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Will Portland weaken its policy to phase out diesel, replace it with biofuels?

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Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Portland leaders may soon weigh whether to roll back parts of the city’s signature climate policy on replacing diesel with renewable fuels, a first-in-the-nation standard critical to reducing emissions and harmful particulate matter pollution. The policy, adopted by the City Council in 2022 and aimed at medium and heavy trucks, phases out the sale of petroleum diesel by 2030, gradually replacing it with diesel blended with renewable fuels at increasingly higher increments.Council members had hailed the diesel phase-out as a tool to reduce pollution in low-income neighborhoods often located near freeways with high concentrations of diesel emissions. As part of the policy, a 15% blend requirement began in 2024, a 50% blend will be required by 2026 and a 99% blend by 2030. Medium and heavy trucks affected by the policy include delivery trucks, school and transit buses, dump trucks, tractor trailers and cement mixers. But Portland’s Renewable Fuels Standards Advisory Committee is poised to recommend weakening the phase-out. The committee was established in July 2023 to advise the city Bureau of Planning and Sustainability director on technical and economic issues related to the renewable fuel supply as well as meeting the policy’s fuel requirements. A draft memo, made public in advance of the committee’s meeting this week, shows the committee is planning to ask the city to reduce the 2026 biofuel percentage requirement from 50% to 20% and delay implementation until 2028 or 2030. The memo was obtained by the Braided River Campaign, a Portland nonprofit that advocates for a green working waterfront, and shared with The Oregonian/OregonLive. The proposed rollback essentially would allow trucks to continue to emit black carbon or “soot” at a higher level and for longer than under the original plan.The draft also recommends pausing for at least two years strict restrictions on the type of feedstock used to make renewable fuels – a standard that three years ago was hailed as the most innovative, emission-reducing part of Portland’s diesel phase-out. The pause would allow retailers to fall back on using biofuels made from feedstocks such as soybean, canola and palm oils which have been linked to much higher carbon emissions, displacing food production and causing deforestation. The draft memo, addressed to Planning and Sustainability’s Director Eric Engstrom, says the changes would respond to unfavorable biodiesel and renewable diesel market conditions in Oregon and Portland, including the scarcity of low-carbon intensity feedstocks such as used cooking oil and animal tallow.It’s unclear who will decide on the future of the diesel phase-out. While Engstrom has sole discretion to make changes to the program’s rules, the City Council holds the authority to amend city code. Engstrom did not immediately comment on whether the recommended changes would require rule or code changes. Portland officials have said they are fully committed to electrification of trucks but that transition will take many years. Moving from diesel to biofuels is an interim step, they said, allowing for faster emission and particulate matter reductions. The committee’ draft recommendation comes as Portland leaders are debating the future of the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub, a 6-mile stretch on the northwest bank of the Willamette River where most of Oregon’s fuel supply is stored. Zenith Energy, which operates a terminal at the hub that has drawn environmental opposition, has promised the city to convert from fossil fuel loading and storage to renewable fuels. Other companies at the hub are also eyeing renewable fuels as a new income stream. Earlier this week, the city unveiled four alternatives for the hub, one of which allows for unlimited renewable fuel expansion. Environmental advocates said the committee’s recommendations are unacceptable and would gut the renewable fuel policy’s environmental credibility.“This is a complete walk-back of a promise made to Portlanders,” said Marnie Glickman, Braided River Campaign’s executive director. “The city sold this policy on the promise of a rapid decline in carbon pollution. Now, before the strongest rules even take effect, the industry-dominated advisory board is asking for a hall pass to continue using the cheapest, dirtiest biofuels.” The committee is set to refine the memo at its meeting on Thursday and may vote on the recommendation. It must submit the final recommendation to Engstrom by mid-October. Biofuel cost is one of the major reasons the committee cites for the recommended changes. “If the RFS (renewable fuel standard) is left unchanged, the cost of the diesel fuel in Portland could get significantly higher in the City of Portland compared to the rest of the state of Oregon due to the combined higher requirement of renewable content and lower carbon intensity,” the memo said. The draft memo also says Portland’s program has trouble competing with other regional markets such as California for scarce low-carbon intensity biofuels. It also mentions Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill excluding feedstocks supplied from countries outside North America from tax incentives – which is likely to further reduce the supply of low-carbon feedstocks. Glickman said she’s also concerned about the committee’s potential conflict of interest when making recommendations to the sustainability director – a fact the draft memo acknowledges. Six of the seven members of the advisory committee are representatives of fuel producers and suppliers – including bpAmerica, Phillips 66 and the Western States Petroleum Association. The committee’s only non-industry member – Andrew Dyke, a senior economist at ECOnorthwest – declined to comment on the draft memo. In 2006, Portland became the first city in the U.S. to adopt a renewable fuel standard, which required the city’s fuel retailers to sell a minimum blend of 5% biodiesel. The city updated the policy in 2022 to a full diesel phase-out. The current policy far exceeds the federal and state renewable fuel standards.If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Portland’s Renewable Fuels Standards Advisory Committee is poised to recommend delaying the phase-out -- but the decision on how to move ahead will be made by city leaders.

Portland leaders may soon weigh whether to roll back parts of the city’s signature climate policy on replacing diesel with renewable fuels, a first-in-the-nation standard critical to reducing emissions and harmful particulate matter pollution.

The policy, adopted by the City Council in 2022 and aimed at medium and heavy trucks, phases out the sale of petroleum diesel by 2030, gradually replacing it with diesel blended with renewable fuels at increasingly higher increments.

Council members had hailed the diesel phase-out as a tool to reduce pollution in low-income neighborhoods often located near freeways with high concentrations of diesel emissions.

As part of the policy, a 15% blend requirement began in 2024, a 50% blend will be required by 2026 and a 99% blend by 2030. Medium and heavy trucks affected by the policy include delivery trucks, school and transit buses, dump trucks, tractor trailers and cement mixers.

But Portland’s Renewable Fuels Standards Advisory Committee is poised to recommend weakening the phase-out.

The committee was established in July 2023 to advise the city Bureau of Planning and Sustainability director on technical and economic issues related to the renewable fuel supply as well as meeting the policy’s fuel requirements.

