The Big Pause: Tracking Wildlife During COVID-19 Lockdowns

Prof Christian Rutz will present Insights from the most ambitious animal tracking study ever conducted, the COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative.

In 2020, a major tragedy created an opportunity to find the answer to this question.

As countries went into lockdown, to curb the spread of COVID-19, city centres became deserted, nature reserves closed their gates, and highways and shipping corridors fell silent. Anecdotal reports at the time suggested that wildlife responded to this ‘anthropause’ by exploring new haunts.

In this talk, Professor Christian Rutz FRSE FLS will explain how he helped launch a global research consortium that investigates animal movements before, during and after lockdowns, using data collected by tiny wildlife wearables – so-called ‘bio-loggers’. So far, some 500 partners have pooled more than 1 billion GPS location records from over 13,000 tagged animals for joint analyses. The most ambitious animal tracking study ever conducted, the COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative is providing deep insights into human–wildlife interactions, inspiring innovative approaches to sharing space on our increasingly crowded planet.

Professor Christian Rutz FRSE FLS has broad interests in animal behaviour and cognition, human evolution, animal tracking technologies (‘bio-logging’), conservation science, and policy making. Rutz is well-known for his long-term studies of tool-using New Caledonian and Hawaiian crows, and his innovative bio-logging research. He is Founding President of the International Bio-Logging Society, as well as Co-Founder and Chair of the COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative.

Based at the University of St Andrews, Rutz is a National Geographic Explorer and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Linnean Society of London. He has won numerous awards and prizes, including the Isambard–Kingdom–Brunel Award of the British Science Association, and has recently been announced as a finalist for the 2022 Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year.

This talk is online and Zoom login details will be sent out two hours before the event start time.