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[00:00:00] Michael Hawk: Have you ever wondered what it takes to bring a species back from the brink of extinction? Today, we’re diving into the front lines of one of the most challenging and inspiring conservation efforts of our time with Sophie Osborn as our guide. This episode unravels the incredible stories of the peregrine falcon, Hawaiian crow, and California condor.

[00:00:18] They’re three iconic birds with a common thread of survival against the odds. We’ll explore the daunting threats that each of these birds have faced and surprisingly how those same dangers continue to impact us all. For example, lead ammunition. It’s a well known hazard to wildlife like condors, and we’ve talked about that on the podcast previously.

[00:00:38] But did you know when lead ammunition is used, tiny fragments are left behind in game, and they can be ingested by people, leading to serious health risks.

[00:00:47] You’ll find this striking x ray image in our show notes on naturesarchive. com that really drives this point home. But this isn’t just a tale of challenges, it’s also a story of hope.

[00:00:56] Sophie shares the hard won successes and the relentless dedication of biologists such as herself who are making a real difference. Sophie discussed all of this and much more in her new book called Feather Trails.

[00:01:08] It’s a beautifully crafted narrative that blends humor and suspense along with Sophie’s personal journey alongside these remarkable species. Trust me, it’s well worth the read. And be sure to check out Sophie’s work at wordsforbirds. net and her Substack blog, which is also called Words for Birds. As always, links are in the show notes.

[00:01:29] So without any additional delay, Sophie Osborn.

[00:01:33] Good morning, Sophie. Great to see you today.

[00:01:35] Sophie Osborn: Good morning. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:38] Michael Hawk: I’m excited as always for this discussion, because I got to see a little bit of a preview of what we’re going to talk about when you spoke to our Audubon Society. And of course, I also had a chance to read your book. So we’re going to be talking about three unique bird species today. Can you tell me about those bird species?

[00:01:55] Sophie Osborn: I will be talking about peregrine falcon, Hawaiian crow, and California condor. And they’re incredible birds and most people might not link them together except for the fact that I was fortunate enough to reintroduce all three of them to the wild when they were critically endangered.

[00:02:12] So that’s the commonality for me.

[00:02:14] Michael Hawk: Absolutely. That’s going to be, to me anyway, the most interesting part of our discussion is all of these birds face different challenges in their environments. And you’ve been on the forefront of getting them back into their environment and hopefully getting them on a path to a sustainable future.

[00:02:31] and they’re all so different. They all have different stories.

[00:02:34] Sophie Osborn: They really do.

[00:02:35] Michael Hawk: maybe just to set this up a little bit, I learned about you because you wrote about your personal experience with these birds in a recently released book. So can you tell me a little bit about that book? Who you wrote it for?

[00:02:49] Why you felt compelled to write it in the first place?

[00:02:52] Sophie Osborn: So the book is called Feather Trails, a Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds, and it essentially chronicles my journey into the amazing world of birds. It’s about becoming and being a wildlife biologist, and it takes readers behind the scenes and shows them what it’s like day to day to reintroduce three endangered birds. As we mentioned, the peregrine falcon, the hawaiian crow, and the california condor to the wild. And in the process, I reveal what imperiled these birds, and I end up showing that what threatened them, what harmed them, also harms us too. So the book is a mixture of personal stories and experiences, but also natural history information about birds and the threats that they face.

[00:03:36] I, my main reason for writing it is just that I wanted to help birds and this was a way I thought I could do that. I especially wanted to help the Hawaiian crow which is an incredible bird that’s received really very little attention and funding. And I’d been fortunate enough to work with them and I wanted to Bring more attention to them.

[00:03:58] Having worked with these endangered species, I felt like I had a unique story to tell. Not so many people have worked with several endangered species. One of the sad things about working with them is that they’re often very few individuals left, but the silver lining to that is that you come to know sometimes in certain situations, the individuals that are left really well, and I became very attached to the individuals I worked with, and I knew that a lot of people enjoy hearing stories about animals, especially individual animals with unique personalities, and I thought that if I could share my experiences with these unique individual birds that people might come to connect with them and care about them.

[00:04:39] And I think when people care about individuals, they very often care about a species. And then when they come to care about a species, they’re more interested in conserving it.

[00:04:49] Michael Hawk: Yeah. Well, your passion really shined through and the stories were at times very, very personal. But I, the point you just made about reflecting on the individual personalities, I think that’s always important for people because I think about how easy it is to dismiss animals is like all the same and kind of like, automatons. When in fact, they’re all different. They’re all unique. They’re all making their way through the world through their own personal kind of lens.

[00:05:20] Sophie Osborn: Yeah, they really are. I They are remarkably different. And I, I’m often told, well, scientists don’t care about individuals. We care about populations. But when you’re working with endangered species, those populations can be very small and they’re comprised of individuals. Each individual is critical.

[00:05:36] Each individual matters. And I came to discover that all of these birds were really different and they did have incredible personalities. Even surprisingly, a bird like the peregrine falcon, which is typically thought of as a hardwired bird. They’re not as intelligent. They don’t learn from their parents the way Hawaiian crows and California condors are.

[00:05:58] They’re pretty instinctive. But even with peregrine falcons, when I reintroduced them to the wild, the five peregrines we had really were all very different and had readily identifiable personalities. And so I think I highlight that when I’m describing what it was like to watch them and try to help them be successful in the wild.

[00:06:16] Michael Hawk: And if I wasn’t clear enough, one of the things I really like to think about is science communication and nature interpretation. And to me, this is just so important because it’s a way for people to connect with animals at a deeper level. So I want to back up maybe a little bit and ask you, you didn’t just wake up one day and say, I’m going to go, work on the California condors.

[00:06:39] There was a journey that you had to take. So, going way back how did you first realize that you were so interested in nature?

[00:06:46] Sophie Osborn: There was definitely a journey, and my journey was more circuitous than most, I think. I did not grow up knowing that I wanted to be a wildlife biologist. I grew up in Switzerland and Vermont, and I lived in very rural areas, and I always loved animals. We had a ton of pets growing up. But I had never heard of wildlife biology, and I thought that if you loved animals, your only option was to be a vet.

[00:07:09] And I spent a summer being a vet tech and I loved it, but I didn’t want to be in a vet’s office for my whole life. So I did international relations and French literature in a university. That was at the University of Pennsylvania, and then I moved to Washington, D. C., thinking maybe I wanted to become a diplomat, but really wishing there was something I could do with animals.

[00:07:30] And I just happened upon a catalog one day from a group called the School for Field Studies, which offers field programs all over the world. And I was looking at the catalog and they had a course that was a wildlife biology course in Kenya in Africa, and I was reading the description and I had never heard of anything like this.

[00:07:49] And I thought, this is what I want to be doing, this is amazing. But I didn’t have a biology background, so I ended up taking a summer biology course and getting a scholarship and doing this class in Africa. And It’s pretty hard not to get excited about wildlife when you spend time in Africa, and I realized this was exactly what I wanted to do.

[00:08:10] I wanted to become a wildlife biologist, so I had to go back to school to do some makeup coursework, and during my first year of taking classes, I applied for my first summer job as a wildlife biologist, which ended up being reintroducing peregrine falcons in Wyoming. And it was that summer working with peregrines and watching them learn to fly that really turned me on to the world of birds.