A draft memo, made public in advance of the committee’s meeting this week, shows the committee is planning to ask the city to reduce the 2026 biofuel percentage requirement from 50% to 20% and delay implementation until 2028 or 2030.

The memo was obtained by the Braided River Campaign, a Portland nonprofit that advocates for a green working waterfront, and shared with The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The proposed rollback essentially would allow trucks to continue to emit black carbon or “soot” at a higher level and for longer than under the original plan.

The draft also recommends pausing for at least two years strict restrictions on the type of feedstock used to make renewable fuels – a standard that three years ago was hailed as the most innovative, emission-reducing part of Portland’s diesel phase-out.

The pause would allow retailers to fall back on using biofuels made from feedstocks such as soybean, canola and palm oils which have been linked to much higher carbon emissions, displacing food production and causing deforestation.

The draft memo, addressed to Planning and Sustainability’s Director Eric Engstrom, says the changes would respond to unfavorable biodiesel and renewable diesel market conditions in Oregon and Portland, including the scarcity of low-carbon intensity feedstocks such as used cooking oil and animal tallow.

It’s unclear who will decide on the future of the diesel phase-out. While Engstrom has sole discretion to make changes to the program’s rules, the City Council holds the authority to amend city code.

Engstrom did not immediately comment on whether the recommended changes would require rule or code changes.

Portland officials have said they are fully committed to electrification of trucks but that transition will take many years. Moving from diesel to biofuels is an interim step, they said, allowing for faster emission and particulate matter reductions.

The committee’ draft recommendation comes as Portland leaders are debating the future of the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub, a 6-mile stretch on the northwest bank of the Willamette River where most of Oregon’s fuel supply is stored. Zenith Energy, which operates a terminal at the hub that has drawn environmental opposition, has promised the city to convert from fossil fuel loading and storage to renewable fuels. Other companies at the hub are also eyeing renewable fuels as a new income stream.

Earlier this week, the city unveiled four alternatives for the hub, one of which allows for unlimited renewable fuel expansion.

Environmental advocates said the committee’s recommendations are unacceptable and would gut the renewable fuel policy’s environmental credibility.

“This is a complete walk-back of a promise made to Portlanders,” said Marnie Glickman, Braided River Campaign’s executive director. “The city sold this policy on the promise of a rapid decline in carbon pollution. Now, before the strongest rules even take effect, the industry-dominated advisory board is asking for a hall pass to continue using the cheapest, dirtiest biofuels.”

The committee is set to refine the memo at its meeting on Thursday and may vote on the recommendation. It must submit the final recommendation to Engstrom by mid-October.

Biofuel cost is one of the major reasons the committee cites for the recommended changes.

“If the RFS (renewable fuel standard) is left unchanged, the cost of the diesel fuel in Portland could get significantly higher in the City of Portland compared to the rest of the state of Oregon due to the combined higher requirement of renewable content and lower carbon intensity,” the memo said.

The draft memo also says Portland’s program has trouble competing with other regional markets such as California for scarce low-carbon intensity biofuels. It also mentions Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill excluding feedstocks supplied from countries outside North America from tax incentives – which is likely to further reduce the supply of low-carbon feedstocks.

Glickman said she’s also concerned about the committee’s potential conflict of interest when making recommendations to the sustainability director – a fact the draft memo acknowledges. Six of the seven members of the advisory committee are representatives of fuel producers and suppliers – including bpAmerica, Phillips 66 and the Western States Petroleum Association.

The committee’s only non-industry member – Andrew Dyke, a senior economist at ECOnorthwest – declined to comment on the draft memo.

In 2006, Portland became the first city in the U.S. to adopt a renewable fuel standard, which required the city’s fuel retailers to sell a minimum blend of 5% biodiesel. The city updated the policy in 2022 to a full diesel phase-out. The current policy far exceeds the federal and state renewable fuel standards.

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

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Salmon farmer accused of blocking UK investigations into alleged animal rights breaches

Faroese firm Bakkafrost wants to ban campaigner Don Staniford from going within 15 metres of its fish farmsOne of Europe’s largest salmon farmers has been accused of attacking the civil rights of environmental campaigners by asking for sweeping restrictions on their freedom to investigate alleged animal rights breaches.The Faroese company Bakkafrost, which produces about 20% of the UK’s farmed salmon, has asked a judge to consider banning the campaigner Don Staniford from going within 15 metres of any of its fish farms, boats and barges. Continue reading...

One of Europe’s largest salmon farmers has been accused of attacking the civil rights of environmental campaigners by asking for sweeping restrictions on their freedom to investigate alleged animal rights breaches.The Faroese company Bakkafrost, which produces about 20% of the UK’s farmed salmon, has asked a judge to consider banning the campaigner Don Staniford from going within 15 metres of any of its fish farms, boats and barges.The company is seeking an interdict, or injunction, that would extend to anyone acting with Staniford, or guided by him, from approaching, entering or boarding any of Bakkafrost’s more than 200 salmon farms, ships, factories, docks, hatcheries and offices – including its head office in Edinburgh.Don Staniford has documented conditions in Scottish salmon farms. Civil rights groups argue that Bakkafrost’s legal action amounts to an attempt to shut down legitimate investigations in the public interest, using a tactic known as a strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapp.Staniford, one of the UK’s most prominent fish farm campaigners, has already been ordered to stay away from fish farms and land bases in Scotland owned by the Norwegian multinational Mowi and by Scottish Sea Farms.Staniford, who is based in north-west England and known to his supporters as the “kayak vigilante”, boards salmon farms to look for any evidence of disease or parasite infestations on fish, or any evidence of illegal chemical discharges, at times with documentary film-makers and journalists.All three firms say they uphold the highest legal and welfare standards on their farms.Bakkafrost’s legal action, being heard at Dunoon sheriff court near Glasgow, is trying to establish an even broader restriction than its competitors by asking for the 15-metre exclusion zone around all its assets. Breaching that interdict would be a contempt of court, exposing campaigners to the risk of imprisonment.Mowi tried and failed to impose a similar exclusion area against Staniford but that restriction was thrown out on appeal. Staniford said Mowi is pursuing him for £123,000 in court costs and legal costs – a bill he is unable to pay.Nik Williams, a policy officer with the Index on Censorship and a co-chair of the UK Anti-Slapp coalition, said sweeping bans of this kind, particularly if the interdict appeared to include anyone associated with Staniford, had a chilling effect on public debate.He said: “Anywhere there are legal constraints like this, people will step back scrutinising these incredibly influential industries”, adding it was “quite concerning” that Bakkafrost was seeking a 15-metre exclusion area despite knowing that Mowi’s application to do so had failed.Bakkafrost wants its “extended interdict” to include Staniford “by himself or by his agents, employees, or servants, or by anyone acting on his behalf or under his instructions, or procurement”.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionIn the first day of the hearing, Staniford’s lawyer, Nicole Hogg, told the sheriff, Laura Mundell, the judge presiding over the case, that Bakkafrost wanted sweeping restrictions on him without specifying why they were needed.She said it had failed to produce evidence that it owned or leased the land-based properties it wanted to protect, or why an exclusion zone was necessary at sea. “It is not sufficiently precise,” she told Mundell.Ruairidh Leishman, acting for Bakkafrost, said the 15-metre zone was useful because it set a precise boundary for the court, but it was asking for it to be imposed only if the judge believed it necessary.He said the case it had against Staniford would be disclosed at a later hearing, but this was not an attack on his freedom of expression.Even though Staniford had voluntarily agreed not to enter its properties in December 2024 while its application was being heard, he had continued to make highly critical comments about Bakkafrost. “This a case about property rights and not freedom of expression,” Leishman told the court.The case is due to continue at a later date.

