Author: Frances Monroe

Along Delaware Bay’s shores, something extraordinary occurs every May. One of nature’s most unlikely arrangements, horseshoe crabs crawling ashore to spawn and leaving behind a thick carpet of pale green eggs just beneath the sand, attracts thousands of shorebirds to the beaches. This stop is essential for the red knot, a robin-sized shorebird finishing one of the longest migrations on the planet. It’s survival. But that arrangement is collapsing. Furthermore, New Jersey Audubon’s Vice President of Research and Monitoring, ecologist Dr. David Mizrahi, has spent decades closely observing it. It’s difficult to look away from the numbers. Over 94,000 red…

Peregrine falcons have been building nests at a quarry in south Staffordshire for many years. There are sheer cliffs. The location is far away. Almost on time, the birds return each spring to lay their eggs and raise their young. The fact that someone is typically observing is something that those falcons are unable to know and that conservationists took too long to fully acknowledge. Although the theft of peregrine falcon eggs and chicks from British nesting sites has been going on for decades, during the last ten years it has become more covert and systematic. At least 126 British…

Above the American heartland’s rooftops, an ancient event takes place every autumn. Under the cover of darkness, billions of birds, including waterfowl, shorebirds, warblers, and swallows, take off and travel south along paths that their ancestors have taken for thousands of years. Most people are unaware of the movement that fills the skies over the Mississippi River Valley. However, for years, something about these travels has been subtly going wrong—earlier and more quickly than most forecasts indicated. For a long time, North America’s migratory flyways—the Pacific, Central, Mississippi, and Atlantic flyways—were thought to be among the more resilient aspects of…

On a calm morning, Subic Bay has a subtly unnerving quality. Once one of Southeast Asia’s most heavily militarized and chemically saturated coastlines, the water catches light like any lovely coastline, reed beds sway at the edges, and birdsong fills the air. Fuels, solvents, and industrial runoff were present at this former U.S. naval base for many years, and their effects on the ecosystem are still being measured today. However, a tiny warbler has been quietly accomplishing something amazing in the bay’s reed margins. The local population of Acrocephalus warblers, which should have either left the area or drastically decreased…

If you listen closely, you will notice that the birds sound different when you enter a park from a busy city street. It’s not quite louder, but it sounds sharper and more demanding, as if they’re putting in more effort than is necessary. It turns out that feeling is genuine. For years, scientists have been monitoring it, and what they have discovered is both fascinating and subtly unsettling. The songs of urban songbirds are becoming more melodic. Not by chance, not at random. They are doing this in order to survive in a world that has become incredibly noisy due…

Lesser prairie-chickens congregate on flat, open areas known as leks each spring to perform their mating dance in the stillness of the Kansas and Oklahoma grasslands before dawn. The males make a low, booming call that reverberates throughout the plains, inflate bright orange sacs on their necks, and stomp their feet quickly. It’s one of the most amazing wildlife displays in North America. And because there aren’t many of these birds left, very few people have ever seen it. Since the 1800s, the population of the lesser prairie-chicken has decreased by about 97%. It’s hard to sit with that number.…

Early April mornings have a certain quality that gives the impression that something is about to happen: cool air, pale light, and the faint sound of a warbler working through a still-bare canopy. Indeed, it is. For millions of years, that moment signaled the rough start of a meticulously planned series of events: plants are triggered by warmth, insects are triggered by plants, and birds are fed by insects. However, that chain is beginning to come loose. Where the links used to land, they no longer do. Phenological mismatch is the technical term used by scientists to describe a timing…

Barges carrying goods bound for ports in Europe ran aground on parts of the Amazon River that had virtually vanished in 2023. The water had simply vanished. The cost of freight doubled. Over $100 million was lost by a large transportation company in Brazil. The majority of people read about it, put it under “climate news,” and moved on. However, there is something noteworthy about that picture: a river that was once the focal point of important trade routes is now absent. That incident demonstrated more than just a disruption to the economy. It was a sneak peek at something…

The fact that more than 130 nations recently convened in Campo Grande, Brazil, and reached a consensus is somewhat noteworthy. Not a trade agreement. Not a truce. Not a commitment to climate finance that would quietly fall apart in two years. They decided to extend the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals’ protections for forty migratory animal species, including cheetahs, snowy owls, giant otters, and several shark species. The number of species covered by the treaty has increased to over 1,200. That is a working multilateral agreement by any reasonable standard. which, by today’s standards, makes…

A quiet farm has an unsettling quality. Before sunrise, no trucks arrived. There is no hand movement between pens. Just deserted streets, signs, and the kind of silence that seems more like consequence than serenity. That stillness has become commonplace throughout the farming belt and is beginning to feel permanent for far too many farmers. Once uncommon and localized, biosecurity lockdowns have become more widespread and economically detrimental than most people seem to realize. Regulatory bodies are now in an aggressive containment mode due to the H5N1 bird flu strain. Following an on-site confirmation of the virus last month, one…