Seduced by Junk Food, Storks Are Opting Not to Migrate

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/science/seduced-by-junk-food-storks-are-opting-not-to-migrate.html

St, Nicholas. "Seduced by Junk Food, Storks Are Opting Not to Migrate."The New York Times. The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2016. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

It is reported that a great deal of storks are traveling to trash dumps in Portugal, rather than undergoing their usual winter migration.These birds dine on whatever they can get their beaks on from rotten fish to broken computer parts. Although previous studies displayed that these birds merely stopped at these dumps on their migration route, recent observations say otherwise.“Before the ’80s there were no storks in the Iberian Peninsula in Europe during the winter. Suddenly we saw a few birds and then the number increased and now we have 14,000 birds in Portugal in the winter,” reported conservation ecologist Aldina Franco. Dr. Franco and a group of colleagues then captured some of these junk food birds and placed a GPS locator on their backs to monitor their movements. The rationale behind the change in behavior that the stork bird is an “opportunist” which is beneficial for these territorial birds.  Andrea Flack, an ornithologist,  emphasized this argument  by saying, “Unlike birds that leave their breeding territory during migration, they can defend and maintain their nests.” However, these feeding frenzies may end as the European Union announced that on 2018 it plans to close down the landfills, thus possibly reverting back to their old migration pattern.

Humanity’s filth as growing food wastage is attracting these birds to stop their natural migration pattern for the interest of a growing food pile. Not only are our garbage centers increasing environmental problems but ecological disruptions. This disruption in the migration pattern can lead to deleterious effects of the lack of the stork’s presence in South Africa during the winter months. As we’ve learned from our recent studies in biology that changes in habitat can lead to habitat isolation and then reproductive isolation. Of course this would only be a problem to consider in the long term, but in the short term it in effect predators of the stork in South Africa as well as the stork itself as it digests food outside its regular diet. However, it is good to hear that the European Union has caught attention of the problem of mass garbage and is switching to composting.

Strengths within the article was its concise explanation and quote integration of expert opinion. Improvements may be actually providing us with the data Dr. Franco’s team collected. The author simply noted that Franco’s team monitored these birds. Also it may have been nice to hear more about the European Union’s movement towards composting because the author just throws this statement at the end to the reader, not really expanding on this important piece of information.