Audubon Magazine Winter 2021

THE EMAIL THAT LANDED IN MY inbox on June 14 was bleak. “I killed it,” wrote Dan Koeppel. He was referring to a Rare Bird Alert hotline in Colorado. Koeppel was exaggerating, but only a little; by pointing out the mere existence of this relic, he had caused its demise. One of journalism’s prime directives, he noted, is not to get involved in the story—to report, rather than make, the news—and so he felt he owed an apology to Rocky Mountain birders (who perhaps didn’t realize that their Rare Bird Alert still existed). The story Koeppel was writing, “The End of the Dial-a-Bird Era” (page 42), is a bittersweet one. He started out with a central question: How many Rare Bird Alert hotlines are left? The number dwindled as his reporting…

AS THIS ISSUE GOES TO PRESS, I’ve just returned from the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where I shared with the global climate movement what birds are telling us about our changing environment. The effects of climate change on birds are undeniable. Take, for example, the Atlantic Puffin. These vulnerable seabirds have had a particularly devastating year, especially the fluffy young pufflings. Audubon’s Seabird Institute reports that warming waters have driven away most of the fish that puffins like to eat, leaving them to feed their pufflings butterfish, a species that is too big for young chicks to swallow. Making matters worse, a series of storms also kept them dangerously cold and wet as they were hatching, and as a consequence, less than half the usual number of puffins…

Mosquitoes to the Rescue! This fall, the U.S. government proposed that eight Hawaiian avian species be declared extinct. The same forces that spurred the birds’ declines still threaten Kaua'i’s eight remaining native forest birds; of those, disease-transmitting mosquitoes are the most insidious. Scientists are preparing a powerful weapon to rid the island of the introduced pests: bacterial birth control. In a lab, male mosquitoes’ bacteria are altered. When released into the wild, eggs they fertilize won’t hatch, causing the mosquito population to crash—or so experts hope. Will the innovative approach give birds a chance to recover? Read the story at audubon.org/mosquito. RE: “Greetings from Florida, The Land of Ibis” I was surprised to read about the adaptive behavior of White Ibis in the Fall issue of Audubon. I recently relocated to North…

HALF A CENTURY AGO, CONGRESS set loose a torrent of confusion when it wrote the Clean Water Act to protect the “waters of the United States.” Lobbyists and lawyers have fought ever since over the phrase, often dubbed WOTUS. Its meaning seems grade-school simple but quickly grows as murky as a backwoods swamp. Into these perilous waters the Biden administration wades. While no one disputes that the law protects large rivers and lakes, developers, farm lobbyists, and others have long tried to exclude more isolated and seasonal streams and wetlands. Before they can disturb protected water bodies, landowners must have a permit that requires them to minimize damage and make up for unavoidable impacts by restoring waters elsewhere. Without one, they can face stiff fines or criminal charges. These regulations, many…

AS NATURE PHOTOGRAPHERS in Colombia, home to more than 300 types of ecosystems and one-tenth of the planet’s biodiversity, we’ve seen our share of stunning views. But the Mavecure Hills in southeastern Colombia, pictured below, stand out as one of the most breathtaking places we’ve visited. The formations are sacred to Indigenous communities in the area, who consider them homes of gods. The three massive mounds, reachable only by a two-hour boat trip on the Inírida River, do indeed stand like mighty guardians looking out over the Amazon jungle. We were especially drawn to the largest of these hills, not just because it towers some 2,300 feet high, but also because it is called Pajarito, or “little bird.” Our trip on the Inírida was just one snippet of our quest to…