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We're Pandemic Experts. Here's What Worries Us Most About Bird Flu.

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Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Jonathan R. Beckerman via Getty ImagesExperts are concerned for farm workers who are most likely to get sick from bird flu.It’s hard to turn on the news or look online without seeing something related to bird flu. Also known as H5N1, the virus is spreading in a few states across the country and sickening animals and farm workers.Given the circumstances, it’s only natural to worry about the virus, so we asked experts to share their thoughts. Below are the societal and health-based concerns they have about bird flu right now:They’re worried about farm workers who make up most bird flu cases.Experts told HuffPost the average person doesn’t need to panic at this point in time.“Today, the greatest fear I have is for people that we know are being exposed to this virus directly ― so that’s the farm workers,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island.Farm workers who are in close contact with poultry and cows are currently at risk and are largely becoming infected; 56 of the 58 reported bird flu cases in the U.S. this year can be traced back to cattle or poultry exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.“We already know that they’re getting infected, and we know that they’re getting sick, and fortunately, they haven’t gotten very sick,” Nuzzo said. “They haven’t gotten severely ill, they haven’t died, but we literally don’t know why that’s happening.”They are paying attention to non-farm worker cases as well.A Canadian teenager with no underlying health conditions was also infected with bird flu and ended up in the hospital.“That just shows you how much of a gamble the whole thing is, because you literally can’t predict it. Are you going to be like the farm worker who gets a frankly hideous case of conjunctivitis and some respiratory symptoms, or are you going to be like the teenager in British Columbia? You don’t know,” Nuzzo said.“I want to be clear. I’m not talking about the general public. I am talking about people that we know are being exposed to this virus,” she added. “This virus is not yet capable of spreading between people, and although we’re also seeing increasing cases occurring with an unknown exposure — meaning we don’t know where they got it from ― that also is concerning to me, but those events are still quite rare.”They’re concerned that it could swap genes with the seasonal flu, making it able to spread more easily.“The concern is that H5N1 is an avian influenza. Influenza viruses are notorious for changing. They can shift over time, they can reassort with each other and make much bigger shifts quite quickly,” said Meghan Davis, an associate professor in the department of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.“The reason this is important is that if you would have a person who is infected with both H5N1 and a seasonal flu, you now could have one of those bigger reassortment events,” Davis continued. “So, some swapping of the genes ... you might be able to give the H5N1 virus genes that make it more virulent in people or that make it possible to transmit more easily from person to person, and that’s definitely something we want to prevent.”Experts say you should stop drinking raw milk to protect yourself from bird flu.They’re worried about infections in household pets.“For me, as an animal health specialist, I’m very worried about the amount of disease we’re seeing in animals, which is extraordinary,” Davis said. “We’re talking about millions of birds lost. We’ve got many dairy cows affected — I think we’re now up to over 700 herds in the country that have been impacted by it. It’s also a virus that can be lethal in some species, not just the marine mammals we heard about in prior years, but also cats.”This goes for cats on farms that drink raw milk in addition to domestic cats, where the contamination source is unclear, she said. Cats could have had contact with a dead bird that’s infected with the virus, raw milk, or other infected animals, with Davis noting that “we’ve been finding that the virus can infect mice, and so that’s a huge concern as well.”“I’m really trying to get it out there about the cats, because I think that it’s just so possible for an infection to occur,” she said. “And I worry ... because if you have a pet infected in a home, that’s a very different kind of exposure than even drinking the raw milk or having occupational contact as a worker on a farm.”These infections could happen in folks who avoid potential contamination sources like raw milk and farms because they’re immunosuppressed or pregnant, Davis explained.“We just don’t know what we might see in terms of the kind of infection that could come out of that kind of exposure,” she said.Davis also noted that the same concerns extend to other household pets like dogs, who could also come in contact with birds, mice or other infection sources.They’re worried about the consumption of raw milk.In recent months, raw milk has grown in popularity as people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow promote drinking it. However, raw milk is known to carry harmful bacteria and does not have proven health benefits when compared to pasteurized milk. Moreover, raw milk is directly tied to bird flu.“If you’re someone who is drinking raw milk ... here’s what I’m worried about: The virus is spreading to more and more dairy farms. We know that when cows are infected, the amount of virus that’s in their milk is very high. We also know from animal studies that consuming H5N1-infected milk can make these animals that consume it very sick, including hideous neurologic symptoms,” Nuzzo said. “So when I connect those dots, that tells me I don’t think I would drink raw milk.” However, you don’t need to be concerned if you drink pasteurized milk.“Commercial pasteurization, which brings milk to a certain temperature for a certain duration of time, sometimes under pressure, is effective at inactivating the virus,” Davis said.She also noted the importance of the USDA ordering raw and unpasteurized to be tested for bird flu, explaining that testing will help officials determine infected farms.They’re concerned that the conditions that cause pandemics are only getting worse.“I think it is really important for people to understand that the conditions that give rise to pandemics are only getting more pronounced,” Nuzzo said. “There are going to be more pandemics in the future. We should try to prevent them ... sounding the alarms right now with H5N1 is an attempt to just do that.”She also explained how climate and environmental change plays a major role in the spread of new pathogens.“The new pathogens that have the ability to infect people and then spread between people, they have to be things that we don’t have immunity to, and the majority of those come from wildlife,” Nuzzo said. “So, anything that shakes up our interaction with wildlife is what potentially creates risk.”This includes things like deforestation, reforestation and land use changes, she said, in addition to “wild animals having more contact with humans, either directly or through domesticated animals, like cows and pigs.”“Ultimately, it’s about creating more opportunities for people to become exposed to wildlife pathogens [and] allowing those wildlife pathogens to become adapted for infecting and spreading between humans,” Nuzzo said.They’re worried that society isn’t doing enough to prepare for future pandemics.Plenty of people are talking about bird flu right now for good reason.“We’re trying to get government to do more to get ahead of this virus so that it doesn’t become a problem for general members of the public. Nobody wants to go through another pandemic, nobody wants a farm worker to lose his or her life just for putting milk in our fridges,” Nuzzo said. “So, we are kind of sounding the alarm for the purposes of policy and practice changes that could make everyone safer.”We Need Your SupportOther news outlets have retreated behind paywalls. At HuffPost, we believe journalism should be free for everyone.Would you help us provide essential information to our readers during this critical time? We can't do it without you.Can't afford to contribute? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.You've supported HuffPost before, and we'll be honest — we could use your help again. We view our mission to provide free, fair news as critically important in this crucial moment, and we can't do it without you.Whether you give once or many more times, we appreciate your contribution to keeping our journalism free for all.You've supported HuffPost before, and we'll be honest — we could use your help again. We view our mission to provide free, fair news as critically important in this crucial moment, and we can't do it without you.Whether you give just one more time or sign up again to contribute regularly, we appreciate you playing a part in keeping our journalism free for all.Support HuffPostAlready contributed? Log in to hide these messages.Nuzzo noted that, because of how horrible COVID-19 was, people have a hard time grasping the idea that more pandemics will happen, hoping that they never have to go through something like that again. And it doesn’t help that society is often quick to say disease emergencies are over — a problem that Nuzzo argued stops us from planning more effectively against pandemics.“And I think that is getting in the way of our doing the kinds of things that would just make us more ready for these events. ... It may come, it may not. But if we’re generally ready for it, then we don’t have to sit there and work ourselves up about it,” she said.Shutting down everything, as was the case with the COVID pandemic, is not how society should have to respond to a pandemic, with Nuzzo saying, “That is not what responding to a pandemic is supposed to be.” Instead, she explained that, to curtail a potential bird flu pandemic — or any pandemic, for that matter — the government should focus on preventing the virus from infecting more farm workers and killing people, getting ahead of it so it can’t mutate and become more contagious, developing medications, and improving indoor air quality.“So that when these things happen, they don’t just wash over us and upend our lives,” Nuzzo said.

