Hope Is A Verb - Johannes Fritz - Flight school for birds

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Meet Johannes Fritz, a maverick biologist and conservationist who is reintroducing the endangered Northern Bald Ibis across Europe. Using an ultralight aircraft, Johannes has taught the birds new migration routes to mitigate the impact of climate change.    FIND OUT MORE ABOUT JOHANNES: http://alt.waldrapp.eu/index.php/en/en-home This episode of Hope Is A Verb was hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose. The soundtrack for this podcast is "Rain" composed and performed by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠El Rey Miel ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠from their album "Sea the Sky." Audio Sweetening by Anthony Badolato- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ai3 Audio and Voice⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can contact us at: [e-mail]

Welcome to Season 2 of Hope is a Verb, a podcast that explores what it takes to change the world through conversations with the people that are making it happen. I'm Amy. I'm Gus, and these are the unknown heroes who are mending our planet, stitching together a better future, and showing us the best of what it means to be human. It was indeed this Hollywood movie which inspired us as young scientists at the research station just to think about,

well, this could be a method to lead the birds. But it was just a rough, crazy idea at the beginning in the 90s. But in 2001, I indeed made a pilot license, particularly for the need to fly with the birds. So it started step by step. One of the things we love about this podcast is that it gives us the opportunity to meet people who we would never cross paths with in our everyday life. Extraordinary people like Johannes Fritz, an Austrian biologist who is taking animal conservation to new heights in a way that almost defies belief. Johannes has helped reintroduce the endangered northern bald ibis, a distinctive

looking migratory bird which was native in Central Europe until it disappeared in the 17th century. The unexpected twist in this story is that he's done it using an ultralight aircraft, teaching the birds a new, safer migration route in the face of climate change. At a time when phrases like extinction crisis pop up regularly in our news diets, Johannes' approach may challenge you to think about conservation in a new way and the lengths that we need to go to if we really want to make a difference. to if we really want to make a difference. Johannes, welcome to Hope is a Verb.

We are so pleased to have you on the show. Thanks a lot for inviting me. It's a pleasure. So we'd like to kick off with the same question. Is there a new story somewhere in the world that's giving you hope right now? I'm at the moment in Perth in Australia because there was a three-day conference all about conserving animals and plants. So I met up with colleagues from all over the world. I heard a lot at this conservation conference about animals which are conserved behind fences in very limited areas. So we develop into a world where biodiversity is behind fences,

where animals and plants live in very controlled conditions. This is something which worries me. But on the other hand side, humans have a lot of innovative power, particularly the young generation of scientists and conservationists are very willing to take actions, take risks, make innovations. And I think that's what needed. That's what gave me hope. When I think about the word conservation itself, it has the word conservative in it. But what you're speaking about here is maybe something a little bit different how do you think conservation can benefit from more risk taking i mean it's a question which regards also the general question how conservation should take place what are the

aims this was indeed also discussed at this conservation grants location conference in berth what is clear in recent times in times of climate change is that we should not have a back-oriented perspective this was for a long time and i think is still in the brain of many conservationists, conserving wilderness. I think that's not the way conservation works because our world is changing and our view has to be forward to the future. We have to find ways how animal and plant species can survive in this changing world. It will not be the same world which was in the past. That's an idealistic motivation to restore historical wilderness. It's even not wilderness which we have.

There's hardly any real wilderness left in our world. in our world. We have to construct and conserve environments where species can survive, where they can sustainably survive. And that's basically what we do in the case of the bald ibis. We introduce them into urban areas. So we don't resemble what historically was the case in this bald ibis. We actually don't know where they migrate and along which migration route they migrated. But this has not really significant relevance in our

changing world. We should learn from the past, of course, but the focus needs to be forward. Johannes, where did you first encounter the animal which has really defined a lot of your career, the northern bald ibis? And of all the birds, why did this one capture your attention?

