COVID-19 Lockdown Impacts: On Raccoons in St. Louis

Presenter(s)

Angela Yokley

Abstract or Description

The emergence of COVID-19 drastically altered the way humans interacted with outdoor spaces, providing a natural experiment to study how a change in human activity patterns would impact a change in animal activity patterns. Here, we explored the impacts that COVID-19 lockdown protocols had on daily raccoon activity patterns in green spaces along an urbanization gradient in St. Louis. Raccoons were chosen as the focal species of this study because they have been documented as being active during various hours of the day, and because there were sufficient observations across the urbanization gradient whereby statistical trends were more likely to be found. We expected that COVID restrictions would interact with land-use types to affect when raccoons were active due to changes in human activity levels. Using data from the St. Louis Wildlife Project’s camera trapping of animals across an established urbanization gradient, this study compared raccoon sightings in April of 2019 and April of 2020 across 34 locations, according to different land use types, urbanization levels, levels of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, and within three activity periods of the day (diurnal, nocturnal, and crepuscular). Results of the initial study found that there was a statistically significant change in raccoon activity patterns between the two years in suburban sites. Observations of raccoon activity during all time periods significantly increased in April of 2020 compared to 2019 at suburban and rural locations, but not in urban areas where human activity increased. In addition to understanding more about how humans affect animals across an urbanization gradient, this study also has the potential to contribute to future improvements in environmental policy, protection, and potential restoration as a result of noticing changes in animal activity based on anthropic activity patterns.