Differences in the response of ACV with wildlife and livestock species during the COVID-19 lockdown in Spain.

COVID-19 lockdowns provided a unique opportunity to study the interaction between humans and wildlife. The decrease of human presence in the territory, for example, by reducing traffic volumes on the road network, promoted changes in the behavior and use of space by wildlife. Reports of wild species venturing into rural and urban areas, where they had not been seen for many years, became frequent. We expected that all these changes influenced the patterns of AVC (animal-vehicle collisions) occurrence. In this study we evaluated what happened to AVC in Spain during the 14-week lockdown between March 13 and June 22, 2020, compared to the same period for the years 2017-2019. In addition, we wanted to explore the differences between wild and domestic species since the former only responded to changes in their behavior and the latter to human management itself. We used the AVC reported by the Spanish traffic safety authorities from 2017 and 2020; a total of 18171 AVC, 15404 with wildlife and 2767 with livestock: wild boar (5847), roe deer (8167), red deer (806), wolf (14) badger (222) red fox (348), dog (2144), domestic cat (182), sheep (92), goat (34), pig (15), cattle (124), and horse (176). We removed interannual trends using ARIMA method. We found that the decrease in the number of AVC was 63.90 ± 16.61% for livestock and 40.1 ± 11.50% for wild species. The reduction in traffic volume was 65%. That is, livestock AVC decrease was very similar to the reduction in traffic volume. In contrast, wildlife AVC decreased less than expected in relation to traffic volume. We hypothesize that this difference is explained by changes in the patterns of space use by wildlife, which ventured during this period into areas that they do not normally frequent.

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Colino-Rabanal V.J. González-Gallina A. y Rodríguez Díaz R. Differences in the response of ACV with wildlife and livestock species during the COVID-19 lockdown in Spain. Center for Transportation and the Environment North Carolina State University, 2021.

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Retrieved: 12 Nov 2025 16:44:40

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Resource type Text
Date of creation 2025-05-23
Date of last revision 2025-05-23
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Metadata identifier a2ee6c42-84bb-5b32-9e36-26673517e806
Metadata language Spanish
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ISO 19115 topic category biota
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Name of the dataset creator Colino-Rabanal, V.J., González-Gallina, A. y Rodríguez Díaz, R.
Name of the dataset editor Center for Transportation and the Environment, North Carolina State University
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