'But now more than ever, birds need our help. It’s our turn to be a source of hope for these wild creatures,' writes Rebecca Heisman
Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migrationigratory birds are almost a perfect metaphor for hope—so much so that Emily Dickinson’s line “hope is the thing with feathers” has become a cliché. Every year, just when we feel like the cold, gray months of winter may never end, migratory birds return from their wintering ranges to refill our fields and forests with color and song.
When trying to take in the overwhelming challenges facing North America’s birds, it would be easy to lose hope entirely. Fortunately, an entire community of passionate scientists and conservationists has dedicated themselves to understanding, halting, and reversing these declines. It may be tempting to argue, in the face of such sobering population declines, that the time for data collection is over and we should be shifting all our resources to conservation, protecting crucial habitat and minimizing threats. But despite decades of work, the truth is wedon’t know enough about the migratory behavior of many bird species to target conservation efforts effectively.
Understanding migratory birds’ lives at this level of detail is crucial if we hope to turn the tide for these species. Habitat loss, pesticide use, or another threat at a single Central American “stopover” site that a species uses during migration, or a specific patch of South American forest that one population uses during the winter, could have cascading effects throughout a species’ range.
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