Animals
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Could These ‘Deepfake’ Whales Aid Conservation Efforts?

It’s a hyper-modern problem on social media: A video or image of an animal doing something seemingly unbelievable in the wild pops up on your feed, only for you to realize it is, in fact, unbelievable. That’s because many of these images and videos—from wolves befriending house cats to brown bears jumping on a trampoline—are […]

Ecologists are increasingly tapping into artificial intelligence to help aid conservation, but many are grappling with how to use these energy-hungry systems without fueling future environmental problems.By Kiley PriceIt’s a hyper-modern problem on social media: A video or image of an animal doing something seemingly unbelievable in the wild pops up on your feed, only for you to realize it is, in fact, unbelievable. That’s because many of these images and videos—from wolves befriending house cats to brown bears jumping on a trampoline—are fabricated using artificial intelligence.

Animals
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In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt Embarked on an Ambitious Expedition to East Africa. Here’s Why His Trip Still Matters Today

The 26th U.S. president is both lauded as a conservationist and condemned as a big-game hunter. A new book recounts the historic journey on which he helped form a significant collection of animals at the National Museum of Natural History

In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt Embarked on an Ambitious Expedition to East Africa. Here’s Why His Trip Still Matters Today The 26th U.S. president is both lauded as a conservationist and condemned as a big-game hunter. A new book recounts the historic journey on which he helped form a significant collection of animals at the National Museum of Natural History Roosevelt stands between the Sister of Rev. W.F. Bumsted, at that time mother superior of the convent, and the young King Daudi of Uganda, and is surrounded by members of the king's court at St. Mary's Convent, near Kampala, December 22, 1909 Unidentified photographer / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University On a frigid day in March 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt rode slowly through the streets of Washington, D.C., his horse-drawn carriage navigating nearly a foot of snow and slush on the way to the inauguration of his successor, William Howard Taft. The short trip marked Roosevelt’s exit from the White House, but his thoughts were already on the next great journey of his life. Before the month was over, Roosevelt again found himself surrounded by cheering throngs at another historic departure. This time, in New York, Roosevelt was boarding the Hamburg to embark on an adventure that captivated people all over the world: the Smithsonian expedition to British East Africa. Eager to escape the responsibilities of the presidency and give Taft space to govern, Roosevelt longed to get away, enjoy camp life and take to the field with his gun. Roosevelt and his son Kermit would bag elephants, rhinoceroses and lions—but theirs was no simple big-game safari. The 1909-1910 expedition, through parts of what is now Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Kenya, included leading scientists. It produced a written and photographic record of an Africa that few in the West had seen, and it diligently described and preserved hundreds of African animals that became a foundational collection for the newly minted National Museum of Natural History. In a new title from Smithsonian Books, Theodore Roosevelt and the Smithsonian Expedition to British East Africa, 1909-1910, readers can experience the expedition in Roosevelt’s own words, written during evenings in his camp tent. The book features 28 excerpts from his chronicle of the trip, African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist. It’s illustrated with more than 100 fascinating expedition photographs, many taken by Kermit Roosevelt, that capture East Africa’s landscapes, fauna and people. Author Frank H. Goodyear III provides thoughtful historical context and commentary on the expedition’s enduring scientific significance, while exploring how the endeavor reflects the era’s colonial imperialist attitudes toward Africa and its people. “He saw a long tradition of exploration and seeking out new knowledge, and trying to connect worlds together,” Goodyear says. “Of course, exploration is also part of empire building, so that’s a part of the legacy here as well. But I think he very much saw himself as participating in this history of Western exploration.” Accompany Theodore Roosevelt on his Smithsonian safari to East Africa with new context and perspectives. Key takeaways: Theodore Roosevelt's trip to East Africa In 1909, just after his presidency ended, Roosevelt and his son Kermit journeyed to East Africa to collect specimens for the Smithsonian's new National Museum of Natural History. The museum opened to the public in 1910, and the many animal and plant species that Roosevelt and fellow naturalists brought back from the trip helped form a significant collection for the museum of today. It was a crucial time for such a trip. Roosevelt saw how railroads and settlers had forever altered the wild landscape of the American West. In Africa, such change was happening quickly. Roosevelt knew it, as did many others who were scrambling to collect and document African species and ecosystems that were on the brink of radical transformation or extinction. “It’s a real transitional moment in the history of East Africa,” Goodyear says. “Colonization is really beginning to take hold. You have the construction of the Uganda Railroad that literally opens up the territory; you have the beginnings of large-scale ranching and farming; you have colonial settlements being established throughout the land. So it was clear that the impact on indigenous ecosystems was going to be profound.” Roosevelt presents Kermit to King Daudi of Uganda, December 21, 1909 Charles W. Hattersley / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University Roosevelt’s environmental legacy remains complex. He’s been celebrated as a conservationist and criticized for being a big-game hunter, especially by those who had recently witnessed the destruction of the buffalo and the native ecosystems of the American West. “It was controversial in its own day, and it remains controversial. What some perceived as the wanton destruction of wildlife offended many people,” Goodyear says. But Roosevelt was aware of this criticism and determined that this trip would not be an exercise in “game butchery.” “I would a great deal rather have this a scientific trip, which would give it a purpose and character, than simply a prolonged holiday of mine,” he explained in a letter to his friend Henry Cabot Lodge. Roosevelt’s passion for the natural sciences was real and lifelong, notes Darrin Lunde, mammals collections manager at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “Yes, he liked big-game hunting,” Lunde says. “But he was so much more than a hunter. It genuinely was a scientific expedition led by a former president who himself could hold his own as an ornithologist and a mammalogist.” He was an eternal naturalist who collected specimens and started his own museum as a child. “He was one of those guys who liked to get out with his gun, collect things, do taxidermy, describe new species,” Lunde says, noting that Roosevelt originally went to Harvard University to be a naturalist, a part of him that always remained. He kept correspondence with leading naturalists and curators throughout his life. For Roosevelt, this trip “started out as a hunt and very quickly became a museum expedition,” Lunde says. “Because this was a chance to live that boyhood dream of being this great, classical kind of museum naturalist.” Roosevelt on his favorite horse, Tranquillity, in Nairobi, Kenya, July 26, 1909 Paul Thompson / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University Planning the trip in the White