Am I In Your Space? Highlighting The Dual Impacts of Human Presence and Landscape Changes on Wildlife 

Featured Image Caption: A Coyote (Canis latrans) scans its surroundings in an urban Los Angeles park. Photo by Ian Becker (author).

Primary Source Article: Oliver, R. Y., Yanco, S. W., Ellis-Soto, D., Jesmer, B. R., Cohen, J., Gao, S., … & Jetz, W. (2026). Interacting effects of human presence and landscape modification on birds and mammals. Science, 392(6800), 879-884.

Secondary Source Articles:

Oliver, R. Y., Chapman, M., Ellis-Soto, D., Brum-Bastos, V., Cagnacci, F., Long, J., … & Rutz, C. (2024). Access to human-mobility data is essential for building a sustainable future. Cell Reports Sustainability, 1(4).

To crudely sum up the last 50 years of urban ecology research, we are well aware of the fact that human activities affect ecosystems and wildlife. Of course, in an ideal world, we would enjoy sustainable coexistence between people and animals. Maybe not in the Disney-esque birds help you get dressed way, but picture green bridges that help animals move over highways and conservation of native vegetation in urban areas. Yet, in order to reach this eventual (and admittedly picturesque) goal, we need a core understanding of exactly how we are impacting animals. Importantly, pinning down the mechanism or cause of these human impacts on wildlife may help researchers and land stewards better understand how to manage human-wildlife interactions.

One of the main drivers of human-wildlife impacts is landscape modification. We are actively altering native ecosystems and landscapes for the purposes of developing cities, agricultural fields, and other forms of infrastructure. Interestingly, landscape modification and its effects have seldom been analyzed in conjunction with human presence. Animals respond to the presence of people, often changing daily behaviors and geographic use of space, which in turn can impact a species’ environmental niche, or the amount of an ecosystem used by a given species. Human presence and its impacts on wildlife in general are relatively understudied, as robust forms of fine-scale presence data are difficult to come by (likely for good reason). This raises multiple questions: How do landscape modification and human presence independently impact a species, and how might these factors interact to impact a species?

“Calling” all people and animals 

To explore these questions, a global team of 92 researchers gathered GPS data from tracking studies of 37 species of mammals and birds, totaling 4,581 individuals and 11.8 million locations. For each species included in the study, the authors modeled the effect of landscape modification and human presence on both geographic area used (based on GPS locations) and environmental niche size (defined above). To estimate landscape modification, the authors utilized a previously existing map of landscape alteration, but to quantify human presence they had to get a bit more creative, using spatial estimates of mobile-devices, essentially equating the presence of a phone to the presence of a person on the landscape. 

Figure Caption: Schematic showing the two main factors the authors explored for each species in response to human presence and landscape modification. Created by Ian Becker (author)

The authors found that the geographic space use and/or environmental niche size for over half of the included species were affected by both human presence and landscape modification. Furthermore, about two thirds of all included species were impacted by human presence, relating human presence to changes in the size of a species’ environmental niche as well as changes in the amount of geographic space used. Changes in geographic space use was particularly evident for mammal species included in this study who tended to contract the amount of geographic area used in response to either increasing human presence or landscape modification. 

Some of the study’s most novel insights came from considering the interaction between human presence and landscape modification, meaning that the effect of human presence was dependent on landscape modification and vice versa. This interaction effect varied across species, likely reflecting differences in life history and behavioral plasticity, or ability to compromise behavior, in the presence of human activity. For example, the authors note that increasing anthropogenic activity caused coyotes (Canis latrans) to decrease area used while Common Ravens (Corvus corax) actually increased their area used under the same conditions. When considering the effects on environmental niche size, most species contracted their environmental niche, with some exceptions such as cougars broadening their niche in response to human activity. 

Towards better human-wildlife coexistence 

These findings mark critical progress towards understanding the interacting mechanisms underpinning wildlife responses to human activity. Yet, gaps still exist in how we can apply this knowledge to uncover more detailed interpretations of wildlife behavior. Researchers may now consider the findings of this study as a foundation for single-species explorations, providing fine-scale characterizations of urban animal behavior as a function of both human presence and landscape modification. 

There is still one big human shaped elephant in the room though. Ironically, human presence data is incredibly difficult to obtain. In particular, human mobility data, which utilizes mobile devices (phones, watches, tablets) is currently limited in its accessibility for research purposes both due to privacy concerns but also as a result of data being largely owned by private corporations (Oliver et al., 2024). Open access to human mobility data or other developing other proxies for quantifying human presence at a spatial scale relevant for ecological study would be an important next step for continuing the work described in the above study. Yet, therein lies immense opportunity to completely rethink how we study human-wildlife coexistence. Disentangling the effects of human presence from other stressors may positively impact millions of animals living in anthropogenic environments.

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