Join BirdNote tomorrow, November 30th!
Illustrator David Sibley and actor H. Jon Benjamin will face off in the bird illustration battle of the century during BirdNote's Year-end Celebration and Auction!
Threatened returns for its fourth and final season!
Season 4 will launch Tuesday, January 17th with a new episode every week – in both English and Spanish. These four episodes examine the one-of-a-kind ecology of Puerto Rico and the birds of Puerto Rico that are facing significant challenges. In season 4 of Threatened, we’ll meet the people and communities in this Caribbean island who are acting on behalf of birds and banding together to protect them.
Episodes include:
- The Puerto Rican Parrot Comeback: In the season premiere, we travel to Puerto Rico to meet a bird that has survived deforestation, hurricanes and the exotic pet trade. The Puerto Rican parrot saw its numbers drop to almost zero at one point. But today, its population is growing and stabilizing. To achieve this, the people involved had to make some difficult tradeoffs.
- Protecting a Bird and Ourselves: How do you organize a group of people to protect a bird from powerful forces? The Julián Chiví, or Black-whiskered Vireo, reveals a story of a community banding together to save a species, its environment, and ultimately, the people themselves. The organizers in Puerto Rico decided to go beyond just presenting alarming facts—and their strategy worked.
- The Scientific Name Doesn’t Do It Justice: Birds have their common English name and a name in the languages of all the places they might fly through. And then they have their Latin name, which is their taxonomic name, the one scientists use. In this episode, we learn about a decades-long effort in Puerto Rico to change San Pedrito's scientific name, why it matters and the journeys of two people seeking to make it happen.
- An Unusual Place to Eat and Rest: In Puerto Rico, there is an area of saline lagoons, salt flats and mangrove swamps where humans have extracted salt for over 500 years. We often describe the effects of human activity on the environment as negative. But the migratory birds that eat and rest in one of the most visited places by locals and tourists probably see things differently.
Catch up on the first three seasons of Threatened here on our website or by searching for "Threatened" on your favorite podcast app.