Alaska<\/a>, with newly fledged chicks in tow.<\/p>\nA net in place to safely catch the birds. Photograph: Andy McGregor<\/p>\n
In an attempt to understand the birds\u2019 perilous journey, Tjaltjraak rangers are working with Yup\u2019ik and other Alaskan traditional owners. The global research project combines ecological, scientific and ancestral knowledge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one of those things where you know that you\u2019ve got this connection through this one bird,\u201d Reynolds, a senior ranger, tells Guardian Australia. \u201cIt\u2019s a special moment because we are all on the same page in relation to taking care of country. We both have a kinship with the animals and wildlife and we\u2019re making sure that we have that same responsibility for looking after them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The collaboration began by building on pre-existing relationships between the Tjaltjraak rangers and their Eyak, I\u00f1upiaq, Yup\u2019ik and Alutiiq community counterparts. Early conversations revealed shared concerns about declining numbers.<\/p>\n
David Guilfoyle, a coordinator with the Tjaltjraak rangers, spent many years living and working in Alaska. He says those longstanding community ties helped fast\u2011track what is now a formal cross\u2011cultural partnership.<\/p>\n
Tjaltjraak rangers say the birds are not only culturally significant but vital to the area\u2019s ecosystem. Photograph: Andy McGregor<\/p>\n
The project aims to form a clearer picture of how the birds live: their migration patterns; how deep they plunge the ocean in their quest for food; and ultimately the risks they are facing in a changing environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very holistic,\u201d Guilfoyle says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just looking at the species so much as looking at the whole ecosystem and what role these birds play, and what we can do to protect and manage them. But we can\u2019t do that until we get a lot of data.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rangers knew the birds returned each year to colonies off Esperance; Alaska communities knew when they arrived in their waters. But the exact route, the staging areas and what was happening in between remained largely invisible.<\/p>\n
Safe in hand \u2026 a captured yowli. Photograph: Andy McGregor<\/p>\n
To answer those questions, Tjaltjaak rangers had to catch and tag the yowli. That meant working quietly and quickly in cold, dark and potentially snake-infested sand dunes on an island in the middle of the Southern Ocean, with only red torchlight to see by, says one ranger, Hayleigh Graham.<\/p>\n
The team placed tiny, almost weightless sensors and tags on them \u2013 which required a little finessing to ensure the technology would adhere to delicate legs and tails.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to sort of sand it back, so we made a bit of glue, but the glue didn\u2019t really work as well, so then we tried double-sided tape, but, nope, that wasn\u2019t so good,\u201d Graham says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ended up having to get some smaller zip ties to try and trim it off and make sure the ethics of the way we put it on wasn\u2019t hurting or damaging the birds, and then as the sun started to go down, within a few minutes, we got our first yowli.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the end of the night, they had tagged 21 birds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still really early days,\u201d Guilfoyle says. \u201cWe\u2019re really nervous. I can\u2019t sleep since we\u2019ve tagged these birds \u2013 every hour I\u2019m checking the map about where they\u2019re going. It\u2019s like being an expectant parent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe watch them every day, so now it seems like they\u2019re starting to slowly track towards Tassie, and then eventually they\u2019ll just start missioning north to Alaska.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tjaltjraak rangers say the birds are not only culturally significant but vital to the area\u2019s delicate ecosystem. The shearwater\u2019s fixed habits make it a warning sign for the health of their breeding and feeding grounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like an alarm bell,\u201d Guilfoyle says. \u201cIf we don\u2019t see them as much now, what have we lost? At the very basic level, that observational data is a call to action: we need to make sure that we\u2019re not just falling for the trap of shifting baselines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Climate threats<\/p>\n
Estelle Thomson is a Yup\u2019ik leader and president of the Native Village of Paimiut Traditional Council. She lives in Anchorage and works closely with Indigenous rangers and wildlife ecologists as a bird migration advocate and vice-chair for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Commission, which represents 43 tribes from the Bering Sea to territories bordering Canada.<\/p>\n
The birds will have to be caught again in November to remove the tags. Photograph: Andy McGregor<\/p>\n
She says the shearwater were not originally one of the hundreds of birds that flew to the vast Yup\u2019ik lands but were usually found on a cluster of islands in the Bering Sea. But they have been recorded as far south-west as the Kuskokwim River, far from their traditional migration path.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey typically go to the Aleutian Islands \u2026 but because of climate change and because of a whole bunch of extenuating circumstances, they\u2019ve actually been starting to come into my region,\u201d Thomson says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can tell when things are starting to go a little bit awry with the birds. We can tell when they\u2019re not getting enough food if they\u2019re not coming in at the times that they normally do. We can tell when they\u2019re late. We can tell if their food sources are having difficulty.\u201d<\/p>\n
The permafrost tundra is melting, leaving the region vulnerable to typhoons and other extreme weather events. The climate emergency is displacing Indigenous peoples<\/a> from their lands. Once-abundant traditional food sources are becoming scarcer.<\/p>\nMany of those food sources are migratory birds \u2013 about 220 species of which spent part of the year in Alaska. Thomson has partnered with Indigenous peoples around the globe through a collective called Children of the Sky, which brings First Nations people together to gain a deeper shared understanding of migratory birds and their place in our ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Rangers hope the project will lead to other cross-cultural endeavours. Photograph: Andy McGregor<\/p>\n
\u201cOur peoples have specific, traditional ecological and Indigenous knowledge about our non-human relatives,\u201d she says. \u201cThe people on the other side of flyway that we\u2019re on also carry knowledge. So when we get together, we\u2019re able to share what we know from each of our perspectives \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThe birds are a global citizen. This bird has no allegiance to any specific country. It doesn\u2019t look at the boundaries of borders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reynolds says she hopes the project will open the way to other cross-cultural endeavours.<\/p>\n
First, though, rangers will have to catch the birds again next November to remove their tags.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all custodians now,\u201d Reynolds says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just us. It\u2019s everyone\u2019s responsibility to be able to care for country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Short-tailed shearwaters used to blacken the skies on the south-west coast of Australia, so abundant were they in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-631438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}