Storks Spend Winter Eating Rubbish in Landfills Instead of Flying to Africa
Some white storks have taken to spending the winter in rubbish dumps eating garbage rather than making the usual, exhausting journey south across the Sahara, scientists said on Friday.
The lure of landfills is a new sign of how human influences, ranging from climate change to pollution, disrupt migratory routes for animals from turtles to elephants, they said.
Tracking juvenile white storks in countries from Spain to Uzbekistan, they found that some from Germany, for instance, spent the winter at landfills in Morocco rather than completing the traditional migratory route to sub-Saharan Africa.
UN/Evan Schneider