Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, is expected to hit the Gulf Coast of central Florida in the U.S. on Oct. 9. Hurricane Milton follows on the heels of Hurricane Helene, which devastated parts of the Southeast just two weeks earlier. Both storms coincide with the fall migration of birds in North America. Scientists say such storms can be deadly for birds, but many species have ways to cope with hurricanes; some even benefit.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center radar recently observed a flock of birds traveling in the eye of the hurricane. Although we don’t know the species of birds traveling with Milton it is “fairly common” to find certain types of birds inside a hurricane, Andrew Farnsworth, visiting scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, told Mongabay by phone.

Some migratory seabirds, like sooty terns (Onychoprion fuscatus), are particularly vulnerable. “It’s a very aerial species; sometimes the birds won’t touch down for many months at a time. So, a hurricane is a perfect vehicle to wrap them up and transport them far away,” Farnsworth said.

After Hurricane Helene, sooty terns, native to the Caribbean, were found more than 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away in Indiana.

“They travel with the storm, and then when the storm sort of blows apart, the birds get deposited,” Farnsworth said.

Many wayward birds make it back home, particularly if they are deposited near a waterway. However, some don’t survive the return trip, so far removed from their natural habitat and food.

For some waterbirds, though, hurricanes can actually bring more food. Scientists in a recent study noted that one-third of the Desertas petrels (Pterodroma deserta) they tracked intentionally followed hurricanes. Desertas petrels aren’t strong divers, so when storms churn up nutrients and prey to the ocean surface, petrels take advantage, the study found.

Hurricane season coincides with the fall migration of some 5 billion birds. Radar images showed that before Hurricane Helene, there was a large concentration of migrating birds along the U.S. East Coast, but as the storm made landfall, the only bird migration was west of the storm.

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Bird migration on Sept 20 and Sept 25. Image courtesy of BirdCast/Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Farnsworth said migrating birds on land can choose to stay put if the conditions are bad. “You can just hunker down and say, ‘OK, not migrating today,’” he said. When the storm passes, the birds carry on.

For birds migrating south over water, like the Gulf of Mexico where Milton passed through, it’s a different story. These birds can get caught up in the storm and get displaced northward again. Some even die en route.

Birds evolved with hurricanes but climate change is fueling more frequent strong storms, and that change in intensity “has the potential to change migration patterns in ways that we don’t necessarily understand,” Farnsworth said.

Banner photo: by Duncan Wright via Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Global conservation efforts will receive a much-needed boost with the recent launch of two initiatives involving the use of satellite data.

The Airbus Foundation and the Connected Conservation Foundation (CCF) recently opened a third round of applications for their Satellites for Biodiversity Award, which now offers access to finer-resolution satellite imagery to help protect habitats and threatened species.

At the same time, Planet Labs’ Project Centinela will be sharing high-resolution satellite imagery and analytics with scientists and conservationists to safeguard some of the world’s most at-risk biodiversity hotspots. Project Centinela will launch with eight sites and expand to 50 in the next three years.

The Satellite for Biodiversity Award will be looking for innovative proposals to use space technology and machine learning to combat wildlife loss, foster human-wildlife coexistence, influence sustainable land-use practices, and shape conservation policy.

Three winning projects will get access to Airbus’s Pléiades and Pléiades Neo satellites to track and monitor their projects at up to 15 centimeters (6 inches) of high-definition resolution. They will also receive $6,000 in funding, mentoring from CCF, and access to geographic information system software to conduct advanced mapping, visualization and analysis.

“CCF and the Airbus Foundation have been working with [past] winners from across the globe – ranging from South Sudan to Thailand to Papua New Guinea to help them access high-resolution satellite imagery, to meet their current objectives and provide a detailed baseline of their conservation area,” Sophie Maxwell, executive director of CCF, told Mongabay in an email.

Past winners of the award have used satellite technology to identify risks faced by Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in Thailand and mitigate the risk of pangolin (Manis gigantea) electrocution in Kenya.

Hania Tabet, Airbus head of social value and foundation director, said in a statement that the award enables participants to “leverage relevant data, tools, technologies and training for positive social and environmental impact. Through the Satellites for Biodiversity award, we strive to support projects acting for the protection of endangered species and their habitats.”

Responding to the announcement from Planet Labs, which has previously partnered with Airbus, Maxwell told Mongabay, “We’re encouraged to see more satellite providers recognizing the urgent need to harness their technologies in addressing the biodiversity and climate crisis. Reaching global targets, like protecting 30% of the planet by 2030, requires every resource at our disposal.”