[00:08:35] After that, I went to work on a variety of birds, including half a dozen raptor species and a number of different songbirds, a parrot, a duck all over Western North America and Central and South America. And I eventually earned a master’s degree from the University of Montana, where my research focused on American Dippers, which is the only truly aquatic songbird in North America, an amazing little bird.

[00:08:59] So aside from peregrine falcons along the way, I worked with two other endangered species, the Hawaiian crow and the California condor. And so those, along with peregrines, as we’ve mentioned, are the stars of my new book, Feather Trails.

[00:09:12] Michael Hawk: Well, let’s jump into the peregrine falcon then. From your perspective, what makes it so astoundingly special?

[00:09:18] Sophie Osborn: I think first and foremost, one of the facts about peregrine falcons that most captivates people is that it is the fastest animal in the world in its dive or stoop as it’s known, being clocked at over 200 miles per hour. It’s a strikingly beautiful top level predator. It feeds on birds and people have been captivated by peregrines for about 4, 000 years. It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone isn’t moved by seeing a peregrine for the first time.

[00:09:47] Michael Hawk: And when you think about that fact that you gave the 200 miles per hour speed and it’s stoop, and you start to think about what kind of physiology is required to do that, it’s pretty amazing. Like even, how do you see when you’re moving that fast? And how do you, like, what happens if dust is hitting your eyes and the air is drying you out so fast?

[00:10:05] And like, there’s just so many cool little things

[00:10:07] Sophie Osborn: Well, exactly. And you’ve touched on, some incredible adaptations that peregrines have in their eyes. I detail a lot of those really amazing adaptations that they have for high speed flight. They’re superbly adapted for doing that.

[00:10:22] Michael Hawk: And there’s some amazing videos online too, of them going into their stoop and, chasing like city pigeons and,

[00:10:28] you know,

[00:10:29] Sophie Osborn: I bet.

[00:10:30] Michael Hawk: So what caused the peregrine to become endangered?

[00:10:33] Sophie Osborn: Well, it was primarily the pesticide DDT, along with a few other highly toxic pesticides. The birds started declining in the 1950s, and it disappeared all over the world. There were losses reported from, almost every continent and many, many countries. And its disappearance precipitated a really big conservation effort to save the species here in North America.

[00:11:00] Peregrines consume birds, as we discussed, and over time, when they fed on birds, they fed on ones that had fed on seeds and invertebrates and vegetation that had been contaminated by DDT. So the peregrines ended up ingesting more and more DDT over time as they fed on these birds. And the breakdown product of DDT, which is known as DDE, accumulated in their bodies, and it interfered with their calcium production.

[00:11:28] And so they were unable to lay or they laid thin shelled eggs. And then when the peregrines incubated the eggs, they ended up crushing them, so they weren’t able to raise young, and the population numbers just collapsed all over the world.

[00:11:44] Michael Hawk: And this is I think what you just described that’s similar to the impact DDT had on bald eagles and a number of other species

[00:11:51] Sophie Osborn: Bald eagles brown pelicans, ospreys, a lot of birds ended up having thin shelled eggs and not being able to raise young during that period.

[00:12:02] Michael Hawk: So when you started working with the peregrines paint a picture of the landscape at that point in terms of the status of the populations and, the number of birds that you were working with?

[00:12:13] Sophie Osborn: I reintroduced them in 1991. Reintroductions had started in 1974 and had mainly occurred in the East . And so the Peregrine had started to recover its numbers . But reintroductions were just ramping up in the west when I started working with them.

[00:12:32] There was some recovery that was going on and DDT had been banned, which was the key, really, to recovering the peregrine that had been banned in 1972. So it was more just trying to repopulate areas more quickly through reintroductions.

[00:12:48] Michael Hawk: So tell me a little bit about the reintroduction process for the peregrines and maybe compare and contrast to some of the other ones you worked on. Before reading your book my uh, perspective on this was a lot of the reintroductions that were happening in the East were being done on tall buildings and cities.

[00:13:06] Like that was where biologists had access to, and I might be wrong, so you can correct me there. But, these birds in the West, what was different about these more wild Western introductions and where did these birds come from? Like what was their genetic origin?

[00:13:22] Sophie Osborn: In the East, they were also reintroduced In cliff habitats, peregrines inhabit a really wide variety of areas, usually open country, and they nest on high ledges. So I think it was fortuitous when they discovered that peregrines were willing to nest on tall buildings as well as cliffs.

[00:13:41] So they reintroduced them on both. They also built these structures in wetlands and reintroduced peregrines out of boxes that were on tall stilts in wetlands. So in the West, there were just, I think, fewer large cities. And so they focused more on natural habitat and cliffs where they were reintroducing them. The peregrine, genetics is complicated.

[00:14:03] The Eastern peregrine had completely disappeared by the time reintroduction started. So when, Peregrines were bred in captivity, they took several subspecies and combined them. And then reintroduced species that had genetics from several different subspecies to peregrines in the East .

[00:14:21] So,

[00:14:22] Michael Hawk: tell me a little bit more about the process then and what that looks like?

[00:14:26] Sophie Osborn: With peregrines, they’re a bird that learns to hunt instinctively. So, reintroducing them to the wild was a fairly straightforward process. I mean, It took a while to work out different techniques. They tried a variety of different things. But what they found worked best was a process called hacking.

[00:14:43] And so they would raise young in captivity and then they would bring the birds to the release site and place them in a really large plywood box that was set up on a cliff or on a building. And they would stay in the box for about a week until they’d finished growing up Hacksite attendants like me would drop food down through a chute to feed them during that week.

[00:15:05] And at about six weeks of age, they were ready to fly. And so we pulled off the front of the box and released them to the wild. And over time they figured out how to hunt on their own. In the meantime, we supplied them with food so that right after the release, there was plenty of food available for them until they learned to hunt on their own.

[00:15:23] We monitored them to make sure they would stay safe. We had to especially keep them safe from predators like golden eagles and great horned owls, and even adult peregrines that could target newly released peregrines. And so we basically, fed them and monitored them and looked out for them for about six weeks.

[00:15:40] And then during that time period, they learned to hunt on their own and dispersed from the release site.

[00:15:47] Michael Hawk: So you mentioned that, DDT had been banned a long time ago and a question I suppose I have with that is there still DDT in the environment at all?

[00:15:55] Like how long does it persist out there? Is there still a risk from DDT?

[00:16:00] Sophie Osborn: There is still a risk from DDT in certain places, it’s a remarkably persistent pesticide, and there were companies that produced DDT, for example, the Montrose Chemical Company in Los Angeles that dumped their toxic waste products into the Los Angeles sewage system, and it went out into the Pacific Ocean and settled, on the seafloor. Today fish that feed in that area are contaminated with DDT, and the sea lions that feed on those fish end up accumulating DDT in their systems, and they’re toxic.

[00:16:39] They then travel up the coast, and California condors have fed on those sea lions, when those animals died. And so California condors nesting in the redwoods on the coast of California now are having thin shelled eggs in certain situations. So this is 50 years later, but there’s still some effects of DDT.

[00:17:02] And there’s other stories too. There’s a certain town in Michigan where a company produced DDT, and many of the townspeople have their yard birds dying because they had fill from the company dirt that they used to form their yards, and it still had DDT in it.

[00:17:19] So robins feed on their lawns and die all these years later.

[00:17:23] Michael Hawk: Wow. The biological mystery of tracking down the causes of that must have been fascinating as well as a few things I want to read about.

