ACTION HEROES
How far would you go to conserve birds? Some scientists and volunteers take it to the extreme, risking bodily harm — whether from cliffs, undertows, frostbite, exhaustion, or armed poachers — and performing feats of athleticism that would make an X-Gamer proud.
Obliterating the stereotype of pale and feeble scientists hunched over beakers, these “action-hero” avian protectors thrive in inhospitable places and are often on the front lines of the extinction crisis. (Though this profile focuses on birds, “extreme scientists” work across an array of fields, from deep-sea divers, spelunkers, and hurricane-exploring pilots to researchers who feed lab mosquitoes with their own blood.)
“There’s just a ton of cool things that bird people do,” says Justin Hite, field supervisor at the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project in Hawai‘i, adding that, on the whole, he finds his fellow field ornithologists to be outdoorsy, passionate, daring, and smart, and he enjoys “hanging out by the campfire [with them] and sharing stories about all these crazy adventures.”
Climbing hotshots
As rock climbing has exploded in popularity, so too has the ability of researchers to access the nests of tree- and cliff-dwelling birds. In fact, dozens of scientist-climbers now operate across North America, banding the chicks of everything from California Condors to Bald Eagles (and at times collecting their eggs or young for captive-breeding purposes).
Steve Faccio, a conservation biologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, recalls the adrenaline rush he felt while banding Peregrine Falcon chicks in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “They’re really amazing birds,” Faccio says of the fastest flyers on Earth. “I feel really fortunate to have had that opportunity to work so closely with them.”
At the time, Peregrines in his home state were only just starting to recover from the devastating effects of DDT poisoning, and Faccio was recruited to keep tabs on