Infectious disease experts reveal what does and doesn't alarm them when it comes to the H5N1 virus.

Jonathan R. Beckerman via Getty Images

Experts are concerned for farm workers who are most likely to get sick from bird flu.

It’s hard to turn on the news or look online without seeing something related to bird flu. Also known as H5N1, the virus is spreading in a few states across the country and sickening animals and farm workers.

Given the circumstances, it’s only natural to worry about the virus, so we asked experts to share their thoughts. Below are the societal and health-based concerns they have about bird flu right now:

They’re worried about farm workers who make up most bird flu cases.

Experts told HuffPost the average person doesn’t need to panic at this point in time.

“Today, the greatest fear I have is for people that we know are being exposed to this virus directly ― so that’s the farm workers,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island.

Farm workers who are in close contact with poultry and cows are currently at risk and are largely becoming infected; 56 of the 58 reported bird flu cases in the U.S. this year can be traced back to cattle or poultry exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We already know that they’re getting infected, and we know that they’re getting sick, and fortunately, they haven’t gotten very sick,” Nuzzo said. “They haven’t gotten severely ill, they haven’t died, but we literally don’t know why that’s happening.”

They are paying attention to non-farm worker cases as well.

A Canadian teenager with no underlying health conditions was also infected with bird flu and ended up in the hospital.

“That just shows you how much of a gamble the whole thing is, because you literally can’t predict it. Are you going to be like the farm worker who gets a frankly hideous case of conjunctivitis and some respiratory symptoms, or are you going to be like the teenager in British Columbia? You don’t know,” Nuzzo said.

“I want to be clear. I’m not talking about the general public. I am talking about people that we know are being exposed to this virus,” she added. “This virus is not yet capable of spreading between people, and although we’re also seeing increasing cases occurring with an unknown exposure — meaning we don’t know where they got it from ― that also is concerning to me, but those events are still quite rare.”

They’re concerned that it could swap genes with the seasonal flu, making it able to spread more easily.

“The concern is that H5N1 is an avian influenza. Influenza viruses are notorious for changing. They can shift over time, they can reassort with each other and make much bigger shifts quite quickly,” said Meghan Davis, an associate professor in the department of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.

“The reason this is important is that if you would have a person who is infected with both H5N1 and a seasonal flu, you now could have one of those bigger reassortment events,” Davis continued. “So, some swapping of the genes ... you might be able to give the H5N1 virus genes that make it more virulent in people or that make it possible to transmit more easily from person to person, and that’s definitely something we want to prevent.”

Experts say you should stop drinking raw milk to protect yourself from bird flu.

They’re worried about infections in household pets.

“For me, as an animal health specialist, I’m very worried about the amount of disease we’re seeing in animals, which is extraordinary,” Davis said. “We’re talking about millions of birds lost. We’ve got many dairy cows affected — I think we’re now up to over 700 herds in the country that have been impacted by it. It’s also a virus that can be lethal in some species, not just the marine mammals we heard about in prior years, but also cats.”

