Ready and Able

Juvenile Brown Pelicans aren’t exactly cooperative—like any tween they’re instantly recalcitrant when faced with authority. “One volunteer had their hat stolen by a pelican that was resisting being captured,” says photographer Madeline Gray, who tagged along with a field research team in North Carolina. But you’d never know it from this issue’s cover star: a young bird perched in its habitat with an air of quiet equanimity, coolly appraising its visitors on a late-summer day.

Led by Audubon coastal biologist Lindsay Addison, many in this group were the birds’ neighbors. The pelicans share a river with residents of Wilmington, and they all—birds and people—live downstream from a chemical plant. By studying the pelicans, Addison and her collaborators hope to learn how compounds in the plant’s wastewater may have affected the birds’ health—and by extension, their own. When a Brown Pelican last appeared on our cover in 2010, the bird had rebounded from a century of persecution to a much-celebrated delisting from the Endangered Species Act. But as Addison knows, its recovery isn’t assured.

Throughout this issue, you’ll see people like her taking action to stay ahead of evolving environmental threats. Sometimes doing so is a matter of documenting what birds need, when and where they need it. Surveys led by another Audubon biologist, Erik Johnson, showed that Gulf Coast habitat essential to Eastern Black Rails is also the site of a planned liquefied natural gas facility. And community scientists are taking a fresh look at forests to locate “Very Important Pools”—ephemeral wetlands that serve as biodiversity hotspots—to safeguard protections for them.

In Ashley Stimpson's story on “feathered field assistants,” we illustrate (quite colorfully!) how scientists are enlisting birds themselves to assist with gathering data. Many avian species go where people can’t, making them uniquely suited to the job of probing ecosystems for insights that will benefit both wildlife and people.

Often, we already know what birds need, and it’s simply a matter of providing. In the southern Great Plains, landowners are conserving habitat for the Lesser Prairie-Chicken, whose populations are already threatened and endangered, as Susan Cosier reports. Restoring native prairie, ranchers like Dallas May know, will create holistic benefits for the land and all that rely on it—and hopefully, help another beloved species bounce back.

This piece originally ran in the Spring 2025 issue. To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.