[00:17:33] Sophie Osborn: It’s incredible. It’s a very convoluted story but yes, it is very persistent. Fortunately, it’s not affecting all birds everywhere, but there are still localized impacts.

[00:17:45] Michael Hawk: Yeah. I know DDT is still used in different parts of the world too, which is another story, but to help control mosquitoes and, and so forth. So very complicated. But one of the things that we’ve talked about on this podcast before is neonicotinoids. And, uh, it was interesting to see you bring it up in your book as a newer threat.

[00:18:05] And I learned a lot, from your book about how this threat was maybe even broader than I realized. So can you tell me a little bit about what are neonicotinoids and, and what threat do they pose?

[00:18:15] Sophie Osborn: Yeah, and I especially wanted to put it in the context of, here we had this incredible situation with DDT killing all kinds of birds. And so we banned this pesticide. But yet in many ways, we’re going through this, same story where we have a pesticide that’s widespread and persistent and it’s causing problems.

[00:18:34] Neonicotinoids are a family of pesticides that are absolutely deadly to insects. They’re far more toxic to insects than DDT was. I think it takes about 10, 000 times more DDT to kill half a sample of bees than it takes neonicotinoids. So they’re very deadly. Fortunately, they’re less acutely toxic to vertebrates like people and dogs.

[00:18:58] They’re known as systemic insecticides, which means that they’re absorbed by a plant’s roots and leaves. And so the entire plant becomes toxic. So insects that feed on any part of the plant, like its flowers or its fruits or leaves either die or are debilitated. And these pesticides are really widely used in agriculture.

[00:19:19] There’s hundreds of varieties of neonicotinoids, and seeds of more than 140 crops are coated before they’re planted with neonicotinoids, so that they’re not destroyed by insects, basically. But although they’re less toxic to vertebrates, even so, a single corn seed treated with imidacloprid, which is one of the most widely used and oldest neonicotinoids can kill a seed eating bird the size of a blue jay.

[00:19:47] So, they can be harmful to birds and feeding on less than that, like a tenth of a seed every day, can inhibit a bird’s ability to reproduce. So, they still are problematic for birds and maybe more so than we realize. Their widespread use has led to absolutely catastrophic declines of our insect populations.

[00:20:07] Many people are now referring to an insect apocalypse. As so many of our birds feed on insects or else they feed their young insects during the breeding season to raise their nestlings. so With so many of our insects disappearing, that’s impacting our bird populations. We’ve lost about 3 billion birds in the last 50 years, and some of those losses are attributed to neonicotinoids. The pesticides are water soluble, and so they can be transported through runoff from terrestrial to aquatic systems, and they can contaminate our surface and groundwater. And like DDT, they’re very persistent, so they’re toxic to earthworms and our soil organisms to the aquatic invertebrates that feed our fish, to the birds and bees that pollinate our plants, and of course, to the insects that sustain our birds and bats. So they’re having pretty ecosystemic effects. And even though, they’re not killing birds quite as directly as DDT harmed peregrines, because of that loss of insects, they’re having an incredible toll on wildlife generally.

[00:21:14] Michael Hawk: Yeah, I’ve been amazed. Some of the research I’ve read shows how if you plant a plant that has been treated with a neonic, how it can actually leach into a neighboring plant as well. And just the, incredible persistence of these chemicals. We even did a, in the Jumpstart Nature podcast, an episode called Plant Your Bird Feeder.

[00:21:34] And, And the idea there was to help dispel, in the casual, person who has a bird feeder, the myth that all birds eat seeds, because as you alluded to very few are just dedicated seed eaters, granivorous birds. They almost all require insects at some point in their life. And if those insects are gone, that’s the cascading effect.

[00:21:56] So just so far reaching.

[00:21:58] Sophie Osborn: So neonics might not affect peregrines directly, but, if there are far fewer insects, and so birds aren’t raising as many young, then there are fewer birds in general. And so a bird like a peregrine that depends on birds down the road may end up being harmed by them.

[00:22:15] Michael Hawk: I don’t quite know how to ask this question, so I’ll do it the best way I can. So I think of peregrines as like an apex predator So when there are cracks in the foundation of, all the species they depend on, are they more adversely harmed? that make They are absolutely apex predators. And I think we just don’t yet know how they’re going to be affected. For now, peregrine numbers have recovered compared to the DDT era. They were taken off the endangered species list in 1999. They’re not currently considered a bird of concern. Their population numbers are stable. They’re doing well. But what happens in the future with declining bird populations is anyone’s guess. I would think that they would potentially decline. One thing that peregrines have going for them is they’re very opportunistic in the number of birds they kill, and they’re incredible. They’re known to have killed maybe 2, 000 different species of birds. 20 percent of the world’s birds. And so they have that going from them. Even if certain birds decline, they can target other species. So it may be longer before peregrines are affected by neonicotinoids.

[00:23:34] That’s a good point. As a generalist Apex Predator, they have other options on

[00:23:38] Sophie Osborn: apex.

[00:23:38] Exactly.

[00:23:39] Michael Hawk: So I’m much, much less familiar with the Hawaiian crow. Maybe you can, again, just help paint a picture of, what does this bird look like? How does it behave? Maybe compared to an American crow that I think a lot of people would be familiar with.

[00:23:52] Sophie Osborn: Right. The Hawaiian crow is the most endangered corvid in the world. Corvids are ravens, crows, jays, and nutcrackers. And most people are astonished to hear that any crow anywhere is endangered because we tend to think of our American crows as very opportunistic and able to cope with people and their habitat.

[00:24:11] But Island living crows that live in forested habitats are some of our most endangered birds. The Hawaiian crow lives on the island of Hawaii, or the Big Island, and the Hawaiian island chain, and it resides in the cloud forest. It looks quite like our American crow. It’s a little duskier brown and has a bigger bill, and it’s actually more closely related to common ravens than to American crows.

[00:24:38] They are a forest species. They’re very arboreal. They feed on a wide variety of fruits, and they’re really important seed dispersers in the Hawaiian cloud forest. They also feed on insects, which they find under bark, flakes of bark, on tree trunks and branches, or in clusters of leaves. And they also probe for nectar in flower blossoms.

[00:25:00] So they’re definitely different than the crows that we’re used to experiencing.

[00:25:04] Michael Hawk: Yeah, and I have never had the privilege of seeing one and it makes sense if they’re only on the one island in the Hawaiian chain.

[00:25:11] Sophie Osborn: Just the one island. And one thing I loved about them, which I didn’t mention, is they have just this wide variety of incredible vocalizations. They have about 60 different calls that they make. And for me, the Hawaiian crow really became the voice of the cloud forest when I was there on Hawaii.

[00:25:28] They’re just, raucous and sometimes quiet and whispery and murmuring, but very vocal So the forests were always ringing with the sounds of the alala, which was amazing.

[00:25:39] Michael Hawk: That’s really neat. And, I think a lot of people maybe don’t realize how, Corvids in general have a wide range of vocalizations and capabilities and like Ravens can speak English kind of like a parrot, like they, maybe they don’t know what they’re saying, but they can at least mimic.

[00:25:53] So this one, it sounds like it’s at the top of the stack in terms

[00:25:56] Sophie Osborn: It really is.

[00:25:57] Michael Hawk: So why is it endangered? What’s going on with its populations?

[00:26:02] Sophie Osborn: So a good portion of its habitat in Hawaii was destroyed by Polynesian colonizers and European colonizers and the animals that they brought with them. And in more recent times, Their numbers were also really impacted by introduced predators and diseases on the islands.