This goes for cats on farms that drink raw milk in addition to domestic cats, where the contamination source is unclear, she said. Cats could have had contact with a dead bird that’s infected with the virus, raw milk, or other infected animals, with Davis noting that “we’ve been finding that the virus can infect mice, and so that’s a huge concern as well.”

“I’m really trying to get it out there about the cats, because I think that it’s just so possible for an infection to occur,” she said. “And I worry ... because if you have a pet infected in a home, that’s a very different kind of exposure than even drinking the raw milk or having occupational contact as a worker on a farm.”

These infections could happen in folks who avoid potential contamination sources like raw milk and farms because they’re immunosuppressed or pregnant, Davis explained.

“We just don’t know what we might see in terms of the kind of infection that could come out of that kind of exposure,” she said.

Davis also noted that the same concerns extend to other household pets like dogs, who could also come in contact with birds, mice or other infection sources.

They’re worried about the consumption of raw milk.

In recent months, raw milk has grown in popularity as people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow promote drinking it. However, raw milk is known to carry harmful bacteria and does not have proven health benefits when compared to pasteurized milk. Moreover, raw milk is directly tied to bird flu.

“If you’re someone who is drinking raw milk ... here’s what I’m worried about: The virus is spreading to more and more dairy farms. We know that when cows are infected, the amount of virus that’s in their milk is very high. We also know from animal studies that consuming H5N1-infected milk can make these animals that consume it very sick, including hideous neurologic symptoms,” Nuzzo said. “So when I connect those dots, that tells me I don’t think I would drink raw milk.”

However, you don’t need to be concerned if you drink pasteurized milk.

“Commercial pasteurization, which brings milk to a certain temperature for a certain duration of time, sometimes under pressure, is effective at inactivating the virus,” Davis said.

She also noted the importance of the USDA ordering raw and unpasteurized to be tested for bird flu, explaining that testing will help officials determine infected farms.

They’re concerned that the conditions that cause pandemics are only getting worse.

“I think it is really important for people to understand that the conditions that give rise to pandemics are only getting more pronounced,” Nuzzo said. “There are going to be more pandemics in the future. We should try to prevent them ... sounding the alarms right now with H5N1 is an attempt to just do that.”

She also explained how climate and environmental change plays a major role in the spread of new pathogens.

“The new pathogens that have the ability to infect people and then spread between people, they have to be things that we don’t have immunity to, and the majority of those come from wildlife,” Nuzzo said. “So, anything that shakes up our interaction with wildlife is what potentially creates risk.”

This includes things like deforestation, reforestation and land use changes, she said, in addition to “wild animals having more contact with humans, either directly or through domesticated animals, like cows and pigs.”

“Ultimately, it’s about creating more opportunities for people to become exposed to wildlife pathogens [and] allowing those wildlife pathogens to become adapted for infecting and spreading between humans,” Nuzzo said.

They’re worried that society isn’t doing enough to prepare for future pandemics.

Plenty of people are talking about bird flu right now for good reason.

“We’re trying to get government to do more to get ahead of this virus so that it doesn’t become a problem for general members of the public. Nobody wants to go through another pandemic, nobody wants a farm worker to lose his or her life just for putting milk in our fridges,” Nuzzo said. “So, we are kind of sounding the alarm for the purposes of policy and practice changes that could make everyone safer.”

We Need Your Support

Other news outlets have retreated behind paywalls. At HuffPost, we believe journalism should be free for everyone.

Would you help us provide essential information to our readers during this critical time? We can't do it without you.

Can't afford to contribute? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.

You've supported HuffPost before, and we'll be honest — we could use your help again. We view our mission to provide free, fair news as critically important in this crucial moment, and we can't do it without you.

Whether you give once or many more times, we appreciate your contribution to keeping our journalism free for all.

You've supported HuffPost before, and we'll be honest — we could use your help again. We view our mission to provide free, fair news as critically important in this crucial moment, and we can't do it without you.

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Nuzzo noted that, because of how horrible COVID-19 was, people have a hard time grasping the idea that more pandemics will happen, hoping that they never have to go through something like that again. And it doesn’t help that society is often quick to say disease emergencies are over — a problem that Nuzzo argued stops us from planning more effectively against pandemics.

“And I think that is getting in the way of our doing the kinds of things that would just make us more ready for these events. ... It may come, it may not. But if we’re generally ready for it, then we don’t have to sit there and work ourselves up about it,” she said.

Shutting down everything, as was the case with the COVID pandemic, is not how society should have to respond to a pandemic, with Nuzzo saying, “That is not what responding to a pandemic is supposed to be.”

Instead, she explained that, to curtail a potential bird flu pandemic — or any pandemic, for that matter — the government should focus on preventing the virus from infecting more farm workers and killing people, getting ahead of it so it can’t mutate and become more contagious, developing medications, and improving indoor air quality.

