, we have been fed propaganda that the climate crisis is happening because of the irresponsible actions of human beings as individuals. If only we drove less, recycled more, and unplugged our computers, we could change the world. Then came the pandemic: in the blink of an eye, traffic density decreased by half, it seemed like the air pollution was improving, and for a brief period of time we thought maybe we had found the solution to environmental disaster (although a human health crisis and economic collapse should never be called a solution).
Recently, however, NPR reported that the pollution levels in many areas did not decrease. This is due in part to the continued fossil fuel and pollutant emissions by industries and the constant flow of trucks on the road transporting goods, trying to keep the economy puttering along. Even a deadly virus is no match for industrial machinery. Preventing catastrophic climate change is going to take more than individual action, it requires systematic industrial reform. Our individual actions will add up, but as the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed, industry pollution will continue to dominate without large scale action.
Now for some good news:
Since the lockdown, more Americans have taken up birding. Due to decreased noise pollution and spending more time staring outside their windows, people are beginning to notice the diversity of birds living in urban environments. This comes after a gut-wrenching Science article describing the loss of North American birds published in January which states that bird populations have declined nearly 30% since 1970. I have always been interested in birds, and since the pandemic I have been spending more time sitting on my couch with my cat, our eyes glued to the window counting the number of house finches at the feeder or watching the hummingbirds flit in and out of our neighbor’s lemon tree.
Sheltering inside has caused many citizens to turn to birding, allowing us to come to a better appreciation of urban wildlife. Photo credits: Dulcey Lima
Along with the appreciation of our flying, feathered friends comes a respect for the natural places where many are seeking solace during these hard times. It is easier to socially distance outdoors and preliminary evidence shows that the novel coronavirus does not spread as easily outside. However, at the beginning of the pandemic, many places closed parks and highly trafficked hiking trails to reduce exposure to COVID-19.
The week before the lock down in San Diego, I went for a hike in Mission Trails Regional Park, a popular hiking destination for us city dwellers, and was surrounded by people trying to get their last breath of the chaparral air before the lockdown orders went into effect. Hundreds of people walking on narrow trails, breathing heavily, touching the guardrails and boulders: this was a virus’ dream!
So trails closed and people sheltered inside. As an ecologist who’s job relies on going outside, I was going stir crazy within days and the rest of the county soon followed. Eventually, and with strict social distancing guidelines such as limiting the amount of parking spaces at trail heads, the trails reopened. Prior to the pandemic, people around here hiked, but perhaps did not truly appreciate the privilege of having so many canyons, parks, and hiking trails scattered across the county. Lucky for us, COVID-19 did not close the outdoors to us permanently and with the proper safety measures we can continue to burn our shoulders while climbing mountains (like I was able to last weekend).
Awesome! We can all go outside! But wait, I have some more bad news.
By forcing people to shelter inside, this pandemic has allowed people to come to a better appreciation of the natural world around them. However, fire season is swiftly approaching (see an article I wrote about fire here). And with the safety risks of COVID-19, many of the scheduled prescribed burns did not happen.
Prescribed burns help reduce the severity of forest fires, but many of these controlled burns were cancelled due to the CoVID-19 pandemic. Photo credit: Sippakorn Yamyasikorn
Prescribed burns are done to maintain the structure of the ecosystem while also protecting the health and safety of humans by reducing the fuel load and limiting the severity and extent of fires. Fires, even small controlled burns, emit a lot of smoke and as the country grapples with a respiratory virus, inhaling that smoke could escalate the problem. Therefore, many fire agencies canceled prescribed burns this year to protect human health. Additionally, it is difficult to carry out proper social distancing when working with a fire crew and the agencies placed the health of their employees first.
But it’s a catch-22. Without these burns, much of the vegetation that grew during the rainy season is drying out, waiting for the spark to set it ablaze. With less people out, there may be less sparks and less fires...hopefully. But we need to be prepared. As we saw when the cyclone hit India and Bangladesh, reducing the spread of COVID-19 is much harder when also dealing with a natural disaster.
However, I want to finish this article on a happy note. The wildlife in national parks are thriving. In Yosemite National Park bears, bobcats, and coyotes roamed the usually packed Yosemite Valley, taking advantage of the lack of tourists. Similar “wildlife parties” occurred in Yellowstone and nature reserves across the country. Even in dense urban areas, wildlife are claiming the streets for their own. The CDC warned about aggressive rats in New York City, and goats are roaming the streets in Wales.
The effects of the coronavirus are multifaceted, and right now we don’t fully understand all of its large scale effects. In a few years, it may be easier to look back with “2020 hindsight” and study the effects of this pandemic on human lives and ecosystems.
Whenever I teach or talk about ecology, or if someone asks me about the results of my research, I usually shrug and say “it depends.” Because that’s the truth. What will happen to wildlife when the pandemic is over and people return to the parks? It depends on the actions of the visitors and wildlife managers. Perhaps we learned enough about socially distancing within our own species that we will finally learn to apply for other species. What will happen to air pollution? It depends on the policies we vote for, the regulations we pass, and whether or not we choose to divert resources towards renewable energy sources. Over the past few months, people across the country caught a glimpse of a future without air pollution: maybe this will influence their future decisions.
What will happen to birds and the new birders that follow them? It depends on how we advocate for the protection of bird species, and maintain the diversity of birds and birders alike. (Read more about birding while Black here and keep up with #BlackBirdersWeek and #BlackinNature on Twitter). What will happen with fire management as the vegetation dries up? Again, it depends on the policies we make and how well we manage human-caused sparks.
The COVID-19 pandemic presents us with a lot of unknowns with regards to the environment, and how these unknowns ultimately play out depends on our next actions. The toll of this crisis is staggering: millions out of work, more than 100,000 dead in the U.S. alone, and many of us sheltered in place for who knows how long. We will all emerge from this crisis full of grief. My solace is that as society claws its way back to some sort of normalcy, we will begin to make the right decisions to both improve human health and safety as well as the heath of our ecosystems in the future.
-Brianne
Photo credit: Shownen