Author: Frances Monroe

As these things usually do, it began quietly. A California duck farm. a standard examination. An outcome that no one desired. Health officials confirmed the first cases of H5N9 avian influenza in the United States in late January 2025. Although the announcement didn’t make headlines in most places, virologists were already aware that another flu strain had entered a system that was already dangerously overcrowded. There is more to H5N9 than just its existence. It’s where it came from. This virus did not appear on its own. As a reassortant, it was basically pieced together from fragments of three distinct…

At first glance, the Mekong Delta seems almost misleading. The water flows slowly. In the shallows, egrets remain still. Pale green rows of rice paddies stretch to the horizon. In some ways, what scientists have been discovering here is all the more unsettling because it seems like one of those places that the modern world has not yet fully reached. The Mekong Delta is more than just a geographical area. Approximately four million hectares of floodplains, wetlands, mangrove forests, mudflats, and peatlands support over 450 fish species and an estimated 18 million people, making it a living system. Up to…

Something will eventually cut across the glow if you stand on the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building after dark. It will be swift, intent, and not a pigeon. The silhouette is easily recognized if you know what to look for: long, tapering wings, a narrow tail that spreads out in the middle of a turn, and a controlled arrogance in the way it controls the airspace. It’s a peregrine falcon, and it must be somewhere. Seeing this take place over one of the world’s most illuminated, crowded cities is subtly amazing. Not precisely because it’s weird.…

The relationship between Britain and the Thames is complex. It declared the river biologically dead in the 1950s, worked for decades to revive it, and then, at some point, let things fall apart once more. The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs is now faced with a challenging task: protecting a waterway that appears to have recovered on paper but actually reveals a very different picture. The Environment Agency’s most recent data arrives quietly. Of the rivers in England, only about one in seven are in good ecological condition. Less than 7% of lakes met that criterion. Not a…

A male southern yellow-billed hornbill does an almost comical thing on a hot afternoon in the Kalahari: he opens his beak and simply holds it open, his wings drooping slightly at his sides as he stands motionless in a manner that birds hardly ever do. He’s not sleeping. He’s at work. working in order to survive. For years, Dr. Susan Cunningham of the University of Cape Town has been associated with that image. Long before the debate over climate change became as heated as it is now, her team has been recording how Kalahari birds react to rising temperatures. What…

The fragility of the global food trade is almost unbelievable. An entire shipment can be frozen at the border by a single laboratory reading, such as parts per billion of a pesticide residue or a prohibited agrochemical used somewhere on a farm in a developing nation. A supply chain that supplies millions of people is abruptly put on hold in a matter of hours after contracts are suspended and buyers are informed. Most people are unaware of how frequently it occurs. Formally known as zero-tolerance trade policies, they function precisely as their name implies: there is no margin of error,…

When you learn that something you’ve been doing with the best of intentions may actually be harmful, a certain kind of guilt sets in. When the RSPB released guidelines in April asking people to remove their seed and peanut feeders between May and October, millions of British households—an estimated 16 million people regularly put food out for garden birds—started to feel that way. The headlines changed quickly. The panic spread more quickly. However, compared to the suggested coverage, the actual guidance is more cautious. The RSPB is not advocating for complete cessation of bird feeding. It was created in collaboration…

A small group of local government representatives, conservationists, and officials convened at Negros Forest Park on a January morning in Bacolod for what might have appeared to be a standard ceremony. It wasn’t. The ten birds inside the securely fastened transport containers, silent and unremarkable to the untrained eye, symbolized something much more important. One of the rarest birds on the planet, Negros bleeding-heart pigeons, had just returned from a nearly four-year journey from Singapore. The bright red splash in the middle of its white chest, which strikingly resembles a wound, is the source of the bleeding-heart pigeon’s name. It…

The majority of people have never been able to identify the source of a particular photograph. A video of a sea turtle in distress and obviously in pain was released in 2015, showing researchers carefully removing a plastic straw from deep inside the turtle’s nostril. No press conference. No memo on policy. Just a creature clearly in pain, with a camera steady enough to capture the moment. Over 42 million people watched the video. Plastic straw bans were implemented in dozens of cities and nations within a few years. No single piece of peer-reviewed literature may have had that kind…

Watching a possible pandemic develop in slow motion while the world is preoccupied with other matters is unsettling. The relentless pace of domestic political crises, economic instability, and geopolitical tensions all vie for attention. And a virus that stealthily spreads thru poultry farms, dairy cattle, and wild birds on several continents usually loses that competition. With H5N1 avian influenza, that is precisely what has been occurring. It’s still there. If anything, most people are unaware of how far and deep it has spread. The current H5N1 outbreak has been linked to 71 human cases and 2 fatalities in the United…