Indigenous Rangers Tag 21 Shearwaters on 15,000km Migration
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- Tjaltjraak rangers in Esperance and Yup'ik, Eyak, Iñupiaq, and Alutiiq communities in Alaska launched a cross-cultural project combining ecological, scientific, and ancestral knowledge to track short-tailed shearwaters (yowli/muttonbirds) on their 15,000km migration between the two hemispheres.
- First Nations peoples on both coasts have observed sick and dying shearwaters washing ashore with bellies full of microplastics, and birds veering far from their traditional migration routes in search of food.
- Rangers tagged 21 yowli on a Southern Ocean island after glue and double-sided tape failed, settling on small zip ties to attach tiny, almost weightless sensors to the birds' legs and tails without causing damage.
- Yup'ik leader Estelle Thomson said shearwaters, originally concentrated on Bering Sea islands, are now appearing as far south-west as the Kuskokwim River, attributing the shift to climate change and disrupted food sources.
- The project aims to map previously "largely invisible" staging areas, diving depths, and exact migration routes—data rangers call essential because the birds' fixed habits make them an "alarm bell" for ecosystem health.
- Thomson also partners globally through Children of the Sky, a collective of Indigenous peoples arguing migratory birds are "global citizens" with no allegiance to national borders, and roughly 220 migratory bird species pass through Alaska annually.
- Melting permafrost tundra in Alaska has left the region vulnerable to typhoons and extreme weather, displacing Indigenous peoples and threatening traditional food sources, including the migratory birds Yup'ik communities have long depended on.
Why it matters: The 21 shearwaters tagged in April mark the first formal cross-cultural tracking project linking Indigenous knowledge holders on both ends of a 15,000km migration route. With microplastics already found inside dead birds and the species now appearing at the Kuskokwim River far from its traditional Bering Sea range, the sensors will generate the first concrete data on staging areas and feeding patterns along the route—data rangers say is needed to detect ecosystem collapse before it accelerates.
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