Storks & Junk Food
March 21, 2016
Storks in Europe are forgoing migration to Africa because of the ready availability of human food from landfills.
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Transcript
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.
A white stork with a tracker. (Aldina Franco/White Stork Research Group)
