Human Presence, Not Just Land Change, Alters How Wildlife Use Space

Overview

• The paper, published in Science in May 2026, combined GPS tracking from about 4,500 animals with neighborhood-level mobile-phone data and satellite measures to separate short-term human activity from long-term landscape change.
• Researchers found that roughly 57–65% of the 37 bird and mammal species studied changed their space use in response to people’s presence or to landscape modification, with responses varying widely by species.
• Many mammals reduced the area they used when people were present, especially in less-developed natural places, while some species such as gray wolves and ravens expanded or shifted their ranges to avoid or exploit human-linked resources.
• The study used the COVID-19 decline in human movement as a natural experiment, giving the team a rare window to measure direct effects of human activity separate from urbanization or agriculture.
• Authors say managers should add fine-scale, time‑based data on human activity to conservation plans, and teams are already studying whether the observed behavior shifts affect animal mortality or long-term population health.