The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Human Activity and Coyote Populations Along the Gradient of Urbanization

Humans can influence wildlife populations and behavior through structural and behavioral disturbances, which can be particularly pronounced along the gradient of urbanization. Importantly, although anthropogenetic structural characteristics are relatively static along the gradient of urbanization for a given period of time, the presence of humans can be dynamic on daily and seasonal scales, which can affect wildlife activity patterns. The rapid onset of the COVID-19 pandemic created a unique opportunity to evaluate how a sudden change in human behavior can affect wildlife activity along the urbanization gradient. Specifically, we used a before-after-control-impact (BACI) study design to compare human presence and coyote daily activity patterns from before the COVID-19 pandemic to after COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and shutdowns were put in place in areas of low and high levels of urbanization. We predicted that human detection rates would increase in low levels of urbanization and decrease in high levels of urbanization due to the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. We also predicted that coyote daily activity patterns would shift in response to human detection rates, where coyotes would become more nocturnal in areas of low levels of urbanization where human presence was expected to increase and become more diurnal in areas of high levels of urbanization where human presence was expected to decrease. We used data from wildlife cameras across the gradient of urbanization from 2019 to 2020 within the Phoenix Valley of Arizona. Across 8 sites in low levels of urbanization and 12 sites in high levels of urbanization, we did not find a statistical difference in human detection rates or coyote activity patterns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, low sample size likely led to low power to detect differences and next steps for this research (as part of my M.S. thesis project) will be incorporating additional wildlife camera locations and wildlife species (e.g., bobcat, cottontail rabbit, gray fox, etc.), into future analyses. This project and future studies can help us better understand how structural and behavioral characteristics of humans can shape wildlife populations along the gradient of urbanization, which has important conservation implications for wildlife and people.