For ecologist and conservation biologist Amanda Rodewald, migratory birds are emblematic of a world on the move. In one year, a single warbler may spend 80 days in boreal forests in Canada, 30 days in the United States resting and refueling during migration, and more than 200 days in Central America.
Amanda Rodewald holds a Mourning Warbler captured as part of her research; her collaborating biologist, Nick Bayly of the Colombian conservation science group Selva, looks on.
Warblers and other neotropical migratory birds, which breed in North America and winter in Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, are of special interest to Rodewald, a member of the Cornell Global Grand Challenge's Migrations initiative to study the complex global issue of migration.
She and her colleagues study birds and the ecosystems on which they depend, the impact of human activities and global change on their populations, and ways to safeguard the healthy environments they - and we - require.