[00:26:19] Hawaiian birds evolved on islands that had no mammals, except for bats, and so they had no mammalian predators, no reptilian predators, and their only native predator was the Hawaiian hawk or ‘io’ As it’s known in Hawaii, but people introduced rats and mongooses and cats all of which prey on Hawaiian birds that had never evolved to deal with predators.

[00:26:40] So the rats are tree dwelling, so they can get up into the trees and consume eggs and nestlings, which is obviously very problematic. And if Hawaiian crow nestlings avoided the rats and managed to fledge they typically spent their first few weeks on the ground, unable to fly. And that was a great strategy when there were no predators around, but now that there are cats and mongooses They’re acutely vulnerable to being killed. Hawaiian birds have also been decimated by introduced mosquitoes. At one time, Hawaii had no biting insects, so it was a complete avian paradise, and probably a paradise for people too. But mosquitoes were introduced to the islands in 1826, and they became disease vectors for two introduced diseases, avian malaria and avian pox.

[00:27:28] And those took an incredible toll on Hawaiian birds. Mosquito transmission of these diseases is the major reason that we now call Hawaii the extinction capital of the world. Many of the native birds end up dying after just a single mosquito bite, so they’re very vulnerable to these diseases.

[00:27:47] Michael Hawk: It sounds, pretty dire. So all these different species have been introduced, leading to the current state of as you said, Hawaii being the extinction capital I’m thinking also about New Zealand and how they’ve taken very dramatic action to rid their islands of certain predators.

[00:28:06] Is anything like that even possible in Hawaii to, like, I can’t imagine that with mosquitoes, but you know, some of the other predators that had been introduced, is there any way to reset things?

[00:28:18] Sophie Osborn: They are working really hard on it and one of the ways they’re doing that is by installing fencing, so they’ll put fences around certain protected areas, and then they will try to target and kill the animals that are within those fences, the cats and the mongooses. One of the problems is feral pigs.

[00:28:38] There’s also a lot of, introduce cattle and pigs on the landscape. And the feral pigs are especially problematic because they create wallows, they disturb and destroy the undergrowth, but they also, while they’re rooting for tubers and earthworms, they create these depressions where water collects, and then mosquitoes end up depositing their eggs in these depressions.

[00:29:03] And so getting rid of the feral pigs out of these fenced areas is a high priority, but it’s controversial because many hunters like to hunt the pigs. So that’s one problem. They can trap animals and they,, have done a great job in certain areas, improving the habitat. The mosquito situation is obviously way more complicated and it’s, it’s even more dire than I have spoken about so far because many of the native birds that are left on Hawaii now live at high elevations because that’s, they’re cooler and there are fewer mosquitoes in those areas.

[00:29:37] But in our warming climate, mosquitoes are able to occur at higher and higher elevations and there’s soon going to be no mosquito free habitat left in Hawaii for those few remaining native birds. And mitigating the mosquito threat, as you suggested, is really challenging. But there are some good tools that people are deploying, hopefully.

[00:29:59] Right now, one of the best options is a biocontrol. It’s called Wolbachia and it’s a bacteria that is a common and naturally occurring in many, many insects, and in Hawaii, it’s found in many native and non native insects, including mosquitoes. And when it’s in mosquitoes, it reduces their lifespan, it can disrupt their reproduction, and it interferes with the pathogens they carry.

[00:30:25] And so what conservationist researchers are doing, is they’re infecting male mosquitoes in the lab with a particular strain of Wolbachia. The males don’t bite people and don’t transmit diseases. It’s the females that do that. So they infect the males with a lab strain of Wolbachia, and then they’re releasing them to the wild, where those males will then mate with females.

[00:30:50] And when they mate, They effectively sterilize the females because the Wolbachia strains that the males have and that the females might have are incompatible, and when they are, it stops the eggs from developing. So with each release of Wolbachia containing males, they’re hoping that the population of mosquitoes will decline, and they started basically dropping male mosquitoes containing Wolbachia in November.

[00:31:15] of last year, and they’re dropping them into areas that are important to forest birds on Kauai and Maui, and so I don’t know the results of that yet, but they are starting to do that, and it’s sort of a last ditch desperate measure, because if we don’t control mosquitoes, we’re not going to be able to conserve Hawaii’s birds.

[00:31:34] Michael Hawk: Well, it’s going to be, in a way, fascinating to see how this plays out with the rapid reproduction cycle of mosquitoes. And, if they start to adapt to the Wolbachia uh, or not, this will be important to watch.

[00:31:47] Sophie Osborn: And there’s some other methods like, gene editing and things like that, that they can do with mosquitoes so that they don’t transmit these diseases or so that they don’t reproduce successfully. So they’ve done some of that work with mosquitoes that transmit human malaria. So there are some other potential options, but, they’re increasingly invasive And expensive and involved, so none of this is easy conservation.

[00:32:13] Michael Hawk: Now this might seem like a little bit of a leap to people, but the topic of toxoplasmosis came up in your book. So can you help connect those dots here?

[00:32:24] Sophie Osborn: I think that’s a fascinating issue. Toxoplasmosis is a cat transmitted disease. And it’s a serious concern to people in wildlife. It’s killed Several Hawaiian crows and at least 14 critically endangered monk seals. People are often surprised that it can kill aquatic animals as well as terrestrial animals.

[00:32:45] And it’s a risk to a host of other organisms, people and also organisms ranging from whales to wolves. It’s really widespread disease. The disease is , caused by a parasite. It’s called Toxoplasma gondii, and it’s a single celled parasite that reproduces in feline intestines. It’s excreted from their intestines in the form of oocysts, which are these single egg like cells excreted in cat feces.

[00:33:11] And it’s eventually ingested by an intermediate host, like a rat or a person. Aside from causing damage in that host the parasite eventually settles in the form of cysts in the host brain, and it affects the neural circuitry of the brain. And so infected rats, for example, lose their fear of cats and they actually become attracted to cat urine.

[00:33:32] So not surprisingly, they become easy prey and they restart the cycles. It’s this incredibly ingenious parasite. And the Toxoplasma oocysts are very persistent in the environment. They can remain for a really long time and because of runoff, they can contaminate terrestrial and aquatic environments, as I mentioned.

[00:33:52] Worldwide, it’s one of the most common human parasitic infections and people can Contract it by eating contaminated vegetables. Like, if, the parasite gets into a water reservoir, for example, and then that water is used to water vegetables, they can become contaminated. It also can be transmitted for people who eat undercooked meat, and by emptying cat litter boxes, if people have outdoor cats, or even by weeding a garden that’s visited by cats.

[00:34:23] Michael Hawk: I remember when my wife was pregnant, we were told that l itter box duty

[00:34:28] was now my

[00:34:29] Sophie Osborn: All yours.

[00:34:30] Michael Hawk: Even though our cats were indoors, they still wanted to be very, very cautious with that. So that, that was my first introduction to toxoplasmosis.

[00:34:37] Sophie Osborn: yeah, and it’s good to be cautious about it. Usually indoor cats are fine unless you feed them raw meat. But essentially it’s just a very good reason to keep cats inside. For a long time, scientists thought that when it was in this latent phase with cysts near the brain, it didn’t actually affect humans, like we knew it affected rats but growing body of research is showing that the disease might be associated with a variety of mental disorders, including depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, things like that.

