Lori Walsh: The Coronavirus pandemic has nature reclaiming a little space. People from all over the world have been asked to decrease the activity, which means animals and their activity are more visible to us, often in surprising ways.
Stephanie Arne is an explorer and wildlife presenter, she's the founder of the Creative Animal Foundation. She's joining us on the phone now. Hey Stephanie, welcome back.
Stephanie Arne: Hey, thanks for having me.
Lori Walsh: How are you feeling, are you well, and in a safe, sheltered, stay at home kind of place?
Stephanie Arne: Yes. We have been sheltering in place for over a month in Southern California, and we notice a huge difference here. Our cases are significantly lower, deaths are significantly low. At least, I can speak for Santa Barbara County where I'm currently living. We've been doing a great job.
Tim and I are used to living and working from our tiny house on wheels, so this isn't a huge, dramatic change in lifestyle for us. So, we're doing well, thank you for asking.
Lori Walsh: Good, let's keep it that way. A lot of people are making that choice, not everyone I understand. Part of the impact of that choice is there's things that we're not doing that we used to do a lot, which is travel in airplanes, and in our cars. What sort of other lockdown behavior is changing human behavior in certain ways? What do you see?
Stephanie Arne: Well, we're definitely no longer traveling and commuting, so we have a significant decrease in the use of cars, boats, buses, trains, planes. But also, we have an economic slowdown as well, which is decreasing manufacturing of unnecessary products. But really, just of power plants, and factories as well, that aren't producing as many products. So, that all together, along with just daily routines of not walking around, and not eating as much out and about, is drastically changing our water quality, air quality, and of course the behavior of some animals that live around us.
Lori Walsh: All right. We want to be clear as we're having this conversation, that for people who are out of work because those factories are closed, those businesses are closed, we're not holding this up as a positive thing, that economic activity has tanked, essentially. But, it is interesting to see the results of it, around totally world. Tell us a little bit about what we're seeing, in pollution?
Because it does help us understand, during this pause, what we were doing before, and might make us think about how we do things in the future.
Stephanie Arne: The Coronavirus pandemic has nature reclaiming a little space. People from all over the world have been asked to decrease the activity, which means animals and their activity are more visible to us, often in surprising ways.Absolutely. You're absolutely correct, this is just science. We're just comparing, and observing, and saying, "Okay, now we have proof." We've never done this before, so now we have proof to show the world. We have the ESA and NASA that are showing us satellite images of significant drops in air pollution over China, Italy, and now we also have really great maps of the US, especially over LA and New York. The nitrogen dioxide levels are so low now. My friends in LA are sending me pictures, and they can see.
It's down by at least 50% in LA right now, so it's really making a huge difference not just visibly, but also it's much healthier for our lungs as well. Yeah, that's pretty drastic.
Lori Walsh: People who are climate scientists, and people who are in tune to how climate change is affecting us, and could affect us in the future are saying, "Pay attention."
Stephanie Arne: Absolutely we need to pay attention. The latest person, ... I love this quote. His name is Christopher Jones, he's a developer for Cool Climate Network out at Berkeley. He said, "If we can think about how to prepare for climate change like a pandemic, maybe there will be a positive outcome to all of this. We can help prevent crises in the future, if we are prepared. I think there are some big picture lessons here that could be very useful," and I completely agree.
Even just this morning, something that is really relevant right now. New research came out of Harvard, and the New York Times shared it this morning, that patients in bigger cities like LA and New York City are actually more likely to die from Coronavirus, because of high particulate matter that's in the air, it increases their vulnerability, and turns it into more severe outcomes. There's serious things that are happening right now, air quality does impact our health, so I think we're hoping that what comes from this is that we can say, "Look, our choices on a daily basis are hurting our health right now, but it will continue to get worse in the future."
So, if there's ways we can really, truly learn from this, so that we can decrease the impacts to our health on a daily basis and in the future, that's a positive thing that we can all strive for.
Lori Walsh: All right. Let's have a little fun, because one of the fun things about social media now is seeing what the humans are up to, and it's also fun to see what the animals are up to, in places that the humans used to crowd them out of. Tell us a little bit, some of the things you have seen the creatures of Earth doing, during the pandemic?
Stephanie Arne: Yeah, you might be seeing a lot of posts right now on social media, and of course, again, remember this is social media and people are trying to get clicks, and views, because they do make money off of it. So, I can't stress that enough, that we have to be very cautious that some things you see aren't real.
But, I do want to bring up some of the posts that I have seen that you may have been seeing, and one in particular would be the fighting monkeys in the Lopburi district of Thailand. Obviously, the tourism industry has decreased so significantly, and unfortunately the monkeys that live there depending on tourism giving them free food handouts. Now that there aren't tourists, the monkeys are taking over the town. If one human being throws out a piece of food, then all of a sudden, hundreds of monkeys come in and fight for that one piece of food, so they've definitely become dependent on humans there.
Let me tell you, I've worked with monkeys. They're crazy, I would not want to be anywhere near that scene.
But, I've also seen ... You might see a post of the Venice Canals being much cleaner and clearer, so they're full of fish.
