Pandemic taking a toll on wildlife

The Covid-19 crisis, besides having a deep socio-economic impact, might profoundly affect wildlife conservation, with potentially long-lasting effects. During the lockdown, large parts of the country lacked patrolling and monitoring from scientists, rangers or tourists.

This severely reduced the likelihood of detecting threats and probably fostered opportunities to exploit endangered wildlife species. The reduction of enforcement could cause a surge of illegal killing of wildlife.

The absence of rangers and tourists effectively opens more territory and increases the available stock of the target resource for poachers. Poaching is the illegal hunting, killing, or capturing of wild animals, in violation of local, state, federal or international law.