Beyond Circumstantial Evidence on Wildlife–Vehicle Collisions During COVID-19 Lockdown: A Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Multi-Year Analysis from a Mediterranean Island
Decreases in animal mortality due to wildlife–vehicle collisions have been consistently documented as an environmental effect of human mobility restrictions aimed at containing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we investigate this phenomenon on the mid-sized Mediterranean island of...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2025-06-01
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| Series: | Ecologies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4133/6/2/42 |
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| Summary: | Decreases in animal mortality due to wildlife–vehicle collisions have been consistently documented as an environmental effect of human mobility restrictions aimed at containing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we investigate this phenomenon on the mid-sized Mediterranean island of Lesvos, considering a multi-species group of mammals over a five-year systematic recording of animal casualties. We developed a method to analyze the relationship between actual casualties and risk, drawing inspiration from Markowitz’s theory on multi-asset optimization in economics. Additionally, we treated this phenomenon as a Poisson probabilistic process. Our main finding indicates that the lockdown year diverged markedly in modeled return–risk space, exhibiting a displacement on the order of 10<sup>2</sup> compared to the multi-year baseline—an outcome that reflects structural changes in risk dynamics, not a literal 100-fold decrease in observed counts. This modeled shift is significantly larger compared to published evidence regarding individual species. The results concerning the vulnerability of specific mammals, analyzed as a Poisson process, underscore the importance of singular events that can overshadow the overall systemic nature of the issue. We conclude that a promising strategy for addressing this problem is for conservationists to integrate animal-friendly measures into general human road safety policies. |
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| ISSN: | 2673-4133 |