The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way people recreate outdoors: Preliminary report on a national survey of outdoor enthusiasts amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

On March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The pandemic is rapidly altering daily life and leading to changes in the way we spend time outside. In an effort to gather timely and relevant data on national recreation patterns, before, during, and after the pandemic, the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics worked quickly with its academic partner, Pennsylvania State University, to offer guidance to land managers, recreation providers, and outdoor enthusiasts across the country. In total, 1,012 outdoor recreationists were surveyed through the Leave No Trace community in a 48-hour window beginning on the morning of April 9th. Our hope is that the results of this rapid assessment will provide valuable information for managing the changing recreation use of public lands, predicting spikes in recreation, and offering insight for land managers as they work to protect the natural world. The following tables, figures, and corresponding brief descriptions are intended to provide initial results of this research effort. Further results are forthcoming.

Hitting the ‘pause’ button: What does COVID-19 tell us about the future of heritage sounds?

“…The disruption caused by COVID-19 also resulted in a range of environmental side e ects, which are perceived to be bene cial, such as reduced air pollution on a local [78], national [79,80], and global scale [81], reduced recreational shing pressure [82], and reduced pressures on wildlife [83] with increased sightings of uncommon species in urban [84,85] as well as near-shore areas [86] and, at least temporarily, reduced pollution of beaches [86]. The reduced human activity also had a owthrough e ect on the nature, volume and geographical distribution of human-generated sounds.…”

Effects of Physical Distancing to Control COVID-19 on Public Health, the Economy, and the Environment

“…Finally, will the pandemic have a lasting influence on how people spend their leisure time? If people become motivated to shift a portion of their time use to outdoor recreation activities-which might pose lower risks of infection than leisure activities indoors or outdoors in large crowds (Rice et al 2020;Venter et al 2020;Samuelsson et al 2020)-this could increase the instrumental value of a clean environment and untrammeled wilderness areas. It also could expand the health benefits from exercise outdoors (Lippi et al 2020;Mattioli and Ballerini Puviani 2020;Gössling et al 2020) and the more general well-being benefits from spending time in nature (Bratman et al 2019;White et al 2019).…”

After the anthropause: Lockdown lessons for more‐than‐human geographies

“…Second, a familiar set of domestic human–animal interactions flourished at hyper‐local scales, including vernacular garden ecologies (Figure 2). Back‐garden birdwatching grew in popularity (Rice et al, 2020), evidenced by the foundation of The Self Isolating Bird Club across social media 2 . David Farrier's (2020) account of lockdown discusses his observations of the previously unnoticed “desire paths” of animals.…”

“…Varied practices of furlough, lockdown, shielding, and working from home created new modes of human (im)mobility and forms of attention, allowing a diverse array of human–animal encounters to flourish. These range from back‐garden birdwatching (Rice et al, 2020) and domestic pet‐keeping to livestreamed digital animal interactions (Turnbull et al, 2020b) and virtual gaming. Different people’s everyday interactions with nature, animals, and wildlife have been significantly restructured, out of both necessity and choice.…”