PATERZELL, Germany — How do you teach a bird how, and where, to fly?

The distinctive northern bald ibis, hunted essentially to extinction by the 17th century, was revived by breeding and rewilding efforts over the last two decades. But the birds — known for their distinctive black-and-iridescent green plumage, bald red head and long curved beak — don’t instinctively know which direction to fly to migrate without the guidance of wild-born elders. So a team of scientists and conservationists stepped in as foster parents and flight instructors.

“We have to teach them the migration route,” said biologist Johannes Fritz.

The northern bald ibis once soared over North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and much of Europe, including southern Germany’s Bavaria. The migratory birds were also considered a delicacy, and the bird, known as the Waldrapp in German, disappeared from Europe, though a few colonies elsewhere survived.

The efforts of Fritz and the Waldrappteam, a conservation and research group based in Austria, brought the Central European population from zero to almost 300 since the start of their project in 2002.

The feat moved the species from a “critically endangered” classification to “endangered” and, Fritz says, is the first attempt to reintroduce a continentally extinct migratory bird species.

But while northern bald ibises still display the natural urge to migrate, they don’t know which direction to fly without the guidance of wild-born elders. The Waldrappteam’s early reintroduction attempts were largely unsuccessful because, without teaching the birds the migration route, most disappeared soon after release. Instead of returning to suitable wintering grounds such as Tuscany, Italy, they flew in different directions and ultimately died.

So the Waldrappteam stepped in as foster parents and flight instructors for the Central European population, which was made up of descendants from multiple zoo colonies and released into the wild in the hopes of creating a migratory group. This year marks the 17th journey with human-led migration guides, and the second time they’ve been forced to pilot a new route to Spain due to climate change.

To prepare them for travel, the chicks are removed from their breeding colonies when they are just a few days old. They are taken to an aviary that’s overseen by the foster parents in the hopes of “imprinting” — when the birds will bond with those humans to ultimately trust them along the migration route.

Barbara Steininger, a Waldrapp team foster mother, said she acts like “their bird mom.”

“We feed them, we clean them, we clean their nests. We take good care of them and see that they are healthy birds,” she said. “But also we interact with them.”

Steininger and the other foster parents sit on the back of a microlight aircraft, waving and shouting encouragement through a bullhorn as it flies through the air.

It’s a bizarre scene: The aircraft looks like a flying go-kart with a giant fan on the back and a yellow parachute keeping it aloft. Still, three dozen birds follow the contraption, piloted by Fritz, as it sails over alpine meadows and foothills.

Fritz was inspired by “Father Goose” Bill Lishman, a naturalist who taught Canadian geese to fly alongside his ultra-light plane beginning in 1988. He later guided endangered whooping cranes through safe routes and founded the nonprofit “Operation Migration.” Lishman’s work prompted the 1996 movie “Fly Away Home” but features a young girl as the geese’s “mother.”

Like Lishman, Fritz and his team’s efforts have worked. The first bird independently migrated back to Bavaria in 2011 from Tuscany. More have flown the route that’s upward of 550 kilometers (342 miles) each year, and the team hopes the Central European population will be more than 350 birds by 2028 and become self-sustaining.

But the effects of climate change mean the Waldrapp are migrating later in the season now, which forces them to cross the Alps in colder, more dangerous weather — without the aid of warm currents of air, known as thermals, that rise upward and help the birds soar without expending extra energy.

In response, the Waldrappteam piloted a new route in 2023, from Bavaria to Andalusia in southern Spain.

This year, the route is roughly 2,800 kilometers (1,740 miles) — some 300 kilometers (186 miles) longer than last year’s path. Earlier this month from an airfield in Paterzell, in upper Bavaria, the team guided 36 birds along one stage through bright blue skies and a tailwind that increased their speed.

The entire journey to Spain could take up to 50 days and end in early October. But Fritz says the effort is bigger than just the northern bald ibises: It’s about paving the way for other threatened migratory species to fly.
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CHEYENNE, Wyoming — A “mega den” of hundreds of rattlesnakes in Colorado is getting even bigger now that late summer is here and babies are being born.

Thanks to livestream video, scientists studying the den on a craggy hillside in Colorado are learning more about these enigmatic — and often misunderstood — reptiles. They’re observing as the youngsters, called pups, slither over and between adult females on lichen-encrusted rocks.

The public can watch too on the Project RattleCam website and help with important work including how to tell the snakes apart. Since researchers put their remote camera online in May, several snakes have become known in a chat room and to scientists by names including “Woodstock,” “Thea” and “Agent 008.”

The live feed, which draws as many as 500 people at a time online, on Thursday showed a tangle of baby snakes with tiny nubs for rattles. They have a lot of growing to do: A rattlesnake adds a rattle segment each time it sheds its skin a couple times a year, on average.

The project is a collaboration between California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, snake removal company Central Coast Snake Services and Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

By involving the public, the scientists hope to dispel the idea that rattlesnakes are usually fierce and dangerous. In fact, experts say they rarely bite unless threatened or provoked and often are just the opposite. 

Rattlesnakes are not only among the few reptiles that care for their young. They even care for the young of others. The adults protect and lend body heat to pups from birth until they enter hibernation in mid-autumn, said Max Roberts, a CalPoly graduate student researcher.

