People Doing the Right Thing

While Americans are rushing to empty animal shelters of dogs and cats, they are also filling up wild animal rescue and rehabilitation facilities.  With free time to burn and no particular place to go, people are actually paying more attention to what's going on in nature around them.

...The pandemic has changed our normal routines — more people are spending time outside and becoming aware of the wildlife in their backyards or local parks.

It's not that there are more orphaned or injured animals, it's that people are paying more attention.

"People are home, they're bored, they're looking out the window, they're going on walks, they're actually paying more attention, or they have the time to look an animal up and find out where it's supposed to go, " says Melissa Anahory, programs and operation assistant at Woodlands Wildlife Refuge in Pittstown, New Jersey.

Woodlands Wildlife Refuge has taken in 250 more animals than this time last year. At Fox Valley, they're up 1,000 animals. Several rehabbers I reached out to for this article were unavailable for interviews because they were so overwhelmed with constant animal intake and care.

But, maybe it's not just that people are bored.  The impulse to help out nature may be one way humans respond to a world that seems out of control.

The pandemic may be unprecedented in our experience, but experts says this desire to do more follows patterns we've seen during other tumultuous times. Alison Cawood, marine ecologist and citizen science coordinator at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, notes that big changes such as elections or natural disasters often inspire spikes in people wanting to do something bigger than themselves, whether it's reporting a species on a citizen science app or calling a wildlife rehabilitator about an injured animal.

It would be nice if we carried on this behavior after the pandemic is behind us.