House, Roosevelt proposed an intriguing partnership to Secretary of the Smithsonian Charles Doolittle Walcott. If Walcott would provide naturalists who could identify, describe and catalog the species of Africa, and prepare specimens for transport, Roosevelt would donate them as a collection for the new National Museum of Natural History. “Now, it seems to me that this [trip] opens the best chance for the National Museum to get a fine collection not only of the big-game beasts, but of the smaller mammals and birds of Africa; and looking at it dispassionately, it seems to me that the chance ought not to be neglected,” Roosevelt wrote, asking to except only “a very few personal trophies of little scientific value which for some reason I might like to keep.” The deal also had a financial angle. Roosevelt was adamant about paying for his own expenses, but the extensive scientific aspects of the expedition needed funding. Walcott, thrilled at the prospect of securing a landmark collection for the museum and publicizing it by partnering with a former president, was willing to help. The Smithsonian pledged $30,000, all raised by private subscription, avoiding the need to ask Congress for funds, which Roosevelt found ethically and politically distasteful. The museum got more than its money’s worth. Three naturalists—Edgar Mearns, co-founder of the American Ornithologists’ Union and a former military surgeon; Edmund Heller, an expert in large mammals and African game; and J. Alden Loring, a small mammal specialist with experience on Smithsonian scientific expeditions—worked tirelessly collecting mice, bats, birds and shrews, as well as pressing plants and stockpiling interesting insects. Roosevelt’s Life-Histories of African Game Animals chronicled the collection—which includes thousands of mammal, bird and plant specimens. Each one was measured, cataloged and painstakingly preserved for travel. Many were photographed, and expedition members recorded the time and place of collection habitats, the subjects’ behavior in the field, and other details. The effort produced a collection of enduring value. “All of those Roosevelt specimens, for the most part, are still here,” Lunde says. “We have the best collection of East African mammals anywhere, in large part because of the contributions of the Roosevelt expedition.” The collection is irreplaceable, he notes, because it occurred at a time when scientists could get not just the little mammals still collected today, but the elephants, rhinos and other megafauna still prevalent at the time. Even now, Lunde notes, scientists study the collection: “It’s all represented here, and people are coming in all the time and using those specimens, to this day, and publishing on it.” Mammals Exhibits, Natural History Building, Square-Lipped Rhinoceros Group, 1913 Unidentified photographer / Smithsonian Institution Archives Because Roosevelt was one of the world’s most famous people, countless reporters hoped to accompany the expedition and scoop its stories of African adventure. He rejected them all, preferring to control the narrative and tell the story himself—while earning cash to help fund his personal expenses. Scribner’s paid $50,000 for Roosevelt to write 12 articles from the field, set to appear in Scribner’s Monthly, and the publishing house also agreed to print African Game Trails, which would bring the series together in one volume. Kermit, who had trained as the expedition’s primary photographer, and others supplemented this with an incredible array of pictures. These had scientific value; showing African fauna in their native habitats gave a fuller picture of Africa’s ecosystems. They also helped to promote the trip abroad and enhance Roosevelt’s hale and hardy image. “The photography is what first drew me into this project,” says Goodyear, a former curator of photography at the National Portrait Gallery. “They are absolutely extraordinary: extraordinary in the story they tell and extraordinary in their depth. There are more than 1,000 of these photos, and they comprise an incredible record of the people, places and fauna of East Africa.” (Though not part of the expedition, British photographer and filmmaker Cherry Kearton was also in Africa at the time and crossed paths with Roosevelt at several points, shooting footage that would become the 1910 film Roosevelt in Africa.) A herd of elephants in an open forest, 1909 Kermit Roosevelt / Smithsonian Institution Archives Kenyan entomologist Dino Martins has written a valuable afterword to Goodyear’s book. In it, he stresses that, like other African expeditions and collecting trips, Roosevelt’s group depended on support and knowledge from a wide range of individuals and communities, including traders, local leaders, porters and guides who knew how to travel and survive in a challenging landscape. “Though often unacknowledged, that local knowledge and support made it possible for Western explorers to undertake these journeys, for without them their expeditions would certainly have failed,” Martins writes. Despite their importance to the journey, African people are largely absent from Roosevelt’s narrative in African Game Trails. “Outside of himself, Kermit and a few heads of game, nearly all other figures in the book are shadowy, and even Africa itself does not stand out very clearly. The book is avowedly Rooseveltian,” a reviewer from the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote of Roosevelt’s work in 1910. Although the critic dubbed this trait the “greatest charm” of African Game Trails, today, this narrow focus seems like a lost opportunity. “Some of the Kikuyu assistants and guides did become really close to Roosevelt,” Goodyear says. “But you can only kind of tease out the nature of these relationships by a few passing comments.” Tohan with a Marabou stork, 1909 Kermit Roosevelt / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University The expedition has also contributed a lasting scientific legacy in Africa; it was one of the first to extensively collect and document animals and plants beyond the classic big-game species. In 2015, a “Roosevelt Resurvey” expedition included Kenyan scientists and naturalists co-leading fieldwork and research programs that retraced the footsteps of the Roosevelt expedition. It found a rodent species on Mount Kenya that had been described by the Smithsonian naturalists during the original expedition, then “lost” for more than a century afterward. “Two data points on this little rat, over a century apart: a lesson on how much we still need to learn about the world around us,” writes Martins. And while the Roosevelt expedition literally put a site called Rhino Camp on the map by shooting white rhinos there, its work studying the many smaller species and their interactions has since proved very valuable. “They documented the fauna of that region when it was intact, when it still had white rhino roaming around, so we have an accurate picture before it was perturbed in any serious way,” Lunde explains. More than a century later, that landscape has changed dramatically, with rhinos and other animals wiped out and people moved in. But the Uganda Wildlife Authority is working at the Ajai Reserve to restore the ecosystem and its megafauna, including the iconic white rhino. Doing so successfully is a complicated endeavor, but it’s being informed by the time-machine-like snapshot gathered by the early 20th-century expedition. “Without it, efforts to create these parks would just be guesswork,” says Lunde, whose team at the museum is aiding the effort by surveying existing species to contrast with the past. “Now, the Ugandans are actually doing it, and thanks to the Roosevelt-Smithsonian expedition they are able to refer to a record of what these habitats were like in their natural state.” From left to right: Theodore Roosevelt, R.J. Cuninghame and Edgar A. Mearns, on the way to Kijabe, Kenya, June 3, 1909 Unidentified photographer / Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University Get the latest on what's happening At the Smithsonian in your inbox.