[00:35:10] There was a study in Europe where women who had toxoplasmosis were twice as likely to commit suicide as women who didn’t have toxoplasmosis. So it’s seeming like it could be much more harmful to people than we initially realized. It also, in rats, makes them not fearful. It makes them bolder and braver.

[00:35:31] And we’re finding that it has that effect on other animals too. So a lot of animals including people that contract toxoplasmosis are more prone to having accidents and trauma.

[00:35:43] than people without toxoplasmosis. So it’s a fascinating and quite horrifying parasite.

[00:35:49] Michael Hawk: And you mentioned at the beginning that it does affect Hawaiian crows. And sorry, if you said this, there’s just so much great information there. But backing up a little bit, how does then affect the crows.

[00:36:02] Sophie Osborn: , they’re definitely trying to trap cats out of areas where they’re trying to reintroduce crows now, but there are a lot of feral cats in Hawaii. People have feral cat colonies that they take care of. And so that’s how some of the parasites getting washed into the waterways but the forests have a lot of feral cats and so they’re defecating in the forest and rodents might pick that up or the crows are somehow ingesting, some of the feces that might be dried and have seeds in them or something like that. I’m not sure how the crows end up getting it but it’s because cats are in their environment and several crows have died from it.

[00:36:40] Michael Hawk: As a little bit of an aside, do you find that the feral cats are actually directly killing the Hawaiian crows ?

[00:36:47] Sophie Osborn: I think so. Predation events in a forest can be so difficult to see. I don’t know that anyone’s actually witnessed a cat killing a crow, although there have been several dead crows that they thought were killed, probably by either a cat or a mongoose one of the people that I worked with when I was in Hawaii saw a mongoose jump out of the undergrowth and grab on to a Hawaiian crow. It managed to extricate itself and he helped with that. So I think it is happening or it was happening when the crows were out in the wild, but it’s just not something that’s very easy to document. But they’re so vulnerable and for sure the young when they leave the nest were very likely to be killed by predators.

[00:37:29] Michael Hawk: So what are the estimates right now for population size for the Hawaiian crow?

[00:37:34] Sophie Osborn: So, There apparently are about 120 crows in captivity, and the ʻalalā is currently extinct in the wild. There are no crows in the wild right now.

[00:37:45] Michael Hawk: Yeah. So that, that would help reinforce the fact that, okay. Yeah. Cats are not directly killing them at the moment.

[00:37:51] Sophie Osborn: Right, At the moment,

[00:37:52] Yeah, they’re not out there. And interestingly, part of the reason that Some of the reintroductions ultimately failed because reintroduced birds were being killed by the Hawaiian hawks or ʻios which is astonishing to many people.

[00:38:07] And, And it’s, I think it’s still somewhat baffling to biologists because there used to be a balance between the Hawaiian hawks and crows. They lived together on Hawaii for eons, but the balance has somehow been upended and the predators are really taking a heavy toll on reintroduced birds.

[00:38:25] So, the program right now is currently planning to reintroduce Hawaiian crows on Maui, which doesn’t have Hawaiian hawks. So, it’s not a native Island for the Hawaiian crow, but they’re going to try to release them there so that they can get them out there, get them to reproduce successfully in the wild.

[00:38:44] And that will be really critical step and then tackle the ʻio after that, and how they’ll handle reintroducing them in Hawaii once they’re successful on Maui. So that’s the big hope. They’ve done the environmental analyses and those reintroductions are supposed to start taking place this year. So there is a big ray of hope for the Hawaiian crow right now.

[00:39:04] Michael Hawk: Yeah, it makes sense, at least to me as a sort of a layperson, to say, okay, you’re removing one of the other pressures that the birds will face by doing that and learning a lot in the process too that will hopefully be transferable to getting them back on the island of Hawaii.

[00:39:19] Sophie Osborn: Right. Exactly.

[00:39:20] Michael Hawk: So moving on then in our trio of really cool birds let’s get to the California condor. And I just want to shout out real quick. Maybe it was six to eight months ago. I had a crossover. Podcast episode about California condors from Michelle Fulmer and the Golden State Naturalist podcast.

[00:39:38] So, if people want more condor content, go check that one out. So getting into your story with the condors tell me about how you got engaged with the condor recovery program.

[00:39:50] Sophie Osborn: It was actually by chance, I had applied for a position with the Peregrine Fund, which was a conservation group that actually oversaw the Peregrine Falcon work that I did, and the Hawaiian Crow work that I did. But I just happened to apply to them to become their South American biologist and after receiving my application, they were short staffed on their condor program.

[00:40:12] They were overseeing the condor reintroduction effort in Arizona. And so they contacted me and asked if I could help them out for a little while. I was tied up in a research job in Montana, but I took a leave of absence and went to Arizona for a month just to help out. And that was really a life transforming experience.

[00:40:30] It was incredible getting to work with and know the condors, but I essentially left after that month thinking that was it for me in condors. I ended up getting that South America job and going to Peru and working to study a forest eagle. It was called the black and chestnut eagle. It’s a cloud forest eagle.

[00:40:48] And I was supposed to be there for a year, but four months into the project, the field manager of the condor. project resigned, and so the Peregrine Fund asked me to come back to the U. S. and take over as the project field manager. So it was not what I expected when I first dipped my toes into the condor world.

[00:41:08] But it was exciting anyway.

[00:41:09] Michael Hawk: So you mentioned Arizona. So I’m assuming this is up North, like near the Grand Canyon, Vermilion cliffs, somewhere up in that area.

[00:41:17] Sophie Osborn: Exactly. Vermilion Cliffs. it’s a great set of cliffs north of Grand Canyon, and it’s turned out to be an incredible area to release condors. It’s accessible to biologists, which Grand Canyon is more difficult for biologists to get into. So when they were looking for sites in Arizona to do a reintroduction, the Vermilion Cliffs were perfect.

[00:41:37] In recovering condors, they wanted to have two different populations so that if a disease or a natural disaster struck the birds in California, there would be another population that would keep going. And so that’s why they decided to do one in Arizona since birds had been in the Grand Canyon historically.

[00:41:55] Michael Hawk: Right. I, it’s been a few months now, but I was looking at a map of what was thought to be the historical range of these birds. And it was I wouldn’t say immense, but it was quite a bit larger than what I expected. I think going all the way down to Baja and maybe up to Oregon, perhaps even Washington correct me if I’m wrong.

[00:42:11] Sophie Osborn: Exactly. And in the Pleistocene era, there are records over in New York State

[00:42:15] and Florida. So,, So they were much more widespread in the Pleistocene. And then people think that their range contracted with the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna, which was mammoths and giant ground sloths.

[00:42:27] And so they were then just on the West Coast and then eventually were limited to just California.

[00:42:34] Michael Hawk: So just. Again, a lot of this information is in the other episode, but people that don’t want to listen to that are probably wondering, well, what are the threats that the condors. see today.

[00:42:44] Sophie Osborn: I think the, the main threat, there were many threats that reduced their numbers initially, they were, they were heavily persecuted, shot, people used to put out poison carcasses to kill coyotes and wolves and bears and condors as scavengers would feed on those carcasses and get poisoned but really the major factor in Reducing condor numbers has been lead poisoning and they ingest lead ammunition fragments in the carcasses that they feed on and then they’re poisoned inadvertently that way.

[00:43:16] Michael Hawk: And as I understand it, the lead ammunition is really problematic because of those fragments, because it just shatters within, the target animal.

