Author: Frances Monroe

Standing on a clear morning in Bonifacio Global City and watching migratory birds fly around towers of steel and glass while traffic idles in one of the world’s most oppressive urban knots is almost surreal. Metro Manila is already well-known for its harsh commutes and consistently high levels of traffic in Asia. The effects of those shiny skyscrapers on the millions of birds that fly over them twice a year as they travel across the Philippine flyway between their breeding and wintering grounds are less well known. Globally, the numbers are astounding. According to the American Bird Conservancy, glass collisions…

A precise set of GPS coordinates can be found somewhere in the EXIF data of a tourist’s safari photo, hidden beneath color profiles and shutter speeds. The photographer posted it without hesitation. Why would they do that? It was simply a magnificent rhino with its horn catching the late afternoon light, the kind of picture that receives a hundred likes by morning. They probably failed to take into account the fact that anyone with a free metadata extraction tool and a reason to look could potentially read the same coordinates at that time. This risk isn’t hypothetical. In conservation circles,…

When the wind drops, a certain kind of silence descends upon Scotland’s high plateaus. Open rock, thin soil, and the kind of sky that seems closer than it should—no trees, no cover. A tiny wading bird with a rusty-orange chest would spend its summers incubating eggs on the stony ground somewhere up there, or at least once. It’s possible that the dotterel won’t be returning to much of that area for very long. What conservationists had long feared is confirmed by new survey results published by the RSPB in 2025. Since monitoring started in 1988, the number of breeding dotterels…

The majority of Filipinos are unaware of the world found deep within Mindanao, where the Agusan River meanders out into a vast tangle of oxbow lakes, floating communities, and carbon-black peatlands. To get to school, kids paddle canoes. The floodline causes houses to drift. Furthermore, the marsh itself still determines life’s rhythms, such as when to plant, fish, and perform rituals, rather than any official calendar. This has been the home of the Agusanon Manobo people for a longer period of time than recorded in written history. However, something has begun to change beneath the surface in the last few…

The Sulu Sea is difficult to describe for some reason. It is located in the middle of one of the world’s most biologically rich and politically complex bodies of water, sandwiched between the Indonesian archipelago to the south, Malaysia’s Sabah coastline to the west, and the Philippines to the north. Its surface may appear surprisingly serene. However, a different reality has been developing for decades beneath the naval press releases and policy reports. The Sulu Sea poses a unique kind of trap for pelagic migrants, those who travel across open water in pursuit of employment, safety, or just survival. It…

The way Anna Balcells tackles a problem has a subtle determination to it. She doesn’t use abstract language when discussing forests or use the rhetoric of large-scale environmental movements to describe her work. She discusses particular trees, birds, and areas of land on Leyte that the majority of people have already written off. Her Leyte Restoration Project is worth closely examining because of this focus. The project is based on the idea that secondary-growth forests—the tenacious, regrown vegetation that takes hold after agricultural land is abandoned—can accomplish significant conservation work. Ten years ago, this idea would have seemed too modest…

Between 50,000 and several million birds are silently flying over Chicago or Philadelphia on a clear autumn night. The majority of people never raise their heads. The majority of cities never shut down. Thus, completely derailed, the birds—warblers, thrushes, and sparrows, sometimes traveling thousands of miles on instinct—descend into a jumble of glowing towers, lit lobbies, and flood-soaked parking lots. It’s difficult to ignore how straightforward the requests made by scientists and wildlife advocates are. not a brand-new law. Not a habitat fund worth billions of dollars. During the weeks when birds are actually moving, simply turn down the lights…

Finding a dead goose close to a location where students walk to class every morning is unsettling. It makes a different impression than a carcass by the side of the road or a far-off news article about chicken farms. When dead waterfowl started to show up close to the Iowa State University campus in Ames, wildlife managers quickly became concerned. This has happened in Iowa before, but not quite like this. In December 2024, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources confirmed that the state had seen a sharp increase in highly pathogenic avian influenza detections in wild birds, primarily north…

If you are fortunate enough to be on the water at the appropriate time, there is a moment when the tide appears to let go. The texture of the surface varies. Something turbulent starts to move like a slow, deliberate hand through calm water. Additionally, the predators are already present if you know where to look. They are not precisely chasing the water, but rather moving with it, reading it, and coexisting with it. There is more to the relationship between rising tide rhythms and wild coastal predators than meets the eye. Researchers have spent years attempting to figure out…

Every spring, a tiny bird weighing less than a handful of coins sets out on the final arduous leg of a journey that began in Central America somewhere over the Pacific flyway. In April and May, dozens of species, including Wilson’s warbler, yellow warbler, and orange-crowned warbler, migrate north through California in search of two things above all else: insects and cover. More and more, what they discover in Silicon Valley is neither. The air on the campuses is sufficiently green. That much is clear. Wide lawns, perfectly trimmed ornamental hedges, and sporadic groves of non-native trees planted for shade…