Photo: Miha Krofel

Understanding how animals respond to people is becoming increasingly important in the face of growing disturbances such as tourism, recreation, driving in natural environment and the exploitation of natural resources. To this end, researchers from around the world have pooled their data to find out how wild animals respond to people in their environments. The results showed considerable differences among different species, with large carnivores proving to be the most sensitive to humans. Part of the research was also carried out in Slovenia, where researchers from the University of Ljubljana's Biotechnical Faculty and the Slovenia Forest Service observed the strongest response in brown bears. The researchers hope that the new knowledge will facilitate coexistence between humans and animals, and enable more effective mitigation of the negative impact of recreation and other human activities in nature.

The restrictions on human movement took place in many countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and this in turn led to changes in animal behaviour. In the largest such study to date, 220 researchers from around the world, including Slovenia, have pooled activity data on 163 species of mammals obtained by camera-traps and used this unique period to better understand the impacts of human presence on animals, which are not as unambiguous as we often imagine. The results have recently been published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, the leading scientific journal in ecology.

The research showed that animals became more active when fewer people were present in their natural environments. However, the animals responded differently in human-dominated landscapes where there is significantly more contact between animals and people. In this type of environment, animals became more nocturnally active when there was more human activity.

The responses varied greatly from one group of animals to another, with large carnivores proving to be the most sensitive to humans. Dr Miha Krofel from the Biotechnical Faculty and co-author of the study said: "In Slovenia, we observed the strongest changes in the behaviour of brown bears, which responded to the increased human presence by becoming even more nocturnally active than usual." On the other hand, responses can be quite different in herbivores, which often even approach human settlements to avoid predators.

Link to the original scientific paper: - Burton et al. 2024. Mammal responses to global changes in human activity vary by trophic group and landscape. - Nature Ecology and Evolution, doi: 10.1038/s41559-024-02363-2

The project was partially funded through the ARIS basic projects.