[00:43:25] Sophie Osborn: That’s exactly right. When you shoot lead into an animal, it loses about 30 percent of its mass and it fragments into these just tiny little particles. You can look at an x ray of a deer that’s been killed, shot by a hunter and it looks like just the starry sky at night. There’s just tiny powder. Small little pieces of lead that spreads very far from the actual entry wound. So it’s really extraordinary. And when you see those x rays, you realize how it would be nearly impossible for a group of condors feeding on a carcass or a gut pile. If a hunter has killed an animal and field dressed it and left the gut pile there, it makes perfect sense how they just can’t avoid ingesting lead.

[00:44:08] And it doesn’t take much to poison them.

[00:44:11] Michael Hawk: Yeah. I was just a couple of months ago having a conversation with someone and they’re like, why don’t, I think, I think it’s non hunters. Probably imagine this bullet is still intact as a, as a full piece. And they’re like, well, why doesn’t the condor avoid it or spit it out? Or, like, how stupid is this animal?

[00:44:26] But it’s, it’s a myth, it’s a, it’s a misunderstanding anyway, maybe not a myth, but a misunderstanding that a lot of people have about lead ammo.

[00:44:34] Sophie Osborn: It’s, yeah, the x rays really bring it home to people. Like, we had a lot of hunters on our field crew when I was working with condors, and the first time we finally saw an x ray of a deer that had been killed, it just was shocked. Everyone immediately started using non lead ammo

[00:44:50] Michael Hawk: Yeah. It’s a risk to the hunters and people consuming.

[00:44:53] Sophie Osborn: It’s a huge risk to hunters and I don’t know when and if you want to go into that.

[00:44:58] Michael Hawk: Let’s tackle it now.

[00:44:59] Sophie Osborn: Okay for many years I don’t think people realized how harmful this lead ammunition could be to people, too. But when we started seeing x rays of deer that had been killed and could see just the, Fragments and powder dust of lead spread in the carcass people became concerned.

[00:45:19] And so to investigate that, a North Dakota doctor x rayed packages of venison that had been donated to local food banks by hunters in 2007. And he x rayed 100 packages and 59 percent of them had visible lead fragments in an x ray. And I have pictures of at least one of those packages. And it’s astonishing because you, you just, it looks like points of light and it looks like there’s 30 or 40 points of light on this x ray and those are little pieces of lead fragments.

[00:45:51] So people were ingesting lead when they were getting food bank donations. So after those findings were publicized, other states x rayed their venison and they found that they’re venison also had alarming levels of lead. And yet, despite those findings years ago food bank donations still aren’t regulated.

[00:46:11] Hunter killed meat is still donated to food banks. And so, unbeknownst to them, millions of hunters who are feeding their families with hunter killed meat and food banks that are receiving donations, millions of people That are, that are eating, generous donations from hunters may be ingesting lead and that kind of consumption could be having profoundly negative health and societal outcomes.

[00:46:37] It’s, it’s really disturbing because we worry about lead in our pipes and in our children’s toys or other forms of lead. We, we eliminated leaded gasoline. We’re concerned with lead in paint. And yet, the biggest form of lead out there that’s unregulated is lead ammunition, and people are ingesting it.

[00:46:55] Michael Hawk: There’s been a lot of research in recent years of the long term effects of that leaded gasoline and leaded paint and how it’s still permeating through society today. I’m curious, you said you had pictures of some of this I think it was the venison. Would you be able to share that with me? I’d love to like re share that in the show notes so people could see it for themselves.

[00:47:16] Sophie Osborn: that sounds great. That, yeah, I’ll definitely do that. So, and I think it’s just one of the things I’m most surprised about is how little attention the human health threat gets. I felt like, I was so concerned with lead With condors and had to spend so much of my time working, trying to rescue condors that had ingested lead and treat them for lead.

[00:47:38] And so I thought this will really change when people realize there’s a human health impact. People are going to not want to use lead ammunition anymore. And yet they still are. Scores of medical doctors, public health experts, and scientists have highlighted the human health threat posed by lead ammunition, and they’ve called for the use of non lead ammunition

[00:47:58] and I think part of the problem is that hunter advocacy groups, like the NRA, have said, there’s no cause for concern. We’ve been hunting with lead bullets for years, and so we really don’t need to worry about it. No one’s ever been harmed by it. But the effects of lead can be really subtle, and they’re often attributed to other causes.

[00:48:17] For example, In adults, chronic lead effects can include high blood pressure, decreased kidney function, reproductive issues like impotence or miscarriages, can cause digestive problems and muscle and joint pain. It might be related to cognitive decline and dementia in older adults, and it affects longevity.

[00:48:39] So adult with higher Lead levels are more likely to die of cancer and they have an increased risk of death from strokes and, heart attacks. So, they might attribute those things to other causes, but oftentimes they’re tied to lead and people don’t realize it. And in children, lead can lead to lower IQ levels and learning disabilities.

[00:49:00] It can also lead to delinquent and aggressive behavior. And that’s something that you alluded to with the leaded gasoline that I thought was so amazing. There’s been a number of studies that have linked lead exposure in childhood to future criminality. And a number of studies attribute the widespread decline of violence in cities in the 1990s to the phasing out of leaded gasoline in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

[00:49:28] And so. Maybe there is this tie to lead and violence, and we have no idea if and how ingesting lead ammunition might be contributing to that. We might think, I’m not eating hunter killed meat, so I’m fine. But what if those who are, some small tiny proportion of those people have a greater tendency to violence?

[00:49:49] Is that contributing to, the violence we see today, the mass shootings, some of those issues? I don’t know. I just hope people look into it.

[00:49:58] Michael Hawk: these are topics that really play on, I think the limitations of our psychology because it’s, it’s indirect, it’s, it’s percentages. It’s probabilities. But when you start looking at the data and the analysis, it’s, it’s in many cases, undeniable. Other cases, harder to decipher,

[00:50:14] Sophie Osborn: Exactly. But very similar to issues like smoking that, took years for people to really conclusively say, this is a concern. And there were many entities that were trying to block information about that. And I feel like that’s something that’s been happening with lead ammunition as well.

[00:50:34] Michael Hawk: Yeah, each of these stories, there are parallels, past experiences that, that seems like we didn’t quite learn the lesson from and we’re having to, to relearn it.

[00:50:44] Sophie Osborn: Exactly. And I think, something I try to highlight in my book is, is some of these species really are the canaries in the coal mine for us. These, these birds are visible, they’re vocal, they’re easy to monitor, and , they’re indications that things are harmful in their environment.

[00:51:00] And very often those things are also harmful to us.

[00:51:03] Michael Hawk: So getting back then to the reintroduction efforts we, we saw two very different approaches for the Peregrines and the Hawaiian Crow. Something that stood out to me in your book was in the early days of these programs for the condors. The condors seem to trust people too much. Can you tell me a little bit about that and how it ties into the, the broader reintroduction effort?

[00:51:28] Sophie Osborn: Yes, I, I would word it slightly differently. I wouldn’t say they trust people too much, but they Juvenile condors are exceptionally curious, and they typically sort of explore the world with their bills, and they didn’t have parents on hand to teach them that People were potentially dangerous, and so juvenile condors were released to the wild without parents, and they very often would be attracted to people I can say why in a moment, but they would then possibly approach people or land in inappropriate places more because they didn’t have mentors to tell them not to, and they let their curiosity overwhelmed their caution, and so we were on hand to try to teach them not to perch on buildings or lampposts or, on the edge of the cliff where people were walking close by so that we basically had to let them know that people were more dangerous than they intended. And I think it’s fascinating because you would think maybe condors, they have all this wild country to, to fly around in, but they very often come to the busiest areas they can find, which is at the south rim of the Grand Canyon, where there’s just a ton of people. But in their evolutionary history, condors were attracted to large aggregations of animals, and that made sense.

