Canadian documentary ‘Nature’s Big Year,’ looks at how wildlife rebounded during lockdown

It sure felt like the animals didn’t waste much time taking over the city streets after that first lockdown, right?

The birdsong sounded louder, a family of foxes in the east-end became social media stars and the squirrels seemed extra-frolicky — entitled almost. Insta was full of pics by amateur urban naturalists who had shot coyotes, beavers and even deer enjoying parks, parking lots and empty city streets. With the humans away, the animals came out to play.

But was it real? Were the animals actually becoming bolder? Or were we just looking out our windows in earnest for the first time in a long while?

Well, we may have an answer, thanks to a new Canadian documentary, “Nature’s Big Year” (now streaming on CBC Gem), which follows the research of a number of environmental scientists over the pandemic. And, last year, almost everywhere you looked, animals were making a comeback.

“I kept seeing snippets on social media, you know, the stories about dolphins swimming in the canals of Venice and animals taking to the streets around the world,” says Toronto director Christine Nielsen, recalling the project’s genesis. “And I guess the scientific side of me just wanted to know how much of this was social media B.S. and how much of it was actually supported by science. We started development really quickly because, it turned out, lots of scientists in different fields were studying the effects of the lockdown.”

The dolphin news turned out to be fake. But the underlying “nature is healing” story checks out. On Juno Beach, endangered sea turtles made more nests when the beach was closed during the 2020 nesting season due to COVID-19 fears. In England, hedgehog populations rebounded, thanks largely to fewer cars on the road. Migratory geese were fatter, healthier and less stressed, likely due to cancelled hunting trips.

When she learned there were measurable (largely positive) changes for a number of animals being studied, Nielsen, who formerly directed “Jumbo: The Life of an Elephant Superstar” and “Kingdom of the Tide,” breathed a sigh of relief, both for the animals — and for her film.

“When I was telling people that I was embarking on this story, I had a fair number of friends in the science community saying to me, ‘Well, you know, we notice more birds because we’re home or were noticing these animals on the street because we’re out at times of day that we’re not normally out,’” she says. “And so that obviously made me a bit trepidatious about the whole project because, if they had been right, it wouldn’t have been a very interesting tale.”

Regardless of the risk, Nielsen had little choice but to film while the experiments were ongoing, since it was such a unique opportunity to observe the impact of human activity on the environment.

“I asked Cora Young, the air pollution scientist from York University, if she’d ever had anything comparable, where you suddenly have an unexpected controlled experiment,” Nielsen remembers. “And she, as well as some whale scientists that we talked to early on, all mentioned 9/11, since that, in a very small, brief, way, paused some activity, so some scientists had a glimmer of what that type of giant controlled experiment could look like. But there’s never been anything like what we had during the pandemic lockdown.”

Young’s research involved looking at changes in air pollution levels in India — and the changes were dramatic. And, since some human activities were paused and others were not, it gave environmental scientists a chance to separate out different activities from the pollution “soup,” and isolate the effects of different emissions.

Another researcher, Erica Walker, from Brown University’s School of Public Health, looked into noise pollution in Chelsea, Mass., a neighbourhood close to Boston’s Logan airport. Walker compared the change in noise levels to the difference between the roar of Niagara Falls and the gentle patter of a rain shower.

Both noise and air pollution have an impact on the health of all animals, including the human ones. Both are also inequitably distributed, affecting racialized populations disproportionately, so this research could potentially help inform policy change.

Each story points to research that can be used to make substantive change in specific instances, be it building tunnels for hedgehogs to safely cross the road or closing the beach during turtle nesting season. Woven together, though, they tell a story about, not only how big an impact we have, but also how quickly the damage we do can be reversed.

“What a lot of the scientists were most astonished by is that things happened so quickly, like, practically overnight in some cases,” says Nielsen. “That’s what Pierre Legagneux, the goose scientist from the University of Laval noticed and it’s what Nicola Koper at the University of Manitoba found with the 82 species of birds she studied. A huge percentage changed their habits pretty much overnight when we slowed down.”

That’s a hopeful message. Everything can seem very futile right now as we face the ongoing climate change crisis, but “Nature’s Big Year” indicates that, if we find the political will to change our ways, we could see positive results quickly.

“I think that’s the big picture takeaway,” Nielsen says. “I’m hoping that’s the big picture takeaway from this film.

“I mean, we’re returning to our speedy usual ways, but I’m hoping it helps show that we don’t have to do very much to begin to have an impact.”