The perception that humans have towards wildlife changes according to important events that occur in time and space, for example a pandemic. The current Covid-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has infected more than 40 million people, and killed more than one million people worldwide. The probable source of this virus is zoonotic has been directly related to wildlife, mainly bats. Consequently, the burning of bat populations has been reported in some geographic areas, out of fear of infection, that can cause serious negative effects on bat populations. For this reason, having data on perception before the Covid-19 pandemic, the objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the perception of wildlife, especially bats, in two sites of Oaxaca, Mexico.

During this project, interviews with key actors, knowledge dialogue, workshops and training practices on mammalian monitoring (photo-trapping for terrestrial mammals and capture with fog nets and ultrasonic detectors for bats) will be carried out with children, youth and adults, who will help collect data on the knowledge, use and perception of wildlife during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. The aforementioned actions will contribute to generating a change in people's emotions, attitudes and capacities to implement in the future an action plan that helps to conserve the populations of wild mammals, including those that are in some risk category on the IUCN red list, such as bats Choeronycteris mexicana (NT) and Leptonycteris nivalis (EN), felines such as Leopardus wiedii (NT), Panthera onca ( NT) and the bair's tapir (Tapirus bairdii, EN).