[00:52:46] Wherever there were big aggregations of animals, there would be births and deaths and predators killing animals. And so, they’re not attracted to empty seeming landscapes. They’re attracted to activity and commotion and lots of animals together. And so in a place like Grand Canyon, that’s at the South Rim.

[00:53:03] So they very often leave the release site and come straight to the South Rim and check out all the people and the chaos and buzz over crowds and things like that, but we spent many years teaching them, not to land close to people and, and, Most of them are now amazing. They, they land, on the cliffs or far enough away from people and the juveniles that are released today usually key into those older adults now.

[00:53:28] Michael Hawk: One of the things that I really liked about your book was all the chapters have these like kind of short, but poignant titles. And one of them, one of the chapters and titles that really stood out to me was called No Tags.

[00:53:40] can you tell me what you meant by No Tags?

[00:53:43] Sophie Osborn: I can. Since the early days of the recovery program, biologists marked condors with large numbers on their wings so that we could identify them at a distance, and we also put radio transmitters on them so we could track them. There were so few individuals left, and so it was really important to keep tabs on every individual that was out there.

[00:54:04] And when we reintroduced condors, Every single bird in the population had number tags and transmitters because every bird was critical to the reintroduction effort. When I joined the program the very first condors that had been released as juveniles were reaching breeding age, so they’re usually six to eight years old before they start breeding.

[00:54:25] And so, when I arrived, the birds were, were almost six years old. And so for the next few years, we were. All on tenterhooks, wondering if our reintroduced condors would be able to reproduce successfully. Would they pull off a chick? And it was a roller coaster ride for a number of years. We had eggs that wouldn’t hatch and chicks that ended up dying, but all along the way, our big hope was to see a young condor.

[00:54:53] That was raised by our reintroduced birds, leave the nest, and it would do so with no tags. It would fly free without tags, which mean it had never been touched by people. And it was an example of a return to what condors once looked like. And so I think write about my watching and observing the very first condor chick in recorded history in Arizona.

[00:55:17] And part of the suspense of that last chapter is, was I going to be able to see this chick leave the nest?

[00:55:24] Michael Hawk: So we can leave that as a teaser for people to to find out about themselves. And there’s so much we can talk about in all these subjects, but, you’re, you pointing out the amount of time it takes them to become mature in the first place. And something else we haven’t talked about is that there’s, So much lead out there still that it’s still a very hands on monitoring and beyond monitoring, but, intervention sort of process to to keep these birds healthy.

[00:55:51] Sophie Osborn: Yes, it’s a hugely intensive process. I mean, The birds are recaptured on a regular basis. If any time, if we tracked our birds and realized that they had fed on a coyote, for example, those were almost always shot. Or if we thought another carcass might have lead in it during the hunting season, for example, we would have to recapture those birds, which was an intensive effort.

[00:56:12] We would catch them, draw their blood. We had a field tester. We would test their lead levels in the field. If they had high lead levels, we had to hold them for multiple weeks. If they had really, really high lead levels, we’d have to take them to a vet and x ray them to see if they had lead fragments in them and then had to monitor whether they were able to get that out of their system.

[00:56:34] But for birds that had high levels of lead, we had to treat them in a process that’s called chelation, which is basically injecting them with a substance that binds the lead and helps remove it from their body. And that’s a really intensive process. They would get two injections a day in their breast muscle.

[00:56:51] So we’d have to hold them in a flight pen and each twice a day go and net them and inject them. And there’s one condor in California, I think, that had lead poisoning 13 times. So, it received at least 130 chelation injections and they would get these injections twice a day for five days. If they still had high levels, then we’d have to do a second week of chelation.

[00:57:13] And then eventually we were able to, usually. Well, not always, but often save them and release them to the wild, but it is intensive monitoring. And I felt so much of the time, like Sisyphus pushing a rock up the hill, I just kept having to recapture and treat condors and then let them go free and be happy about it and then recapture them again and treat them again for lead.

[00:57:35] So it’s, it’s a tough situation.

[00:57:37] Michael Hawk: Yeah. I think the biologists, today are still facing that same feeling. There’s a a spot South of where I live at Pinnacles National Park that has a program going on. And And for me, it’s actually a relatively easy place to see the condors, like the campground area at the park it’s, it’s not at all uncommon to see them soaring over the ridge down there And there’s, there’s hope, here, because some of those birds that are tracked by satellite have been taking kind of exploratory flights to new territories and new ranges.

[00:58:08] So, it seems like people just believe it’s only a matter of time before some of these populations start to expand into new areas. So it’s really exciting.

[00:58:17] Sophie Osborn: It’s hugely hopeful. I mean, They’re definitely intensively monitored. It is a program that, the birds, if they weren’t being monitored and reintroduced because of lead, they would eventually go back toward extinction. But at one time, there were 22 birds left and there’s now, close to 600.

[00:58:36] So in the wild, about 344, last count. So, it is, it is a very hopeful program, and I think it’s moving in the right direction, but the, the deal breaker and the thing that would make all the difference in the world is if people would shoot with non-lead.

[00:58:52] More widely, there are now regulations in California prohibiting the use of lead because of condors, but, there’s still poaching.

[00:59:01] There’s still prevalent lead use. It’s really difficult to police that. So, I think we have to have sort of a nationwide rethink about the kind of ammunition that we’re using.

[00:59:12] Michael Hawk: So you mentioned earlier that the Peregrine Fund and, each of these three species need help. What can people do? What can listeners do on this podcast to help? Maybe it’s donating to a cause or something. They, stop using lead, obviously. But what else comes to mind?

[00:59:27] Sophie Osborn: Do you mean specifically to help , these particular species or birds in general?

[00:59:32] Michael Hawk: I was thinking of these specific species, but if you want to. Dovetail that into birds in general. I know, again, it could be an entire episode, but I’m happy to hear

[00:59:41] Sophie Osborn: Right. Well, I think to help these species, probably the best effort is to read about them, learn about them and support the organizations working most closely with them. A lot of these organizations are efforts that depend on public donations, so that can be hugely. But I think in general, there’s, there’s all sorts of things people can do to help birds.

[01:00:05] And I try to end my book in that direction, because, these three species have helped illustrate threats that also affect other organisms and other birds. And so I think the more we can do to help birds generally, the better. The better off we’ll all be. And there’s just, I feel like there are just hundreds of ways, small ways in our day to day lives that we can help.

[01:00:29] One of the biggest things, of course, is keeping our cats indoors, which is better for the cats, because they end up living about 10 years longer than outdoor cats. I know it can be hard for people, but there’s an amazing number of ways now that we can enrich the lives of indoor cats, and cats are the number one human caused threat for birds. So that’s always a big one, but you can put decals on windows, you can refrain from using pesticides around your house, you can plant native species, you can eat organic foods because that promotes, farming without pesticides. There’s just, All kinds of, of different things.

[01:01:06] You can supportconservation groups and, and open spaces, public lands. There are lots of ways that people can help. And I try to give people each time I have a blog post, I try to include some tips for different random ways people can help.