Animals
Conservation
Forests

California issues advisory on a parasitic fly whose maggots can infest living humans

California health officials warn that the New World Screwworm could arrive in California from an infested traveler or animal, or from the natural travel of the parasitic flies.

A parasitic fly whose maggots can infest living livestock, birds, pets and humans, could threaten California soon. The New World Screwworm has rapidly spread northward from Panama since 2023 and farther into Central America. As of early September, the parasitic fly was present in seven states in southern Mexico, where 720 humans have been infested and six of them have died. More than 111,000 animals also have been infested, health officials said. In early August, a person traveling from El Salvador to Maryland was discovered to have been infested, federal officials said. But the parasitic fly has not been found in the wild within a 20-mile radius of the infested person, which includes Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. After the Maryland incident, the California Department of Public Health decided to issue a health advisory this month warning that the New World Screwworm could arrive in California from an infested traveler or animal, or from the natural travel of the flies.Graphic images of New World Screwworm infestations show open wounds in cows, deer, pigs, chickens, horses and goats, infesting a wide swath of the body from the neck, head and mouth to the belly and legs.The Latin species name of the fly — hominivorax — loosely translates to “maneater.”“People have to be aware of it,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases specialist. “As the New World Screwworm flies northward, they may start to see people at the borders — through the cattle industry — get them, too.”Other people at higher risk include those living in rural areas where there’s an outbreak, anyone with open sores or wounds, those who are immunocompromised, the very young and very old, and people who are malnourished, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. There could be grave economic consequences should the New World Screwworm get out of hand among U.S. livestock, leading to animal deaths, decreased livestock production, and decreased availability of manure and draught animals, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “It is not only a threat to our ranching community — but it is a threat to our food supply and our national security,” the USDA said.Already, in May, the USDA suspended imports of live cattle, horse and bison from the Mexican border because of the parasitic fly’s spread through southern Mexico. The New World Screwworm isn’t new to the U.S. But it was considered eradicated in the United States in 1966, and by 1996, the economic benefit of that eradication was estimated at nearly $800 million, “with an estimated $2.8 billion benefit to the wider economy,” the USDA said. Texas suffered an outbreak in 1976. A repeat could cost the state’s livestock producers $732 million a year and the state economy $1.8 billion, the USDA said. Historically, the New World Screwworm was a problem in the U.S. Southwest and expanded to the Southeast in the 1930s after a shipment of infested animals, the USDA said. Scientists in the 1950s discovered a technique that uses radiation to sterilize male parasitic flies. Female flies that mate with the sterile male flies produce sterile eggs, “so they can’t propagate anymore,” Chin-Hong said. It was this technique that allowed the U.S., Mexico and Central America to eradicate the New World Screwworm by the 1960s. But the parasitic fly has remained endemic in South America, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In late August, the USDA said it would invest in new technology to try to accelerate the pace of sterile fly production. The agency also said it would build a sterile-fly production facility at Edinburg, Texas, which is close to the Mexico border, and would be able to produce up to 300 million sterile flies per week. “This will be the only United States-based sterile fly facility and will work in tandem with facilities in Panama and Mexico to help eradicate the pest and protect American agriculture,” the USDA said. The USDA is already releasing sterile flies in southern Mexico and Central America.The risk to humans from the fly, particularly in the U.S., is relatively low. “We have decent nutrition; people have access to medical care,” Chin-Hong said. But infestations can happen. Open wounds are a danger, and mucus membranes can also be infested, such as inside the nose, according to the CDC. An infestation occurs when fly maggots infest the living flesh of warm-blooded animals, the CDC says. The flies “land on the eyes or the nose or the mouth,” Chin-Hong said, or, according to the CDC, in an opening such as the genitals or a wound as small as an insect bite. A single female fly can lay 200 to 300 eggs at a time. When they hatch, the maggots — which are called screwworms — “have these little sharp teeth or hooks in their mouths, and they chomp away at the flesh and burrow,” Chin-Hong said. After feeding for about seven days, a maggot will fall to the ground, dig into the soil and then awaken as an adult fly. Deaths among humans are uncommon but can happen, Chin-Hong said. Infestation should be treated as soon as possible. Symptoms can include painful skin sores or wounds that may not heal, the feeling of the larvae moving, or a foul-smelling odor, the CDC says. Patients are treated by removal of the maggots, which need to be killed by putting them into a sealed container of concentrated ethyl or isopropyl alcohol then disposed of as biohazardous waste. The parasitic fly has been found recently in seven Mexican states: Campeche, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz, and Yucatán. Officials urge travelers to keep open wounds clean and covered, avoid insect bites, and wear hats, loose-fitting long-sleeved shirts and pants, socks, and insect repellents registered by the Environmental Protection Agency as effective.