“We regularly see what we like to call ‘babysitting,’ pregnant females that we can visibly see have not given birth, yet are kind of guarding the newborn snakes,” Roberts said Wednesday.

As many as 2,000 rattlesnakes spend the winter at the location on private land, which the researchers are keeping secret to discourage trespassers. Once the weather warms, only pregnant females remain while the others disperse to nearby territory.

This year, the scientists keeping watch over the Colorado site have observed the rattlesnakes coil up and catch water to drink from the cups formed by their bodies. They’ve also seen how the snakes react to birds swooping in to try to grab a scaly meal.

The highlight of summer is in late August and early September when the rattlesnakes give birth over a roughly two-week period.

“As soon as they’re born, they know how to move into the sun or into the shade to regulate their body temperature,” Roberts said.

There are 36 species of rattlesnakes, most of which inhabit the U.S. They range across nearly all states and are especially common in the Southwest. Those being studied now are prairie rattlesnakes, which can be found in much of the central and western U.S. and into Canada and Mexico.

Like other pit viper species but unlike most snakes, rattlesnakes don’t lay eggs. Instead, they give birth to live young. Eight is an average-size brood, with the number depending on the snake’s size, according to Roberts.

Roberts is studying how temperature changes and ultraviolet sunlight affect snake behavior. Another graduate student, Owen Bachhuber, is studying the family and social relationships between rattlesnakes.

The researchers watch the live feed all day.

“We are interested in studying the natural behavior of rattlesnakes, free from human disturbance. What do rattlesnakes actually do when we’re not there?” Roberts said.

Now that the Rocky Mountain summer is cooling, some males have been returning. By November, the camera running on solar and battery power will be turned off until next spring, when the snakes will re-emerge from their “mega den.”
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MANILA, Philippines — A Vietnamese doctor who has helped seek justice for victims of the powerful defoliant dioxin “Agent Orange” used by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War is among this year’s winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards — regarded as Asia’s version of the Nobel Prizes. 

Other winners announced on Saturday were a group of doctors who struggled to secure adequate health care for Thailand’s rural poor, an Indonesian environmental defender, a Japanese animator who tackles complex issues for children, and a Bhutanese academician promoting his country’s cultural heritage to help current predicaments. 

First given in 1958, the annual awards are named after a Philippine president who died in a 1957 plane crash, and honor “greatness of spirit” in selfless service to people across Asia. 

“The award has celebrated those who challenge the status quo with integrity by courageously confronting systemic injustices, transform critical sectors through groundbreaking solutions that drive societal progress, and address pressing global issues with unwavering resilience,” said Susanna B. Afan, president of the award foundation. 

Vietnamese doctor Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong carried out extensive research into the devastating and long-term effects of Agent Orange. She said she first encountered it in the late 1960s as a medical intern when she helped deliver babies with severe birth defects as a result of the lingering effect of highly toxic chemical, according to the awards body. 

“Her work serves as a dire warning for the world to avoid war at all costs as its tragic repercussions can reach far into the future,” the Magsaysay foundation said. “She offers proof that it can never be too late to right the wrongs of war and gain justice and relief for its hapless victims.” 

American forces used Agent Orange during the Vietnam War to defoliate Vietnamese jungles and destroy crops for the Vietnamese Communists, or Viet Cong, who fought against South Vietnam and the United States. 

Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed roughly 11 million gallons of the chemical agent dioxin used in Agent Orange across large swaths of southern Vietnam. Dioxin stays in the soil and in the sediment of lakes and rivers for generations. It can enter the food supply through the fat of fish and other animals. 

Vietnam says as many as 4 million citizens were exposed to the herbicide and as many as 3 million have suffered illnesses from it, including the children of people exposed during the war. 

Indonesian Farwiza Farhan won the award for helping lead a group to protect the Leuser Ecosystem, a 2.6-million-hectare forest on Sumatra Island in his country’s Aceh province where some of the world’s most highly endangered species have managed to survive, the foundation said. 

Her group helped win a court verdict that led to $26 million in fines against a palm oil company that burned forests and stopped a hydroelectric dam that would have threatened the elephant’s habitat, the foundation said. 

Miyazaki Hayao, a popular animator in Japan, was cited by the awards body as a co-founder in 1985 of Studio Ghibli, a leading proponent of animated films for children. Three Ghibli productions were among Japan’s 10 top-grossing films. 

“He tackles complicated issues, using his art to make them comprehensible to children, whether it be about protecting the environment, advocating for peace or championing the rights and roles of women in society,” the foundation said. 

The Rural Doctors Movement, a group of Thai physicians, won the award for their “decades of struggle … to secure adequate and affordable health care for their people, especially the rural poor,” the foundation said. 

“By championing the rural poor, the movement made sure to leave no one behind as the nation marches forward to greater economic prosperity and modernization,” it said. 

Karma Phuntsho from Bhutan, a former Buddhist monk and an Oxford-educated scholar, was cited by the awards body for his academic works in the field of Buddhism and Bhutan’s rich history and cultural heritage that were being harnessed to address current and future problems in his country, including unemployment and access to high-quality education. 

The winners will be presented with their awards and a cash prize on November 16 at the Metropolitan Theater in Manila. 
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