Data from: The influence of human presence and footprint on animal space use in US national parks

Given the importance of protected areas for biodiversity, the growth of
visitation to many areas has raised concerns about the effects of humans
on wildlife. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to temporary closure of
national parks in the United States, offering a pseudonatural experiment
to tease apart the effects of permanent infrastructure and transient human
presence on animals. We compiled GPS tracking data from 229 individuals of
10 mammal species in 14 parks, and used third-order hierarchical Resource
Selection Functions to evaluate the influence of the human footprint on
animal space use in 2019 and 2020. Averaged across all parks and species,
animals avoided the human footprint, whether the park was open or closed.
However, while animals in remote areas showed consistent avoidance, on
average those in more developed areas switched from avoidance to selection
when protected areas were closed. Findings varied across species: some
responded consistently negatively to the footprint (wolves, mountain
goats), some positively (mule deer, red fox), and others had a strong
exposure-mediated response (elk, mountain lion). Furthermore, some species
responded more strongly to the park closure (black bear, moose). This
study advances our understanding of complex interactions between
recreation and wildlife in protected areas. While we do not share raw
location data due to the sensitivity of animal locations, we provide
complete information on the format of data files, intermediate data
products, and the scripts necessary to reproduce analyses.