Animals
Health
Food

How Birds Began Migrating to the Arctic to Breed

Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Golden autumn sunlight glints through the sedges and shrubs of the tundra in northern Alaska. Winter is approaching, and soon the region will be buried under snow and ice. For the past three months the chatter of the Arctic Tern colony has served as the soundtrack of the summer breeding season. But now, with daylight waning, the terns need to head south. In an instant, the usually noisy birds will fall silent, a behavior known as “dread.” Moments later the entire colony will take to the skies to begin its 25,000-mile journey to Antarctica—the longest known migration of any animal on Earth.The Arctic Tern is not the only bird that spends its breeding season in the Arctic. Billions of birds belonging to nearly 200 species—from small sparrows such as the Smith’s Longspur to large waterfowl such as the Greater White-fronted Goose—make their way to the far north every spring to reproduce and then make the return flight south for the winter. It’s no easy feat. Migration is costly. Even under ideal conditions, such an epic journey requires huge amounts of energy and exposes the travelers to dangerous weather. The mortality risk is high.But undertaking these trips allows the birds to take advantage of the seasonal conditions in these environments. The endless summer sun supports lush plant growth, flourishing insect swarms, and plentiful fish populations nourished by zooplankton blooms. With 24 hours of light a day, the birds can more easily catch food such as slippery fish and tiny insects. The round-the-clock daylight also means many of the animals that prey on birds are less likely to sneak up on a nest unnoticed.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Scientists have long wondered when birds began making these extraordinary journeys. New fossils that we and our colleagues have discovered and analyzed are finally providing some clues. A decade of expeditions to the Arctic Circle in Alaska has yielded a trove of bird fossils—including several hatchlings. The remains, which date to approximately 73 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period, constitute the earliest known record of birds reproducing at polar latitude. The fossils hint that early birds may have already been traveling to the top of the world to raise the next generation of winged wonders.The polar migration of birds is one of nature’s great spectacles. To make the marathon journey to the Arctic, birds need physical stamina. They typically have various anatomical and behavioral adaptations to long-distance travel. The Arctic Tern, for example, is a marvel of efficiency. Its skeleton is lightweight and partially filled with air, allowing it to glide for long distances without expending any energy to flap its wings. It can eat on the move, plucking fish from the surface of the ocean as it flies. And, like many migratory birds, it can sleep while gliding.Migrants also need to be skilled navigators to reach their breeding ground. The precise methods by which birds find their way remain mysterious, but biologists generally agree that they use some combination of visual landmarks; the position of the sun, moon and stars; Earth’s magnetic field; and scent-based clues. A degree of learning also seems to be involved—in many species, first-time migrants appear to simply fly in the correct general direction, whereas experienced birds may use landmarks to take a more efficient route.Scientists have rediscovered dozens of three-dimensionally preserved teeth and bones from hatchling birds, including this tip of a beak, from the Arctic Circle in Alaska, showing that birds were reproducing at polar latitude by 73 million years ago.As impressive as the trip itself is, the Arctic migration is part of a much grander scheme: the birds are literally changing their ecosystems at their destinations. Although most Arctic birds are only physically in the Arctic for the breeding season, they spur the success of plants by pollinating flowers and dispersing seeds. They also help to manage insect and rodent populations and, by extension, help to control the spread of disease. In fact, birds are so critical to the success of their habitats that they are hypothesized to have played a key role in structuring remote ecosystems over deep time. Birds carry small organisms, such as plants and insects, over long distances to colonize remote polar regions. Were it not for the evolution of migratory birds, today’s tundra would be much more barren.Despite the importance of migration for the birds themselves and for the wider landscape they inhabit, we actually know very little about the origins of this phenomenon. To answer such a fundamental question, we have to look backward in time to the fossil record. Unfortunately, the polar fossil record is sparse, and most of the fossil-bearing sediments there are covered in ice or water. In spots where these sediments are exposed, fieldwork is often challenging, dangerous and expensive. Furthermore, bird bones are some of the rarest fossils in the world because they are small and fragile, making them less likely to survive long enough to fossilize, let alone to be discovered by paleontologists.In the rare cases when we do manage to find a fossil bird in the Arctic, it can be difficult to determine whether that bird was a visiting migrant or a permanent resident. Let’s say we find exactly the same species, in rocks from exactly the same time period, at both temperate and polar latitudes. Even then, we can’t say the extinct species migrated. There’s always the possibility that it merely inhabited a broad area year-round. The range of the modern-day Common Raven, for instance, encompasses practically the entire Northern Hemisphere.There is a clever way to home in on whether a fossil deposit contains migratory birds, however. The vast majority of living birds that inhabit polar regions migrate to lower latitudes after the breeding season ends. So, if we find fossil evidence of birds not just present but breeding at polar latitudes, we are headed in the right direction. This is where our work on fossils from a Late Cretaceous body of rock in northern Alaska called the Prince Creek Formation comes in.At the beginning of the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, a team of paleontologists gently brushes away sand to reveal an intact dinosaur skeleton in the badlands of Montana. Although fossil fieldwork is never as simple as removing loose sediment with a paintbrush (sorry, Steven Spielberg), Arctic fieldwork is in a league of its own. Winter brings temperatures as low as –50 degrees Fahrenheit, tons of snow and limited hours of daylight. The summer isn’t a walk in the park, either: giant mosquitoes are out in force, it’s almost always rainy and cold, and there is So. Much. Mud. Moreover, large mammals are out and about, making potentially dangerous wildlife encounters a concern.In August of 2022 one of us (Wilson) was on her second trip to the Arctic. It was about five in the morning when she awoke in her tent along the Colville River near the Prince Creek Formation. The sun had already been up for hours. With a couple more hours before she needed to be up, she was frustrated that she