Lori Walsh: Yeah, that's one that I saw. I was like, "What?" The before and after of that was pretty incredible. Fish, who knew?
Stephanie Arne: Yeah! If you don't have those boats that are pulling up all of the debris and sediment, then of course it's going to be clearer. Of course, you don't have any motors, or diesel, or any of that around, so it is cleaner and clearer, for sure.
There has always been swans there, though. That one has been proven, by National Geographic, that post about swans, and dolphins coming in, that's actually not true. There's always been swans there, and there are dolphins. They're not in the canals the way it was posted, they're off the port of Italy's and Sardinian harbors.
They've always been there, but they're starting to come closer to the harbor, so that's pretty fun.
Some others ones that are pretty cool I'm going to list quickly, here. Sea turtles that are nesting on beaches in Central America in India, that are coming up in larger numbers. Normally, there's a lot of tourists that hover over them, that causes stress and distracts them. There's some other humans in different areas that predate and steal the eggs to eat. Just like we eat chicken eggs, they eat sea turtle eggs. With that lack of disturbance, sea turtles' population might boom this year.
But of course, we're also seeing videos of boars, antelope, coyotes, sheep, otters, capybaras that are taking to the streets. Of course, some of them might have already taken a stroll through town before. There's some otters that hang out in this little area of the park, they're just doing it more often, and starting to expand into the cities, which people haven't seen before.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. All right, one of the challenges is, though, in a lot of these places, there isn't a lot of protection for these animals as well. Tell us a little bit about some of the challenges to wildlife, because of the pandemic?
Stephanie Arne: Of course. What we need to consider is there will be positive outcomes from this, during this time period, but there's also negative ones as well.
With everybody being home, we don't have as many people that are rescuing and rehabbing animals, we don't have as many people, rangers and guards, that are out there protecting, and monitoring, and managing endangered populations, which makes them very vulnerable to poaching and wildlife trafficking. Wildlife trafficking is what started Coronavirus. If you are collecting bats, and penguins, and civets to eat, and they're in a wet market like in Wuhan, and they're all shoved in cages, and packed on top of each other, and excrement is going everywhere, and they're not treated well, that's how a virus starts, and passes to a human being. We need to stop wildlife trafficking.
Of course, you may have heard that China is banning it, but I really can't stress this enough, they've said it before, and they've reopened them months later. I do not believe it, and I think that we need to keep putting pressure on China and other countries saying, "Please do not contribute to this, this is a human health issue." Wildlife trafficking in poor, unsustainable practices, and pollution is directly connected to human health and economies. It's not just about saving animals, it's exactly what we're going through right now, so it's really important that we stop wildlife trafficking.
Then, of course there's less donations to non-profits, national parks, accredited zoological facilities. They're just not getting the people in, or donations, which is affecting our animals in those ecosystems as well.
All in all, I think we really need to look at what we're going through right now, and review with credible observation and data, and appropriately adjust our relationship to the natural world. Hopefully, just hopefully, we can learn some really positive things from this, that we can take into our future life. Hopefully, make this life a little bit healthier for all of us, for years to come.
Lori Walsh: Tell us a little bit, Stephanie, in our remaining minutes, about zoo animals? We're all tuning into our local zoos, to see what the zookeepers and the critters are up to, and that's been aw lot of fun, and educational as well.
Stephanie Arne: Yeah. Remember that our accredited zoological facilities here in the country, they work really hard on research, and contribute tons of money to conservation projects locally and globally, so they're extremely, extremely important, so make sure to support them in any way you can.
Some of the videos that I'm seeing, and the comments I'm hearing from keepers and care specialists are that the animals that are hand raised, or used to humans, which most of them are in zoos, some of them are tending to want more attention. They're used to people, so some of them are needing and demanding more attention, probably like our children are right now.
Like cockatoos, and primates, and elephants, and macaws. The keepers that are still dedicating their lives right now to caring for them are really important.
The macaws that you see on perches, they're freely walking around the zoo, not just in one area. But, they're going over to hang out with the goats. Some, particularly goats, some of those goats in petting zoos are tending to spend time in areas where normally they wouldn't, because there would be kids trying to pet them. Keepers are able to use unnatural looking enrichment, for lack of a better word, maybe toys that we don't want to see, boxes that have decorations on them, they're able to use that to keep the animals active, and mentally and emotionally engaged.
I'm going to leave you with one funny one. I had a zookeeper say to me when I asked, "Notice any animal behavior changing?" He said, "You know, our hissing cockroaches self confidence is going to grow now that they're not being called gross every five minutes."
Lori Walsh: Oh, well there's something we can take forward when we return to our zoos and our special places, is just go ahead and say something nice to the hissing cockroaches.
Stephanie Arne: Yeah, be kind and loving.
Lori Walsh: They're going to have a little spring in their step.
Stephanie Arne: Absolutely. Nobody, not even animals, want to have that negative energy coming their way.
Lori Walsh: You're not gross, you're fabulous. All right, Stephanie thank you so much for being fabulous, we appreciate your time.
Stephanie Arne: Same to you, thanks.