“So that when these things happen, they don’t just wash over us and upend our lives,” Nuzzo said.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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The impacts only increased as more water was diverted to support the farming and ranching in the region, and more habitat was altered by mining and logging.Twenty-eight types of salmon and steelhead trout, seen as indicator species that represent the health of the ecosystems they live in, have been listed as threatened or endangered.As the Klamath ecosystem deteriorated, there was growing recognition that removing the dams would be a crucial first step in helping the region recover and build resilience in a warming world.But, faced with a strong resistance to change in local communities tucked around the reservoirs and a long history of difficult battles over water in the parched landscapes in the west, dam removal seemed all but impossible. The land for the dams was taken from tribes during the throes of colonization and development and more recently supported energy corporations that had shareholders to answer to.Then, in 2002, disaster struck. Algae flourished in the shallow warming waters that year, exacerbated by the dams and decisions from the US Bureau of Reclamation to divert vital flows to farms, leaving little for fish. The event killed 70,000 salmon and thousands of other species, resulting in one of the worst die-offs ever to occur in the US.The layers of fish floating belly-up sent an important signal of the horrors that could continue into the future if the dams remained. Forming a coalition, tribes up and down the Klamath launched a fierce campaign to educate the public, inform the shareholders of the companies that owned and operated the dams, and petition their boards. They protested and attended public hearings, and engaged with state and federal officials.‘A tremendous rollercoaster’It took decades of advocacy to convince PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, to let go of the aging infrastructure straddling the Oregon-California border. But in the mid-aughts, assured by shifts in public opinion and incentivized by the steep costs to relicense the dams, the company agreed it was time to see them go.In November 2020, roughly 20 years after the die-off, an agreement was forged between a long list of stakeholders that included tribal and state governments and federal agencies. The Klamath River Renewal Corporation was created to oversee and implement the removal.The organization had to help bring residents near the reservoirs on board, navigate dozens of species-management plans, and model how outdoor-recreation enthusiasts could continue to enjoy the river. Ranchers and fishers, environmentalists and farmers, and locals and visitors all had connections to the basin, and were eager to weigh in.“It has been a tremendous rollercoaster,” said Brownell. “Having the river’s health in your hands is an incredible burden to carry.”Brownell, who grew up along the riverbanks, was standing in the canyon as the blast of the first dam released flows and the river that had been held over the last hundred years found its way back to itself.“I got to watch the water come down through the canyon and reconnect with the river below. I watched the river re-establish itself there forevermore,” she said. It was the most exciting moment of the year.The Iron Gate Dam, one of the four hydroelectric dams that once stood on the Klamath River, on 18 August 2023. Photograph: Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty ImagesMoments of traumaThere were moments of trauma along the way. Over the 100 years the dams were standing, they had held back 15m cubic yards of sediment. When the dams were removed, the heavy dead organic matter had to run downriver, soaking up oxygen in the water. Extensive modeling had predicted a severe impact on aquatic life, but no one knew how bad it would get or how long it would take for the river to regain its health. Some models predicted the suffocating conditions could linger for up to a month.“I was braced and prepared but it was still tremendously hard,” said Brownell, recalling how the water, rid of oxygen, looked like oil as it cascaded through its banks.“You can easily compare a river’s health to an individual’s health,” she said. “Often when someone is sick, they are going to get worse before they get better. We essentially performed a quadruple bypass on the river this last year – we knew there would be short-term impacts.”“The whole time everyone was so excited because it felt like the start of something – I just felt sick,” she said.Leaf Hillman a Karuk tribal ceremonial leader who has dedicated decades to seeing this project come to fruition, helped keep hopes high with assurances that these were signs of healing.“For me it was beautiful,” he said, recalling how he felt even when the rushing waters became clouded by silt. “I could envision what it was going to look like – a restored river.”In the end, the river lacked oxygen for only two 24-hour periods, a far shorter time than scientists had feared.The Iron Gate, before and after. Photograph: Swiftwater FilmsThe real work beginsAs 2025 begins, so does the real work.“It is a new era for us – there are good things to come,” Hillman said.He is looking forward to the work ahead, especially the work to ensure fish can reach “pristine habitat” in tributaries above the Upper Klamath Lake.With 400 miles (644km) of habitat for salmon and other native species restored, and 2,200 acres (890 hectares) made available after spending a century submerged, stakeholders are envisioning a future for these lands and those who rely on them. Already, native seeds have been strewn along the banks and in the areas once vibrant with vegetation.There have already been strong signs of their success.In late November, threatened coho salmon were seen in the upper Klamath River basin for the first time in more than 60 years, according to the California department of fish and wildlife. Other animals are benefiting, too, including north-western pond turtles, freshwater mussels, beavers and river otters.Strong winter rains have also helped the rebound. “The river is doing what rivers do – redistributing sediments,” Hillman said, calling the gift of wet weather the “icing on the cake”.“We have a lot more work to do,” he added, “but it’s a good omen.”The roughly 2,800 acres (1,133 hectares) of land sacred to the Shasta Indian Nation that had been drowned and buried under a reservoir created by one of the dams has been returned to them. The Kikacéki and Kutarawaxu bands who once called the area home were decimated by colonists in the 1800s, after the lure of gold, mining, logging and ranching drew throngs of people to the region. The small tribe that remained was then pushed from their homes through eminent domain to make way for construction of the dams to begin.A salmon in a Klamath River tributary in October. Photograph: APThe Guardian was unable to speak to representatives of Shasta Indian Nation on record, but they have recounted the painful history endured by their ancestors and what the next chapter means to them.“Today is a turning point in the history of the Shasta people,” Janice Crowe, the Shasta Indian Nation chair, told AZCentral, . “Now we can return home, return to culture, return to ceremony and begin to weave a new story for the next generation of Shasta, who will get to call our ancestral lands home once again.”With successes, though, there may still be setbacks. The water is still turbid as the river continues to cleanse itself of sediment. There’s a lot of data to wade through and challenges to overcome. The effects of the climate crisis will continue to unfold.The Klamath River flows where the Iron Gate reservoir once was. Photograph: Carlos Avila Gonzalez/APIn the farther parts of the river, Klamath tribal leaders are still waiting to see the salmon that were lost to their homelands more than 100 years ago. Dams still stand in the northern stretches of the river.‘It’s a river again’But for advocates, the dams’ removal on its own serves as a strong reminder that change is possible.Toz Soto, a fish biologist and manager of the Karuk Tribe fisheries program, said with a laugh that he was skeptical right up until the moment they blasted through the concrete. But, by convincing the public that removing the dams made sense, “not just as a social justice issue for tribal health but also from an economic standpoint”, he said, the wheels of change started to turn.As the work continues, Soto is looking upon it with a smile.“There were moments, and those are behind me,” he said. He’s hopeful for the future, and excited to start the reintroduction of spring-run chinook salmon that otherwise would never have had a chance. Water conditions will continue to improve with time, and they are already far better than they were a year ago.“It is quite impressive,” he added. “I am so programmed going up there to look at a funky nasty reservoir. Now it’s just like – wow. It’s a river again.”