But with more than 200,000 protected areas worldwide, Maxwell said more needs to be done to reach that 30 by 30 goal. “Contributions from all satellite data providers like Airbus, and Planet, are vital in providing the monitoring tools necessary for safeguarding our planet’s health. We are excited to see this movement grow, to get the critical data, and capabilities to the communities, policymakers and enforcement partners who can drive large-scale, lasting change.”

Banner image: Nepal captured from space by the Pléiades Neo satellite. Image courtesy of the Airbus Foundation and Connected Conservation Foundation.

The world’s oceans are warming at an unprecedented rate. According to the EU Copernicus’ 8th Ocean State Report released this week, the rate of ocean warming has nearly doubled in the last 20 years.

Roughly 22% of the global ocean surface experienced at least one severe to extreme marine heat wave event in 2023, according to the report. Polar ocean warming is especially pronounced; 2023 had the least polar sea ice ever recorded. Each decade of the last nearly 50 years saw a 4% loss of Arctic sea ice as surface water temperature increased.

The findings mirror the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the ocean and cryosphere, which also shows that global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions has resulted in marine heat waves.

According to the Ocean State Report, record-breaking events have also been observed in European seas. In 2022, the water around the Balearic Islands, off the east coast of Spain, rose to its highest temperatures in the last 40 years. The west coast of Europe, the region between Spain and Ireland, experienced heat waves that lasted a maximum average of 145 days.

Parts of the Barents Sea, north of Scandinavia in the Arctic, have “entered a state of “permanent” marine heat wave, report author and oceanographer Karina von Schuckmann told Agence France-Presse.

Schuckmann said such a sustained increase in ocean temperatures affects nearly every aspect of the marine ecosystem. The report highlighted decreased marine biodiversity due to migration of species, mass die-off events and invasive species. Ocean stratification is also exacerbated as marine heat waves “reduce the capacity of ocean layers to mix and therefore hamper the distribution of nutrients,” the report notes.

Ocean waves are also increasing in height. The Ocean State Report cited waves recorded in Melilla, Spain, which reached 7 meters (23 feet) high in April 2022. The massive waves hit a harbor during a violent record-breaking storm.

The annual publication by the Copernicus Marine Service is implemented by Mercator Ocean International. The recent report is based on satellite observations, in situ measurements and the latest computer modeling technology. More than 100 experts from around the world worked on the report.

Banner image by Thomas Horig / Ocean Image Bank

Hurricane Helene recently ravaged the southeastern United States, cutting a path of destruction from the Florida coast past the mountains of North Carolina, more than 480 kilometers (300 miles) inland. The inland flooding has been catastrophic, and conservationists worry that the unprecedented storm may push some vulnerable species toward extinction.

One of the most locally iconic species of concern is the hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis). At roughly 0.6 meters (2 feet) long and weighing in at nearly 2.2 kilograms (5 pounds), the hellbender is the largest species of salamander in the Americas. It is entirely aquatic and extremely sensitive to water pollution.

“There’s so much contamination in floodwater,” Tierra Curry, endangered species coordinator with the Center for Biological Diversity, told Mongabay during a phone call. “Everything that was on the land can now settle out in the water, including things that are going to cause pollution for a long time, like refrigerators and cars.”

Curry said the additional sediment from floodwater is also deadly for hellbenders. They live and breed under large rocks, in crevices that can be filled in with sediment during a flood. She said a storm in Missouri a few years ago crushed some salamanders and washed others downstream where they couldn’t survive.

Hellbenders are considered vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of endangered species, yet they are not currently listed as such under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, largely due to their large range in the eastern U.S. The species lives in cold, clear, running water from Georgia all the way to New York, but Curry said they are disappearing throughout their range due to human development and subsequent water pollution, plus disease.

“So, 40% of their population has been wiped out entirely, 40% are not healthy and are not reproducing, but they are long-lived so those populations are still there just because older adults are surviving, but they’re not able to successfully reproduce. So, you’re looking at 20% of the population that are healthy and reproducing, and the core of their healthy range just got hit super hard,” Curry said.

In a September 2024 letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Curry argued that the eastern hellbender should be added to the endangered species list before their populations decline further.

The giant amphibian is regionally famous, as evidenced by the many hellbender-themed restaurants, video games, music and poetry events. The huge hurricane’s devastation will be a hurdle for them, and for the hundreds of other lesser-known species at risk of extinction that also call the mountainous area home, including many species of amphibians, freshwater mussels and reptiles. Curry said she thinks it will take time to understand the full extent of the ecological damage.

“I am extremely concerned,” she said, adding, “It’s going to be a while before people can even survey.”