[01:01:22] Michael Hawk: I know one thing that has been historically hard for me when I hear these things, when there’s so many options, such a, kind of a target rich environment that it can become overwhelming. So I, I often remind myself, just start with one thing and then layer on some of the other, things as, as you go

[01:01:38] Sophie Osborn: I think that’s brilliant advice and I try to say that I feel like, I always just feel like anything is better than nothing. And there’s 96 million of us at last count people who watch birds and love birds. And so if each of us does one thing, if you can’t cope with having your cat indoors, maybe keep it in for five days when you think a nest might be hatching or fledging in your home.

[01:02:00] And if, 10 million people keep their cat inside for a week, that’s Something more than nothing, if you don’t want your windows covered with decals, put two on. And so, there’s just small things we can do pick up a little bit of trash or put less trash out there. There’s all kinds of things that can make a difference.

[01:02:19] And I think the, the whole point is that anything is better than nothing. And so anything you do is something. That can

[01:02:25] Michael Hawk: contribute

[01:02:26] That decal thing really speaks to me because I, I read the science and it’s like, well, you really need a lot of coverage to, to be bulletproof, but you’re right. Something is better than nothing. So, absolutely.

[01:02:37] Sophie Osborn: That’s my philosophy. So I, you know, I don’t cover my windows entirely, but I do put some on and, and that really helps. So,

[01:02:44] Michael Hawk: time has flown by here. We are, we’re wrapping up. So I, would love to ask you this question that that I often ask my guests. And that’s what do you think is missing or hindering broader action to support biodiversity, promote sustainability, promote these things that we’re talking about?

[01:03:01] I think I want to make sure that people realize that there are a wide diversity of threats out there. I think we hear so much about climate change and It’s a huge issue.

[01:03:12] Sophie Osborn: Climate change is an existential threat to life on this planet. So it’s a huge, huge concern, and I don’t want to minimize that. But I do think when we speak mainly about climate change, some people do feel overwhelmed and aren’t sure how we can help. But there are a lot of other concerns that we’ve highlighted today, and Some of those concerns are things that individuals can really. Make a difference for, like using pesticides, there are all kinds of small things like night lighting can affect birds negatively, affect wildlife negatively. So reducing your outside lighting there’s just, there are just many other issues that impact wildlife, where we can really make a difference.

[01:03:59] And I think when we take care of some of the other problems that affect birds, we’re liable to have more robust and healthy bird populations and have more resilient bird populations. And when we have more resilient bird populations, we’re going to set them up to deal with climate change better. So I think it’s really important not to dismiss other threats to birds and to keep learning about them and trying to address them so that we have a more holistic approach to, to saving our wildlife.

[01:04:32] Michael Hawk: at the beginning, you mentioned the word feeling overwhelmed or the concept of feeling overwhelmed. And and that’s why I’m always, promoting just doing one thing because it starts people on that path of having some agency, feeling that there’s some control, which really is a great way to combat that.

[01:04:50] Overwhelm, mentality.

[01:04:52] Sophie Osborn: I think it’s good to feel, feel good about just the small things that you do do. We, we can’t all do all of it. We can’t, we can’t be perfect in every element of our lives, if you go to the grocery store and you buy organic strawberries, that’s your thing for helping birds this week because that’s, helped organic farms and reduce pesticides.

[01:05:12] So it can be that small. And you’ve also, done something healthy for yourself too. So I think that,, I think we should celebrate all of the small things that we do. And really, I do think that anything is better than nothing. That one decal can make a difference.

[01:05:27] Michael Hawk: All right. So I would love to hear, do you have any other upcoming projects or anything that you’d like to highlight for our listeners, what’s coming next for you?

[01:05:34] Sophie Osborn: my next project is actually another book that I’ve been working on concurrently for a while. It’s sort of a different. take than, my current book, but a fellow biologist and I have worked for a number of years now to create an anthology of field stories by and about women biologists. And we’ve created, I think, an amazing book full of incredible stories about the, Wild work and crazy adventures that many of us women biologists have been engaged in.

[01:06:02] So we have things from, playing tag alongside wolves in the Arctic, to getting bitten by a bear in Yellowstone, to surviving a flood in Alaska, rescuing an eagle from poachers in Panama, just a crazy variety of stories from the world. crayfish to wolves to condors. So we’re excited about that and I’ll probably, we’re looking for a publisher for it right now and I’ll, I’ll keep information about the status of that book on our website.

[01:06:30] But especially in today’s world where I think some women are feeling under siege, we felt like It is a wonderful opportunity to kind of highlight how women can really thrive in field biology and do some pretty amazing things.

[01:06:44] Michael Hawk: It sounds like it’s going to be really compelling and exciting and empowering at the same

[01:06:48] Sophie Osborn: I think it’ll be fun and empowering, I hope,

[01:06:51] Michael Hawk: So looking forward to that. And you may,

[01:06:52] Sophie Osborn: Especially for young women who might not have realized that field biology was a thing, the way I didn’t. So hopefully some of them will have read my book by then and realized it is a thing, but this will help bring that message home.

[01:07:05] Michael Hawk: And even for myself, I I didn’t know it was a thing. And I wonder what direction my life would have taken if I realized this at a younger age.

[01:07:13] Sophie Osborn: Exactly.

[01:07:14] Michael Hawk: mentioned your website. So, what is your website and where else can people go to follow your work and keep tabs on this next upcoming book?

[01:07:22] Sophie Osborn: My website is http://www.wordsforbirds.Net. And then I am currently writing a blog on the Substack platform, and it’s called Words for Birds. People can find me at Words for Birds on Substack as well. In that, I usually have , some little story about one of my bird encounters or some personal story about my involvement with birds.

[01:07:45] And then I try to highlight some of the threats birds face, and I try to give very easy, straightforward, and, different kind of tips for helping wildlife in ways that, things you might not have thought of that can make a difference.

[01:07:57] Michael Hawk: Well, as listeners know, I’ll make sure to link to all of those in the show notes and and on the website, on the nature’s archive website. So Sophie, before we. Hit stop for today. Is there anything else that you wanted to cover that maybe we missed?

[01:08:11] Sophie Osborn: One additional message I wanted to give people, and I think that they will hopefully see this from my book, is that conservation efforts really do work. We really can make a difference when we have targeted conservation. And this became obvious with the peregrine, but over time, Our dedicated conservation efforts have really turned around numbers of raptors and waterfowl.

[01:08:36] Those are two groups of birds that are really doing better than they were dozens of years ago. So, we really can make a difference when different entities pull together, when individuals do various things, to help birds. And so, my hope is that, okay, we’ve helped waterfowl and raptors, so now maybe grassland birds and insectivores, but there’s other groups that we’re More and more people are starting to focus on, and when we do, we really can turn things around.

[01:09:05] Michael Hawk: Great great advice. And thank you so much for all the time you spent here today. It was really a joy talking to you and I really appreciate you and all the work that you’ve done.

[01:09:14] Sophie Osborn: I’m really grateful to be here. Thank you so much. It’s been great.

[01:09:18] Michael Hawk: And thanks to Jumpstart Nature volunteer Kat Hill for editing help this week. And are you skilled in audio or video editing and want to put those skills to meaningful use? We’re always looking for help at Jumpstart Nature, whether it be audio editing or even audio soundscaping, script writing, or other production tasks with our sister podcast, Jumpstart Nature.

[01:09:37] If you’re interested, drop me a note at michael at jumpstartnature. com.