Animals
Climate
Culture

Why thousands of people are traveling to one country to see these birds

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. Haga clic aquí para leer esta historia en español. VALLE DEL CAUCA, Colombia — From the side of an old highway that cuts through the Andean foothills, Dora Alicia […]

A crimson-rumped toucanet at a popular birdwatching destination in southwestern Colombia called La Florida. This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. Haga clic aquí para leer esta historia en español. VALLE DEL CAUCA, Colombia — From the side of an old highway that cuts through the Andean foothills, Dora Alicia Londoño’s home looks unremarkable. Located in a rural area about two hours from Cali, the largest city in southern Colombia, it’s a simple, two-story concrete building with a sheet metal roof. A few potted plants hang from the rafters.  The main attraction is in her backyard.  There, you will find birds. So many birds. And these are not just your common backyard varieties, like robins and bluejays, but rare forest species that birdwatchers around the world yearn to see. Londoño, 63, has turned her home into a birdwatching lodge, a paradise. There are five guest rooms and a cafe with a view into her backyard, a dense tropical forest. There, she has a homemade bird feeder: wooden shelves holding pieces of fruit. Upstairs, on the roof, she had additional feeders for hummingbirds. When I visited on a warm morning in October, it felt like stepping into a nature documentary. The backyard was teeming with birds, none of which I’d seen before: glistening green mountain tanagers, toucan barbets, lemon-browed flycatchers, velvet-purple coronets. These birds were so colorful they almost looked unreal, painting the yard with streaks of yellows, reds, blues, and purples. And then there was the noise — a clamor of cheeps, trills, and squawks.   “The toucan barbet is one of the rarest birds in the world and it just eats bananas right here,” said Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela, a Colombian-born conservation ecologist and bird expert at the University of California Santa Cruz, who was at Londoño’s with me that morning. In an hour or so, I saw about 45 different species, Ocampo-Peñuela estimates, while leisurely sipping coffee and eating empanadas. If this is birdwatching, I’m in. If you’re into birds, Colombia is the place to be. It has more avian species than any other country on Earth, with close to 2,000 distinct and often very beautiful varieties, nearly 20 percent of the world’s birds. That diversity is rooted in geography. Colombia is a mosaic of different habitats, from tropical rainforest to snow-capped mountains, and different birds have adapted to each of them. And as I experienced that morning, birding here can be incredibly easy. You don’t even need hiking shoes. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}(); This isn’t much of a secret. In the last decade, the activity of birdwatching has exploded in Colombia, said Ocampo-Peñuela, who also studies ecotourism. Activity on eBird, a platform where birders can record their observations, increased more than 27-fold in Colombia since 2010, according to unpublished research by Ocampo-Peñuela and other authors that’s currently under review. While the bulk of these birders are foreigners from places like the US and Canada, more and more Colombians are picking up the hobby, too, she said.  This burgeoning industry is, as many experts argue, a rare force of good. It’s funneling money into rural communities and creating material value for healthy forests — something the environmental movement has, for decades, struggled to do. Indeed, at a time when tropical forests and grasslands are besieged by farming, mining, and other threats, birdwatching tourism offers a real incentive to keep ecosystems intact. Without forests, there are no birds, no birders, and no birding tourism.  There are, no doubt, concerns about sustainability as this young industry matures and more foreign tourists descend on Colombia. But for now, local communities are at the helm of this industry, which is good for people, good for the local economy, and good for wildlife. They intend to keep it that way. Londoño, who goes by Doña Dora, didn’t dream of running a birdwatching lodge and welcoming tourists into her backyard. In the 1990s, she moved here, to the outskirts of Cali, to escape violence near her home in the tropical grasslands, known as Los Llanos. This story is not uncommon. A decades-long conflict between armed groups and the government has displaced more than 5 million people across the country.  Doña Dora arrived with nothing, she told me that morning, as we watched hummingbirds flutter around a pair of freshly filled feeders like a collection of airborne jewels. She cleaned homes and sold empanadas on the side of the road. Her husband picked up odd jobs. Then one day she went to the dentist, and her life changed.  Her dentist, a man named Gilberto Collazos Bolaños, was a bird fanatic, and he knew the forest around her home was full of avian life. So he gave her a suggestion: Put some fruit on a table outside, and wait. The fruit will draw in birds, she remembers him saying, the birds will attract tourists, and the tourists will bring in money. She took his advice. And birds came. First there were bluebirds, golden tanagers, and colorful finches called euphonias. Then rarer species like rufous-throated tanagers and toucan barbets arrived. Toucan barbets are the unequivocal stars of the show. Found only in the mountain forests of western Colombia and Ecuador, they have a brilliant plumage — a collection of light gray, red, yellow, and black — and a song that sounds a bit like a frog. As the dentist predicted, birders eventually arrived, too, largely finding her home by word of mouth. And in 2015, Colombia hosted its first annual BirdFair, a major birding festival, and one of the event’s official field trips was a visit to Doña Dora’s home. That put her on the map, she told me.  “We always loved nature and trees,” said Doña Dora, who, when I visited, was wearing a head covering and what looked like a white lab coat. “But we didn’t have a vision for what we have right now, of birdwatching.” Today, her home is considered one of the country’s top birdwatching destinations, and some visitors have dubbed it “the best backyard birding spot in the world.” It’s this birding business that now supports her family.  