Moving in the Anthropocene: Global reductions in terrestrial mammalian movements

Tucker and a large international consortium pooled GPS tracking data from many terrestrial mammal species to test whether human footprint constrains animal movement, finding that mammals in areas of high human modification moved substantially less, sometimes only a half to a third as far over long intervals, as those in wild landscapes. By comparing movement across a gradient of human pressure, the study provided the first global, cross-species evidence that human-dominated landscapes compress the distances animals travel, with implications for ecological processes like seed dispersal, nutrient transport, and gene flow. The work, which included carnivores among its many species, established a benchmark for understanding human impacts on movement at planetary scale. It is a landmark demonstration of how aggregated tracking data can reveal global ecological patterns.