had to climb out of her warm sleeping bag to pee. She begrudgingly put on a hat and coat and unzipped her tent, still half asleep. Then her heart stopped. About 20 yards away, right near one of her crewmates’ tents, was a giant, fuzzy brown blob. She tried frantically to remember her bear training: Should she call out and try to wake everyone else up? Grab her bear spray? Try to scare it out of the camp? Only after putting herself through this roller coaster of emotions did she finally realize that the “bear” had a large set of horns on its head. Thankfully, the camp visitor was just a musk ox.Brittany Cheung (feature icons) and Rebecca Gelernter (bird illustrations)One may wonder why we bother with such extreme fieldwork. Wilson has often found herself wondering the same thing while working in –30-degree-F weather. But for the same reason the fieldwork is challenging, the fossil discoveries in the Arctic are some of the most exciting in the world. The Prince Creek Formation is located at a modern-day latitude of 70 degrees north and preserves fossils of animals that lived an estimated 72.8 million years ago. Plate tectonic activity has shifted Alaska south since that time. During the Late Cretaceous, these species would have been living at an even higher paleolatitude of 80 to 85 degrees north, practically at the North Pole. Summers would have brought plentiful light and warmth, but year-round occupants of the ecosystem had to endure winters with freezing temperatures, snowfall and about four months of continuous darkness.Paleontologists have known about dinosaurs from the Prince Creek Formation since 1983, but it’s only in the past couple of decades that work led by Patrick Druckenmiller of the University of Alaska Museum of the North and Gregory Erickson of Florida State University has begun to change our perception of Arctic life in the Cretaceous. Their team’s discovery of baby dinosaur fossils helped to demonstrate that dinosaurs were year-round inhabitants of the ecosystem because the baby dinosaurs would have been too young to migrate before the onset of winter. More recently, smaller bones found alongside the dinosaur fossils have led to another exciting discovery: the oldest evidence of polar bird reproduction.To date, we have identified more than 50 three-dimensionally preserved bird bones, along with dozens of teeth, from the site. The fossils are so tiny that they could all fit together in a single jam jar. Nevertheless, they represent one of the best collections of Late Cretaceous North American bird fossils and document the presence of at least three types of birds that lived alongside nonbird dinosaurs in Arctic Alaska. Not only that, but many of the fossils belong to baby birds and represent the earliest known growth stages of these groups of birds. Together these fossils demonstrate that birds have been nesting in the Arctic for at least 73 million years, nearly half the time they have existed on Earth.Close study of these delicate fossils has allowed us to reconstruct the birds of the Prince Creek Formation and their role in the ecosystem. Picture the Arctic in early summer 73 million years ago. The coastal floodplain that was desolate throughout the long winter is now lush with plant life and buzzing with insects. It’s the perfect setting for a newly hatched chick to grow up in. A head pops up from a bowl-shaped nest. It belongs to a baby ornithurine, a close relative of modern birds. He is still covered in downy feathers and scrambles about on skinny legs, not yet ready to take flight. While learning his way around the world, he takes special care to stick close to his parents. Unlike many other Late Cretaceous birds, he and his relatives have a toothless beak that serves as a precise tool for picking off creeping insects under their watchful eyes. This chick hatched a month ago and is already off to a strong start thanks to a new evolutionary innovation: the larger egg laid by advanced ornithurine birds.The coastal floodplain offers premium real estate for nesting. Dinosaurs of all kinds are preparing for the arrival of their young, and last year’s young are still recovering from their first Arctic winter. The ornithurine chick and his family aren’t the only types of birds here to call this landscape home. Kick-diving hesperornithines are hunting in the river waters, and ternlike ichthyornithines are wheeling overhead. And they’re all here for the same reason birds still nest in the Arctic today: lots and lots of sunshine.The Prince Creek birds provide definitive evidence that birds bred in the Arctic during the Cretaceous. Whether they migrated there from elsewhere to reproduce is tougher to establish. We can get at this question from a few angles, however. Let’s start by considering whether these birds had the ability to make such a journey in the first place. We know that any birds from the preceding Jurassic period are unlikely to have flown very far. Such early birds had not yet evolved many of the features that help modern birds fly skillfully and efficiently. For example, the iconic Archaeopteryx was capable of flight, but it appears to have had relatively low endurance and couldn’t perform complex maneuvers. The keeled sternum, or breastbone, that anchors the pectoral muscles in modern birds was either absent or at most a flat cartilaginous plate in Archaeopteryx. Clawed fingers interrupted the leading edge of its wing, and compared with birds of today, its feathers appear to have been less flexible and thus less adept at forming a coherent airfoil. Even its tail seems like an archaic reminder of Archaeopteryx’s grounded ancestry. Whereas modern birds have a short tail with a special plough-shaped bone called the pygostyle that lets them spread their tail feathers into a fan, Archaeopteryx retained a long and aerodynamically unwieldy tail similar to that of its theropod dinosaur ancestors.Researchers excavate a fossil site along the Colville River in northern Alaska.Over time birds evolved a panoply of skeletal and soft-tissue features that improved their flight capabilities. The bony tail became shorter, and the fingertips diminished from large claws to tiny bones hidden under the feathers. Advanced Cretaceous birds in the group Ornithothoraces, which includes the Prince Creek specimens, are in many ways the first birds with an unquestionably proficient flight apparatus. In these birds, the sternum bears a keel that provides additional attachment for the muscles that power the flight stroke. The shoulder joint is oriented higher on the back, allowing for better positioning of the wings. The first finger also anchors an alula, a cluster of small feathers that acts as a mini airfoil, helping in fine maneuvers. Thanks to these anatomical innovations, the Prince Creek birds (apart from the flightless hesperornithines) would have been capable of flying great distances to the Arctic to breed.A closer look at where these birds fit in the avian family tree provides more clues to how they came to reproduce in the far north. Ornithothoraces is divided into two groups: the enantiornithines and the ornithurines. Enantiornithines were the dominant birds for most of the Cretaceous period. These toothed birds ranged from sparrow- to turkey-size and showed a great diversity of forms, from