Foreign tourists pay about $9 to view birds on her property ($13 if they have a camera). A room for two people is around $50 per night, which doesn’t include her coffee or her homemade empanadas. In the busy season, from September to March, the lodge will get more than 100 tourists a month, according to her son Elber Sanchez Londoño, who helps run the business. In her backyard that morning, I watched birds. But I also watched birdwatchers watch birds. I honestly found this activity just as thrilling.  What is it that makes some people so obsessed with birds? One explanation is that you can find them pretty much everywhere. That makes birdwatching easy to start and practice, no matter where you live. Birding can also connect you to a community. It tends to bring like-minded people together, both in person and through platforms like eBird and iNaturalist, where they can share their observations. Plus, it’s free and done outdoors, which is one reason why birding became so popular during the Covid-19 pandemic when people were avoiding crowded, indoor spaces. “It’s like an addiction,” Ocampo-Peñuela, a self-identified birder, told me. “You see these birds, and their beauty, and it just fills you with happy hormones. Then you want to do it more.” That morning, I met several tourists at Doña Dora’s lodge. Most of them toted cameras with long lenses. “This is unbelievable,” said Santiago Ferro, a visitor from Toronto, who grew up in Bogotá. I asked him how this spot compares to birding in North America. He just laughed. Birders are drawn to Colombia for its sheer number of avian species, many of which are found nowhere else. But the ongoing surge in birding tourism has far more to do with safety. Until recently, a conflict between the government and a number of armed groups spread violence across Colombia. At the center of the conflict — which began in the mid-20th century — was the distribution of wealth. The largest such group, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), fought against the government and right-wing paramilitary groups to bring more wealth to poor rural parts of Colombia. Violence tied to the conflict killed more than 200,000 people, and most of them were civilians. In 2016, after years of tense negotiations, the government and FARC signed a peace agreement. Put simply, the agreement required that FARC give up their weapons, stop fighting, and exit the drug trade, which was helping fund the conflict. In return they were offered political power and a promise to invest heavily in rural areas.  Violence still persists in some regions, especially near the borders, and the US State Department advises people to reconsider traveling to Colombia. Yet a tenuous truce holds. The peace agreement has made the country much safer, for locals and foreigners alike, than it has been for decades — and that, in turn, has opened the door to more birdwatching tourism.  In 2017, Ocampo-Peñuela published a study showing that birdwatching, as measured by activity on eBird, was already expanding in areas that were once considered dangerous, including Putumayo, a department in southern Colombia. Ocampo-Peñuela’s more recent research, which is not yet published, finds that birdwatching activity skyrocketed in Colombia after 2016, though it dipped during the pandemic. (A large portion of eBird users are from the US, so data from the platform over-represents American birding trends.) !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r&lt;e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}(); The government doesn’t track birdwatching activity, though it says tourism overall is climbing. Last year, a record 6.1 million foreigners visited Colombia, up 30 percent from 2022, and the majority of them are looking for nature experiences, according to Procolombia, a government agency that markets the country. Tourism is already up this year compared to 2023, Procolombia told Vox. And since 2021, the number of nature lodges, including birding lodges, has nearly tripled, the agency said.  In global hot spots of biodiversity like Colombia, economic growth often comes at the expense of ecosystems. A growing cattle-ranching industry destroys rainforests. A mining boom leaches toxins into streams and soil. Comparatively, Colombia’s ballooning birdwatching industry seems like something to celebrate.  Tourism is not only funding birdwatching destinations like Doña Dora’s but building demand for local birdwatching guides. That’s created jobs for Colombians with deep ties to their surrounding ecosystems, whether or not they have a formal education. Generational knowledge of local birds and where to find them — referred to in some academic circles as traditional ecological knowledge — is increasingly valuable here, even in a straight economic sense. Birdwatching tourism gives it value. The following morning, I traveled to a place called Laguna de Sonso, a wetland just north of Cali. It’s a blip of natural habitat in a sea of sugarcane plantations, a widespread crop in Valle del Cauca. When I arrived, a cocoi heron, a large gray and white bird with a long, sharp beak, was wading in the water, sending ripples out across a lake. The wetland is a birder’s dream. More than 300 avian species live in or pass through Laguna de Sonso, including giants like the osprey and weirdos like the common potoo, a bird with an unsettlingly wide mouth. It’s also where youth from the surrounding communities learn to become birdwatching guides, or interpreters, as they call themselves. “We call ourselves interpreters because we are a community that has had empirical training,” said local guide Jhonathan Estiven Bedoya Betancourth, meaning they’ve learned through observation and experience. “We do not have, let's say, the training of a professional tourist guide.” (A pair of community organizations at Laguna de Sonso do offer workshops and mentorship for bird guiding.) Bedoya Betancourth, 24, says he’s been guiding birdwatching tours since he was 14. “We interpret everything that this beautiful territory has,” said Bedoya Betancourth, who wore a pair of binoculars around his neck.   Bedoya Betancourth started guiding because he loves birds, and he’s good at it. He can imitate the calls of around 30 species, he said. (I obviously asked him to demonstrate, and he impressively whistled the repetitive up-and-down call of a marsh bird called the gray-cowled wood-rail.) But it was also a way to earn money for his family, he said. He makes about $35 for each guiding trip, not including tip, and he’ll lead several trips a month. He supplements his income by making wood carvings to sell to tourists and locals.  “Birdwatching for me and for the group of interpreters is one of the economic activities that has been able to keep the community afloat,” said Maria Omaira Rendon Rayo, a community leader at Laguna de Sonso.  The birding economy gives people a reason to stay in the community, she said, and offers an alternative to careers that might attract violence, such as cultivating and selling drugs. By training kids, the laguna and its community organizations are also helping build a conservation ethic that will last for decades. “If you are receiving economic income from an activity such as conservation, then you want to conserve more,” said Rendon Rayo, who works with a local organization called Asociación de Productores Agropecuarios del Porvenir, which helps restore forests by planting trees and trains birding guides in Laguna de Sonso. “You want to help plant more trees. You want to help keep the laguna clean.” Nature tourism is not an unequivocal force of good. It actually often harms the environment, as researchers like Ralf Buckley have documented. Tourists have inadvertently introduced invasive species to places like the Galapagos Islands, snorkelers and divers have damaged coral, including in the Great Barrier Reef, and hotels are commonly built atop natural habitat. There’s also an exploitation issue: In many cases tourism companies are owned by foreigners, limiting the benefits that flow to local communities, on which they often depend. Plus, as a place swells with wealthy tourists, the cost of necessities like housing and food can rise, making it unlivable for locals.  Birdwatching tourism in Colombia has so far managed to avoid many of these pitfalls. It has some guardrails built in, Ocampo-Peñuela said. For one, birding doesn’t work well in large groups — they scare away birds and make it hard to spot something fluttering far away — and smaller groups have a lighter environmental impact. One of the lodges I visited capped the number of tourists to 10. Another said there are days when they will turn visitors away. What’s more is that finding rare and endemic species, which birders are most drawn to, typically requires local expertise. That helps keep money within local communities.  Then there’s the most important guardrail: Birdwatching tourism doesn’t work if it’s not sustainable. Even if you put out fruit, the birds won’t come if they have no habitat — no forest, no wetland. Birding is not like going to the zoo, where you can always expect to see animals. It’s in the economic interest of the birdwatching industry to make sure ecosystems remain healthy.  “You can’t do this business without conserving,” Javier Rubio, who runs another birdwatching destination, called La Florida, at his property northwest of Cali. “If you don't conserve, you put your future as a business at risk. If you start cutting down trees and damaging the forest, [the birds] will be left without food, which is the reason why they are here.” Doña Dora says one of her goals is to earn enough money so that her son can buy forested land around their home. He wants to conserve it, she told me. “That’s the idea for the future,” Elber, her son, told me, “to make sure that the birds continue to live in a healthy ecosystem.” The industry is still young, so the full extent of its environmental impact has yet to be seen. People involved in growing birdwatching tourism say it’s critical that Colombians, and especially people in rural, bird-filled regions, determine what the industry ultimately looks like. “It’s necessary that we Colombians define what kind of birdwatching tourism we want,” said Carlos Mario Wagner, the founder and director of Colombia BirdFair and one of the country’s most well-known birders.  Birding tourism shouldn’t just cater to foreigners, he said, but also to locals. “Something that makes me very happy is that Colombians are increasingly hiring guides,” Wagner told me. Birding has given Colombians an opportunity to reconnect with their homeland following the peace agreement, he said. It instills in them a sense of pride for a version of Colombia that’s known for nature, not violence. The birding industry will ultimately never be huge, Ocampo-Peñuela says. While it’s growing globally — faster than other forms of ecotourism, she’s found — it will likely remain niche, limited by the small number of people who want to travel to rural places to look at birds, often very early in the morning. “You have to have the right personality,” she told me.  So it’s not like birdwatching alone will fix Colombia’s problems and raise the rural class out of poverty.  Yet what it offers is incredibly special. Not just money for local communities, alternative career paths, and real incentives to save forests, but also something that’s harder to quantify. On a rainy afternoon in October, I visited Rubio at La Florida. Like Doña Dora, Rubio has a homemade bird feeder in his yard constructed with branches and pieces of fruit. It attracted a different cast of avian visitors. Here, the star was the multicolored tanager, a colorful species found only in the mountain forests of Colombia. My favorite, however, was the crimson-rumped toucanet, which is essentially a mini toucan. They’re bright green with rust-colored beaks that seem far too big for their bodies.  Over my fourth cup of black coffee, Rubio told me he was a criminal lawyer for nearly three decades before getting into the birdwatching business. A few years ago, he invited friends to his home to go birding. They saw the multicolored tanager and told him that his property — which abuts a tropical forest — has enormous potential to become a birdwatching destination.  Eager to live a more relaxing life, Rubio, 56, quit his job as a lawyer and started building a tourism business.  “I feel extremely good doing this,” Rubio told me. “I often feel like I’m giving happiness to people. Almost unanimously the people who come say, ‘This is a paradise.’ When you start birdwatching, you start to feel attracted not only to birds but to the peaceful environment of nature.” This is a point that nearly every birder I spoke to made: Caring about birds is a gateway to caring about nature, of seeing its true worth.  “It is a gradual process,” Rubio told me, as we sat on a covered deck as it rained, watching a multicolored tanager bounce around in the branches a few feet away. “You first contemplate them, then you begin to understand them, and then you begin to preserve them. That is the path taken by the one who takes up this habit of birdwatching.”

