The coronavirus has shined a bright light on how much we’ve divorced ourselves from nature. With more than a billion people in various states of lockdown, the air has cleared and wildlife has flourished. While the coronavirus lockdowns are definitely not something we’ve undertaken as a choice to benefit the natural world, there is a chance for us to consider how divorced we’ve become from it. More importantly, they show that we don’t have to continue living apart from nature once the lockdowns lift. “I’m not very surprised that animals seem to be getting some relief,” Katarzyna Nowak, a conservation scientist to CPAWS in the Yukon and a fellow at the Safina Center. That invites us to reconsider the built environment once the coronavirus passes. We could tear up roads or even build ways for animals to get around them. There are even more novel approaches, like green cemeteries that double as wildlife corridors. With the need for a green stimulus in the wake of the pandemic, it could be a way to put people to work while also restoring the planet. Beyond reducing fear, we can also make places more appealing for animals to hang. The need to re-imagine our relationship with nature is all the more pressing in an era of global warming. The climate crisis is putting even more pressure on plants and animals and upping the risk of up to a million species going extinct. The coronavirus has put humanity at a crossroads, one where we can choose to keep walking down a path of destruction of the biosphere that has sustained us or build a future that puts us back in balance.