Longirostravis, with its slender bill, to the blunt-toothed Bohaiornis, to the toucan-beaked Falcatakely. They lived almost everywhere.Ornithurines, which include modern birds and their close relatives, were rarer in Cretaceous ecosystems. Like enantiornithines, most Cretaceous ornithurines still had teeth. But advanced members of the group differed from enantiornithines in having fewer teeth; no gastralia, or belly ribs; and separated pubis bones, which allowed them to lay larger eggs. In contrast to the enantiornithines, which seem to have thrived in forested environments, ornithurines appear to have stuck largely to aquatic habitats during the Cretaceous.Intriguingly, the Prince Creek bird fossils all come from ornithurine birds. We have identified bones and teeth of three types so far: ternlike ichthyornithines; hesperornithines, which used their feet to propel themselves through water; and some nearly modern close relatives of living birds. Notably absent from our assemblage are any enantiornithines. If all Ornithothoraces were capable of long-distance flight, why are the otherwise ubiquitous enantiornithines missing from Alaska?To recover small bones and teeth, the team washes fossil-bearing sediments through screens and takes the resulting concentrate back to the laboratory for examination under a microscope.We suspect one answer lies in the egg. Anyone who regularly cooks eggs has probably noticed a little white blob, which for many people spoils the otherwise appetizing appearance of the yolk. This blob is the chalazae, a pair of protein-rich “tethers” that attach the yolk to the shell. Chalazae protect the embryo when birds rotate their eggs in the nest to ensure that the embryos get thoroughly bathed in nutrients during incubation. Reptiles, which lack chalazae, do not practice egg rotation. In fact, rotating a crocodile egg can disrupt development of and kill the embryo.So far paleontologists haven’t found any fossil chalazae that might allow them to trace the origin of this structure. But we have a hunch that it evolved in ornithurines because crocodilians, nonavian dinosaurs and enantiornithines all buried their eggs at least partially in the ground. Fossil clutches of enantiornithines demonstrate that they placed their eggs vertically in sediment or soil, leaving only the tops exposed. This arrangement would have stabilized the eggs, keeping the embryo safely attached to the yolk, but it was much less efficient for incubation. At best, brooding enantiornithines would have been able to make only partial contact with their eggs, resulting in poorer heat transfer and slower development of the embryo. In fact, some paleontologists speculate that they could not incubate via body contact at all, because the eggs were too small to support that parent’s weight.Perhaps the lack of this tiny embryo “seat belt” explains the absence of enantiornithines in the Arctic. Most modern birds that breed in northern Alaska nest from late May through June. For birds that can nest in vegetation, this is a lovely time of year. Yet even at the start of June, snow may still persist in patches, and the soil may remain chilly or even frozen. Temperatures were warmer in the Cretaceous, but the Arctic winter was still dark and cold, and spring would have taken longer to arrive than at more southern latitudes. For ground-nesting enantiornithines, cold soil would have been highly unwelcoming for nests.Why not just wait until later in the summer to nest? There may simply not have been enough time. Because enantiornithines could not provide full-contact incubation, their eggs probably took substantially longer to hatch than those of birds that can sit on their eggs in nests built in vegetation. The inexorable march of the seasons would have left almost no time for fledging for birds that hatched in late summer.The Arctic Tern migrates tens of thousands of miles every year between its breeding grounds in the Arctic and its wintering grounds in Antarctica.Mark Boulton/Science SourceStill, although enantiornithines took several years to grow to full size, they appear to have been highly precocial as hatchlings. In fact, there is some evidence they could fly within a day of hatching. That might seem to make up for the longer incubation time in the race against winter. But another aspect of enantiornithine biology might have thrown up a roadblock to Arctic breeding.Recently discovered fossils preserved in amber reveal that enantiornithines molted their body feathers all at once. This style of molting allowed them to trade their juvenile plumage for adult plumage rapidly when the time came. Yet it would have been a big liability in colder climates. If an early cold snap occurred during a molting interval, being caught half naked could have been deadly to small-bodied birds that had to generate their own body heat, as opposed to obtaining it from external sources such as the sun. By eliminating the possibility of nesting in the summer and overwintering, this molting pattern might have served as a barrier to those birds inhabiting Arctic environments year-round.Needing a longer runway to make it from the egg to migration-ready seems to have left enantiornithines unable to establish themselves in the Arctic. Ornithurines, in contrast, were able to exploit the Arctic at least seasonally thanks to evolutionary innovations in reproduction and development that occurred in their lineage.Our work on the Prince Creek birds is not over yet. We currently have only circumstantial evidence that they were migrating to the Arctic to breed rather than living there year-round. But we may be able to build our case with a technique called stable isotope analysis, which lets us use comparisons of the ratios of different forms, or isotopes, of the same element in an animal’s teeth or bones to infer its diet, reconstruct its environmental conditions, and even trace its movements over its lifetime.We know that dinosaurs were overwintering in the Arctic because their young would not have been ready to migrate anywhere the first winter after hatching. Perhaps comparisons of the isotopic compositions of bird and dinosaur teeth could inform us about the habits of the Prince Creek birds. Many biological factors, such as diet and metabolism, influence isotopic compositions, though. We still have a lot of groundwork to do to understand these factors before we apply stable isotope techniques to our fossil birds.Meanwhile let’s check in on our hatchling. The Late Cretaceous world is harsh for an ornithurine chick still learning the ropes. At just a month old, he is still very vulnerable and depends on his parents for comfort and safety. If he strays too far, he risks becoming dinner for one of the many dromaeosaurs who are also trying to provide for their young. Because of these predators, many of his siblings won’t survive to the end of the summer, and some just might end up as fossils in the long run. If he can make it a few months, perhaps he will fly south with his kin to somewhere sunny for the winter. He’d be one of the lucky ones. This scenario is the harsh reality of life at the top of the world. But in the remarkable adaptations and behaviors of birds lies hope for survival.

Animals
Climate
Energy

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