Animals
Business
Conservation

Sweden begins wolf hunt as it aims to halve endangered animal’s population

Five entire families can be killed, totalling 30 wolves, in move campaigners say is illegal under EU lawSweden’s wolf hunt starts on Thursday, with the country aiming to halve the population of the endangered predator.The Swedish government has given the green light for five entire wolf families, a total of 30 wolves, to be killed in a hunt campaigners say is illegal under EU law. Under the Berne convention, protected species cannot be caused to have their populations fall under a sustainable level. Continue reading...

Sweden’s wolf hunt starts on Thursday, with the country aiming to halve the population of the endangered predator.The Swedish government has given the green light for five entire wolf families, a total of 30 wolves, to be killed in a hunt campaigners say is illegal under EU law. Under the Berne convention, protected species cannot be caused to have their populations fall under a sustainable level.Sweden’s wolf population dropped by almost 20% in 2022-23, and there are now 375 recorded individuals. The decline is due to increased hunting pressure, and the government announced earlier this year that it intended to halve the population, with 170 wolves becoming the new minimum level for “favourable conservation status”, instead of the current minimum of 300.Critics say this will endanger the wolf population, which has historically had a fragile stronghold in Sweden, partly due to overhunting. Sweden had no breeding wolf population from 1966 until 1983, and the species is listed in the country as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list.The plans are part of a wider trend, with the EU intending to loosen rules around wolf persecution, allowing countries to increase the number they can kill.The European Commission is considering revising its habitats directive to reflect the fact that wolf numbers have increased, particularly in alpine and forested regions of Scandinavia and central Europe. Farmers say the increased population poses a threat to livestock such as sheep.Earlier this month, members of the Berne convention on the conservation of European wildlife and natural habitats voted to change the status of wolves from a “strictly protected” to a “protected” species. This change will enter into force on 7 March 2025 and will make it easier for the EU to change the habitats directive to allow more wolves to be shot.But environmentalists have said that instead of changing the laws to allow wolves to be culled, farmers can take preventive measures with electric fencing.“We are very critical to the path that the EU is now taking, downgrading the protection status of the wolf,” said Magnus Orrebrant, the chair of the Swedish Carnivore Association. “If the EU follows up the latest Berne convention decision by changing the wolf’s protection status in the habitat directive, the result will be very negative not only for the wolves, but for all wildlife in Europe.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 info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“In Sweden, it will have no immediate impact on the wolf population, since the Swedish government since 2010 has been blatantly disregarding the wolf’s special protection status, allowing a yearly licensed quota hunt and thereby breaking EU law. We filed a formal complaint to the EU commission, leading to an infringement procedure against Sweden, as yet to no avail.”Léa Badoz, the wildlife programme officer at Eurogroup for Animals, a lobby group, said: “The wolf is unfortunately the latest political pawn, a victim of misinformation. Downgrading protection will not solve the challenges of coexistence, nor help farmers.”The Swedish environmental protection agency has been contacted for comment.

Animals
Government
Sustainable

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Documentary

Saving Jaguars and Ourselves

"Saving Jaguars and Ourselves" brings attention to the plight of jaguars, wildlife, the Pantanal in Brazil AND the Amazon Rainforest and Cerrado Savannah. The film combines intimate human conversations and portrayals of jaguars in the Pantanal with clear explanations of larger threats that expand to include the Amazon, Cerrado, and the U.S.—focusing on ways that individuals in the U.S. can act effectively to bring change. These three areas form a critical Triad for preventing global climate change. My film explains why this Triad is crucial--why OUR survival in the U.S. depends on its recovery--and what we must do to literally save it, jaguars/wildlife, and Earth. The Pantanal wetland is larger than Florida and stores at least 10 billion tons of carbon. The Cerrado stores at least 13 billion tons. The Amazon stores 200 billion tons. If ANY of these areas completely burns, the carbon releases would be catastrophic. The Amazon and Pantanal are paradises. The Pantanal is directly affected by destruction of the Amazon and Cerrado savannah. Scientists believe that 80% of the Amazon Rainforest must be protected by 2025 or it will not be able to regenerate itself. The Amazon creates its own weather but if deforestation continues, its ecosystem will die and dying trees will give off as much as 200 billion tons of carbon over the next 30-50 years, effectively destroying our ability to protect the climate--and the Earth will die. The Pantanal is one of the most unique and beautiful places in the world, home to over 5,000 animal species and is now also facing threats from upstream river projects.

Solutions
Animals
Climate

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