Group of Ducks on the grass near the Louvre museum in Paris – Animal Photography
Credit: Jacques Julien
Location: Paris – France
The lockdown had a significant impact on the life of wild animals in cities. With the reduction in road traffic and human activity, I have been able to observe many more wild animals in the cities.
It has also been reported that wild boars have been seen on the streets of Barcelona and Berlin during the lockdown. Deer have also been seen roaming the streets of Nara, Japan, where they are used to roaming freely in parks and temples. In Singapore, monkeys have been observed wandering city streets and searching for food in urban areas.
However, while wild animals may seem to adapt to cities more easily during the lockdown period, it is important to remember that they are still wild animals and can pose public safety risks. It is important not to feed them and to let them roam freely without human intervention.
I was lucky enough to be able to approach this family of ducks without disturbing them to take this photo without a telephoto lens. They looked less stressed and fearful than the ducks I usually see on the docks.
“There are ducks all year round in Paris, wild boars in the forests just outside Barcelona,” describes Benoît Fontaine, conservation biologist at the Center for Ecology and Conservation Sciences of the National Museum of Natural History. Animals are simply more visible in spaces freed up by humans, but all this is quite anecdotal compared to the degradation that nature has suffered for decades. “
“This plasticity of nature, this ability of certain fish or birds to frequent spaces quickly when they are neglected, is a phenomenon that we are all familiar with,” adds Jean-David Abel, vice-president of France Nature Environnement. But nature does not take its place. We just look better: we notice species that were next to us but that we could not see. “
