Author: Frances Monroe

The clarity of Jay Batongbacal’s stance is almost unsettling. This University of the Philippines law professor keeps bringing up an idea that seems almost too reasonable: shared marine sanctuaries in one of the most disputed waterways in the world. The dispute has resulted in decades of diplomatic noise, artificial islands, coast guard confrontations, and legal rulings that China simply ignored. Before discounting this as academic idealism, it is worthwhile to consider Batongbacal’s true identity. In the Benham Rise Region, he assisted the Philippines in pursuing its claim to the continental shelf. He is listed as one of UNESCO’s special arbitration…

It is rare for Elbert County, Georgia, to make national headlines. It is primarily an agricultural county near the South Carolina border, with long, low poultry houses that stretch back from the tree line on either side of the roads. However, in January 2025, the state’s first confirmed case of highly pathogenic avian influenza in a commercial poultry operation occurred there, something Georgia’s agriculture industry had been dreading for years. 45,500 breeder hens in a flock. One test came back positive. And a domino effect that, before the majority of people had even heard the county’s name, reached trading desks…

Anyone who has trained a macro lens on a hummingbird feather will remember a specific moment: the moment the color changes. What was black turns magenta when you tilt the subject by a fraction of a degree. Green flames turned into gold. It now appears to be a material that has not yet been created rather than a bird. It’s not pigment, and it’s not an accident. At a scale that is invisible to the human eye, physics is at work. The reason hummingbirds are the most colorful family of birds on Earth is not because of what they absorb,…

In the rural Midwest, there used to be a specific type of late afternoon when barn swallows would cut low across a field, bank hard at the fence line, and then sweep back up into a pale sky. Once, it was unremarkable. It was the kind of thing that you didn’t realize existed until one summer. Quiet and easy to ignore, that absence proves to be a major issue. In North America, swallows and other aerial insectivores—birds that capture flying insects in midair—have been in decline for many years. However, the scope of what has transpired is only now fully…

Rebecca Norris Webb engages in a grief-related game. When she spots a belted kingfisher while birdwatching in South Dakota, she is reminded of her brother Dave—his eccentric sense of style and his half-smile when making fun of her. She recognizes Mike as the Townsend with the intricate yet memorable song when she spots a Townsend’s solitaire. The two brothers are no longer with us. Twenty years ago, one person passed away from heart failure. The other, more recently, committed suicide. Webb continues to carry her camera with her. The birds are still present. She finds it extremely difficult to look…

For a long time, Japan’s railways have been regarded as something akin to a national religion. Within seconds of their scheduled arrival times, trains arrive. With the gravity of air traffic controllers, station employees call and point their way through departure procedures. Additionally, the operator formally apologizes to the public when a Shinkansen departs twenty seconds early, not late. That is the standard expectation. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Kyoto University ornithologists have been speaking with Central Japan Railway, the company that built the famous Tokaido Shinkansen. Not in terms of speed. Not in relation to engineering.…

Stretches of lowland forest that haven’t changed much in centuries can be found deep within the island of Samar, where the road turns to mud and the canopy closes overhead like a ceiling. Clear, cold streams, tangled undergrowth, and old-growth dipterocarps. It’s the kind of place where you can understand why people fight to protect it without having to listen to a lecture. Additionally, some of them are fighting with checkbooks more and more. Samar’s remaining lowland forest has been discreetly acquired over the past few years by a loosely affiliated group of local land trusts, private philanthropists, and conservation…

The Golden-cheeked Warbler, an endangered bird, spends its winters in the pine-oak hills surrounding the colonial city of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, rather than in some isolated cloud forest. Below, tourists stroll along cobblestone streets. Diesel smoke and noise fill the markets. And this little yellow-faced bird finds what it needs somewhere above it all. When you sit with it, it’s an odd image. A nearly extinct species, picking a city. The reason that detail keeps coming up is that it subtly challenges a widely held belief that wildlife and cities are mutually exclusive. In the…

The vastness of it all begins to seem almost unnatural when you drive through the flat, industrial farmlands of northern China or along the agricultural corridors of the American Midwest. Tens of thousands of birds crammed into spaces intended for maximum productivity in sheds that span hundreds of meters. It works well. It makes money. And it might be one of the most important choices that modern agriculture has ever made. For a very long time, avian influenza has been spreading among populations of wild birds. That’s nothing new. The interface between those wild populations and the dense, commercially farmed…

For years, a picture of a bear captured in the Canadian Arctic that is bigger than a polar bear and has the brown-tipped fur of a grizzly has been quietly shared among wildlife biologists. It’s not a camera trick. It’s a grolar bear, the progeny of two species whose ranges were never meant to coincide, brought together by temperatures that have been steadily rising since before the majority of wildlife managers began their careers. Nobody is quite sure how to handle it legally. This quiet uncertainty is turning into a slow-motion crisis. Animals and plants that have evolved on different…