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Home » Radio Archive » Daily Show » Storks & Junk Food

Storks & Junk Food

March 21, 2016
https://podcast.scienceupdate.com/160321_sciup_stork.mp3

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Aldina Franco White Stork Research Group1
White storks look for food scraps at a landfill in Portugal. (Aldina Franco/White Stork Research Group)

BOB HIRSHON (host):

Storks on junk food. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.

White storks used to migrate from Portugal to Africa every winter. But according to a new study in the journal Movement Ecology, they’ve recently abandoned the long, perilous journey in favor of a life of leisure right at home. University of East Anglia ecologist Aldina Franco says they’ve established year-round colonies near garbage dumps, which are brimming with discarded human food.

ALDINA FRANCO:

They start breeding earlier and raise a larger number of offspring closer to the landfill site.

HIRSHON:

But their good fortune could be fleeting, as all of Portugal’s landfills are slated for closure within the next few years.

FRANCO:

That will no longer enable the birds to have access to these resources. It’s a fantastic experiment: will they change their migratory behavior, will they die, will they revert to natural areas? We don’t know.

HIRSHON:
I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.

Aldina Franco White Stork Research Group2a
A white stork with a tracker. (Aldina Franco/White Stork Research Group)
Category: Daily Show, Station DownloadTag: Animal Behavior, Biology, Environment & Conservation, Wildlife
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