When the world locked down, nature kept going: 4 surprising ways nature ‘rebooted’ with reduced human activity | CBC Documentaries

Just because the sky is blue, doesn’t mean the air is clean

Atmospheric chemist Cora Young and her colleagues at York University realized that lockdown presented a unique opportunity to decipher the complex chemical soup in the air of the world’s most polluted capital city: New Delhi. “With our labs shut down … we were looking for other ways to spend our time productively,” she said. “We decided to look at India mainly because it’s not well understood.” In fact, the city’s air chemistry has stumped scientists for decades because it’s composed of so many different sources of pollution.

When New Delhi’s factories shut down and traffic dropped off during lockdown, Young hoped to isolate the chemical ingredients in its aerial brew. When she analyzed the data, she found a reduction in some pollutants, as expected. But her results revealed something else: a surprising increase in ground-level ozone — an invisible but harmful gas linked to asthma and emphysema. 

“I was shocked — I was absolutely floored by our results,” Young said. She learned that when pollutants in the air dropped during lockdown, more sunlight — one of the ingredients required to form ozone — managed to reach the ground. “Just because the sky is blue, doesn’t mean that the air is clean, unfortunately,” she said.

Other researchers saw similar ozone spikes in cities like Rome, London and New York. In Wuhan, China, there was a staggering 117 per cent jump in ozone levels.

‘Just because the sky is blue, doesn’t mean the air is clean’ – Nature’s Big Year

When Canadian atmospheric chemist Cora Young began studying how pollution decreased in New Delhi’s air during the pandemic, she was shocked to see ozone increased dramatically. 2:35

Animals adapted to the brand new world

Lockdowns also led to surprising revelations in Alberta’s Bighorn Backcountry. Ecologists wondered if wolves would change their hunting patterns when there were fewer humans around. Jason T. Fisher and his team hoped camera traps they’d set up before the pandemic would give them the answer.

What they hadn’t anticipated was an influx of humans to the area. The backcountry isn’t regulated like provincial parks, and with many of those parks closed for a time, visitors flocked to the Bighorn in huge numbers in the summer of 2020. It completely turned the tables on what Fisher was studying. “We thought we were going to see wolves hunting at night to stay away from humans.” Instead, the opposite happened. 

Their footage revealed that wolf activity shifted to the daytime. As the team dug deeper, they discovered the wolves’ prey had also switched to daytime foraging when there was more human activity. Fisher’s preferred hypothesis, based on previous research: the moose and deer came out during the day when humans were around to shield them from wolves.

Animals adapting to a brand new world – Nature’s Big Year

As campers flooded into the Bighorn Backcountry, wolves surprisingly changed their behaviour to be more active during the day – to follow their prey. 1:29

We learned just how noisy we really are

At the start of the lockdowns, most activities shut down almost overnight. That’s when scientists were given an unexpected opportunity to find out how all the noise we usually produce affects wildlife — and us. 

Chris Watson is used to listening closely to wildlife. His career as a sound recordist has taken him around the world to document the songs of nature. While stuck at home in Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K., during lockdown, he was surprised to hear what was happening in his own backyard. He felt that the blackbirds were suddenly singing “more vigorously” than before, and as a sound recordist, he had all the right tools to tackle a lockdown experiment. 

We connected him with Canadian researcher Miya Warrington, who analyzed the blackbird song he recorded in his garden. Her analysis confirmed that in the absence of traffic noise, male blackbirds could suddenly hear each other’s song and upped their game to compete.

In Massachusetts, Erica Walker was discovering what a quieter world tells us about ourselves. As founder of Brown University’s Community Noise Lab, in nearby Providence, R.I., she studies how noise affects our health. 

“Noise impacts us all,” said Walker. “But it impacts low-income communities more because they don’t have the resources to fight it. So the powers that be dump all of their acoustical garbage right at their front door.” 

Imagine taking the roar of Niagara Falls and reducing it to the sound of a rain shower– Erica Walker

When air traffic dropped off during the first lockdown, Walker measured just how quiet some previously noisy communities could be. Comparing levels before and during the lockdown, she discovered one community near Boston Logan International Airport showed a dramatic drop in noise. “Imagine taking the roar of Niagara Falls and reducing it to the sound of a rain shower,” she said.

Residents in these low-income and highly noise-polluted areas can arm themselves with data like Walker’s to advocate for healthier communities. 

Low-income communities suffer from noise pollution more – Nature’s Big Year

Low-income communities have fewer resources to fight noise pollution, so the ‘powers-that-be’ dump all of their acoustical garbage right at their front door, leading to ‘acoustic inequity.’ 1:55

Nature can rebound — if we give it the chance

When we began work on Nature’s Big Year, we learned that some of those stories that circulated in the early days of lockdown were incorrect — or just plain fake. 

The cavorting dolphins were nowhere near the canals of Venice: the video had been taken hundreds of kilometres away (although dolphins did appear in Venice during Italy’s third-wave lockdown). And some of the wild animals that appeared to be “taking back” the streets were in fact looking for their next meal in the absence of the tourists they normally rely upon for food. 

But scientists showed us real and uplifting examples of how, if given the opportunity, nature can rebound. In the film, we meet researchers who documented significant and sometimes dramatic shifts during lockdown: birds across North America changed their movements, some notably moving into areas where stricter lockdowns were in place (and fewer humans were out and about). Snow geese in Quebec were fatter and healthier during their spring migration because hunters stayed at home, making for calmer, less-stressed geese with more time and energy to feed. And in Florida’s Juno Beach, sea turtles had more success nesting during lockdown due to less human disturbance. 

These positive outcomes for wildlife resonated deeply with me. Lockdown underscored the tremendous impact humans have on the world. It was also a wake-up call. In many instances, nature can rebound, and we can shift our behaviour when we absolutely must to benefit both the natural world and ourselves. 

Watch Nature’s Big Year on The Nature of Things.