An average of 32 large animals are hit and killed by cars every day in just three states – California, Maine and Idaho.

That was, until COVID-19. The number dropped to around 20 per day as businesses, schools and other activities shut down in the spring due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The data was compiled in a study by the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis, which looked at collisions between vehicles and large animals in those three states before and after coronavirus restrictions in March and April.

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“There is a statistically significant decline in wildlife deaths on highways in all three states following reductions in traffic this spring,” study author Fraser Shilling, director of the UC Davis Road Ecology Center, said in a news release. “This has not been the case for any of the previous five years for these three states. If anything, there is usually an increase in spring.”

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The results mean fewer animals like deer and mountain lions were killed. In Maine, the number of animals killed by vehicles each day was cut nearly in half. In Idaho, the decline was about 38%, while California saw a drop of 21%.

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The decrease is attributed to fewer cars on the road. Traffic in those three states was down between 63% and 73% during the period studied.

Besides being good news for wildlife, fewer drivers were put in danger. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration estimated that 194 people died when they hit an animal on U.S. roads in 2017.

The shift has other implications as well. Certain wildlife carry ticks that cause Lyme disease. Some scientists have, at least in part, blamed increased deer populations for a rise in the disease.

And more deer in the wild could mean more of the animals roaming around come hunting season.

(MORE: Wild Horses of Outer Banks Getting DNA Tests To Determine Family Relationships)

Overall, though, the impact may not be significant.

“I think what it will mean is there will be a few more deer in the woods this fall, but not every hunter is going to see that increase,” Michael Tonkovich, a deer program administrator with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, told Outdoor Life. “We lose 22,000 to 25,000 deer a year to vehicle collisions, but a majority of those come in November, December, and January. There is some spring dispersal of deer, like does pushing out button bucks or does finding a new home range, but it’s not like the movement we see in the fall.”

It's also unknown how long the decline in animal roadkill will last. Traffic is already on the rise again, with California, Idaho and Maine experiencing a two- to threefold increase after restrictions were lifted. As of late June, traffic was up to about half of the pre-shutdown levels, according to Shilling.

He's optimistic that the impact of less traffic on the roads might be even greater than what the numbers revealed.

“Given the five- to tenfold under-reporting of large animals involved in collisions with vehicles and the lack of systematic reporting of smaller animals killed on roads, the positive impacts we report are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg of reduced deaths of wildlife on U.S. roads and highways,” he wrote in the report.