Banner image: Eastern hellbenders can grow longer than 0.6 meters (2 feet), making them North America’s largest salamander. Photo courtesy of Freshwaters Illustrated/Dave Herasimtschuk/USDA.

Ant queens practice a grim but effective form of childcare, eating their own sick larvae to recycle them into new, healthier eggs. A new study shows that by consuming their infected offspring, the queens protect the rest of their colonies from deadly infections while boosting their egg production with the influx of nutrients.

Researchers behind the study infected larvae with a type of insect-killing fungus from the genus Metarhizium. The fungus isn’t immediately contagious, so the ant queens had a small window to detect the threat, and most of them did. Queens in the study cannibalized 92% of larvae infected with the fungus, researchers found, while sparing most of the healthy larvae. Only 6% of the healthy young were eaten.

“Ant queens are remarkably effective at responding to and eliminating early-stage infections before they become transmissible,” the authors wrote, adding that this behavior, observed in the black garden ants (Lasius niger), one of the world’s most common, helps protect both the queen and the wider colony from collapse.

In cases where the infection was left to spread, 80% of the queens died. By not eating their infected larvae in time, they allowed the fungus to reach a lethal stage, eventually leading to the colony’s collapse. Queens that ate their sick larvae early stayed healthy.

The tough love of the surviving queens doesn’t stop at cannibalism. Researchers also observed queen ants spraying the infected larvae with acidic venom before feasting, which may help kill pathogens and explain how ant queens are able to safely consume infected larvae.

“Even though eating your own offspring may seem reprehensible to us, for many other animals, it is no more than an evolved and efficient way for parents to produce the most offspring they can over their lifetimes or to give the best care they can to a smaller selection of their offspring,” Aneesh Bose, a behavioral ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, who was not involved in the study, told Mongabay in an email.

Queens that cannibalized infected larvae laid 55% more eggs than those that didn’t, leading the researchers to believe that they reinvest those nutrients into future reproduction. Ants live in confined spaces where disposal of dead bodies isn’t always possible, which adds another motivation for cannibalism.

“Filial cannibalism is a fascinating behavior because it goes against our basic nature and instincts, but it is hugely widespread elsewhere in the animal kingdom, and insects are no exception,” Bose added.

Banner image: Cannibalizing their offspring is often a life-or-death decision for the common black garden ant queen. Image by Lennart Tange via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

In August, a group of self-described “old ladies” fished out a toilet bowl from a pond in Massachusetts, U.S., and have gained local fame since then. The group is named Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage (OLAUG), and so far, they’ve cleaned up 18 ponds, removing everything from tires and beer bottles to the bright blue toilet.

To join the group, you must be a woman, able to swim half a mile in under 30 minutes and more than 64 years old, Susan Bauer, 84, the founder of OLAUG, told Mongabay by phone.

She says older people bring a different perspective. “It’s the age of gratitude where you’ve lost enough so you’re really grateful for what’s left, whether that’s a husband or a child or it’s that you used to hear whip-poor-wills and now you don’t, you used to see spotted turtles and now you don’t,” Susan adds.

Susan started OLAUG with a few friends during the pandemic. Today, her group is 25 strong and she has a waiting list of women who want to collect trash with her. She says the success of her group is that it’s fun. “We wade out of the water better, kinder, happier, more empowered women. Our product is joy. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to scale up joy than it is to scale up sacrifice.”

“It’s the Zen of trash picking,” she adds.

OLAUG works with one kayaker for every two swimmers. The kayaks haul most of the trash the swimmers collect. The group also engages with local pond associations and asks them to invite the community to come watch the day of the dive.

Often, people start out as skeptics. “The onlookers sort of have their arms across their chest. ‘We have a clean pond; there’s no garbage in our pond,’” she says. “Then an hour later when the kayaks come in laden with tires over their bows, Adirondack chairs, rugs, sofas, a toilet occasionally, part of a charcoal grill, fishing rods and of course beer cans, beer cans, beer cans. When they see that stuff coming in, they change.”

Image courtesy of OLAUG

OLAUG is entirely voluntary. Susan says the women who work with her are doing it for the joy, comaraderie and adventure. Also, the cookies.

“We never work for money. We work for cookies. And so, you have to pay us in homemade cookies,” she says.

Susan says women have approached her about starting other chapters of OLAUG, so she is working on a short manual of lessons learned.

“You can’t just grab a kayak and a couple of swimmers and say, let’s see what we can get out of the pond. That’s the tip of the iceberg. You’ve got to get the community building. You’ve got to get the adventure. You’ve got to get the joy,” she says.

Banner image: courtesy of OLAUG