This is a long, long time ago. So meanwhile, I'm not one of the young scientists. I'm more annoyed. This was actually at the time when I did a PhD. So 25 years ago, I was at a research station in Austria and worked with grey-legged geese and common ravens on behavior, learning, and cognition. And at that time, the research station started up with a further animal species,

and this was the northern bald ivy. So this was the first contact for me with the species. The interest was mainly the rather strange behavior of these birds, juvenile birds. They were kept free-flying, but mid-August all of them disappeared. They just disappeared from the valley. We didn't know where they are. We had no GPS at this time. At the end, we got site reports more or less all over Europe. The next year, the same happened. And it became clear that they perform migration behavior in August, but seemingly without knowing where to go. And so this was something which was interesting for a young scientist. So that was basically the start of this project. Johannes, for anyone listening who has never seen or heard of the

northern bird ibis, what do these birds look like and why do they need protection? The short version is it's probably one of the ugliest birds in the world. It has a naked face with red-black coloration. It has the size of a chick, more or less. And the second few offers its beauty. It has these black feathers, but they have a metallic coloration, red, green, when the sun is shining on it. And they are very exceptional, I would say, very exotic. Also in their behavior, they're very social.

The species was for more than 20 years critically endangered on the red list. The first ones which disappeared in Egypt almost 5 million years ago. In Europe, they disappeared in the Middle Ages, so almost five million years ago. In Europe, they disappeared in the Middle Age, so more than 400 years ago. Fortunately, in the 30s, birds were collected from remaining breeding colonies in the Moroccan Atlas and brought to European zoos. And so we have now a well-managed and well-breeding population in zoos with several thousand individuals we have only two populations remaining in the wild one is in Morocco the other one is in Turkey both lost this migration traditions historically the birds were migrating over several thousand kilometers

along the west coast and the east coast of Africa to reach wintering sites. And these traditions were lost and I think they will be lost forever. I do want to come back and find out more about these lost migration routes but first can you please tell us the story of how you ended up in a small aircraft teaching these birds a new migration route? It's a long story but the beginning was indeed that the same time when I experienced for the first time this bird and became interested in the species, there was this very popular Hollywood movie in our cinemas. It's called Fly Away Home. It's about a girl which used to fly with Canada geese by use of a microlight plane.

It's based on the true story of Bill Lishman. It's a conservationist and flight pioneer, which really was the first one flying with Canada geese. It was indeed this Hollywood movie which inspired us as young scientists at the research station just to think about, well, this could be a method to lead the birds. But it was just a rough, crazy idea at the beginning in the 90s. But in 2001, I indeed made a pilot license, particularly for the need to fly with the birds. So it started step by step. The first flight over about 1,000 meters from an airfield,

flight over about 1,000 meters from an airfield from a pist to a meadow close by was the first big success. Really small steps at the beginning because it was very innovative no experience with this

method so we had to learn by driving an arrow. This is a crazy story. You watched a Hollywood movie but it's based on a real story. And then you, I suppose, created your own version of a Hollywood movie, but in a different place and a different time. It feels almost unbelievable. Did it feel unbelievable while you were doing this?

I mean, I would say at that time it would have been unbelievable if thinking about the project that it is now. It's now one of the big European conservation projects. We did a migration over 2,300 kilometers this year. So at that time it would have felt unbelievable that this is possible. But it was basically scientific curiosity. We just wanted to know if the birds follow the microlight. And when we had the success, we thought about the next step.

So step by step, we developed it. Actually, for 13 years, we did a kind of feasibility study, trial and error learning, developing this method, making the first migrations to Italy, experiencing the ecology of the species, also experiencing the different flight techniques of the species. After 13 years, we were ready to think of reintroduction and apply for a first funding by the European Life Programme. And this provided the dimensionals, the financial resources

to really think about their introduction. So it was really step by step also in the brain. I mean, the fact that you needed to teach these birds their migration route is just so interesting to me. And I want to know and understand a little more, how did they lose their internal GPS system? How does an animal become geographically so uninformed? Migration behaviour is, as all behaviour,

a close relationship between nature-nurture context. And in species like the bald ivies, there is a genetic basis for migration. So they have an ability to migrate. They have this migratory restlessness at the appropriate time. They build up fat depots as energy, as fuel. They have the different flight techniques and also the motivation to leave from the breeding sites at the appropriate time.

The main thing they have to learn is the route to the common wintering sites. And this is a social tradition which is best from generation to generation. So a juvenile bird has to follow its parents in autumn of the first year of life in order to reach the wintering site. And then the bird stores this information lifelong, and it can pass it to the next generation when he gets extra mature. The social component was lost, of course, when the birds were caught and transferred to zoos and restricted from migration.

So that's what we have, birds with a basic ability to migrate, but without knowledge about the migration route and the wintering site. There is so much to unpack here. And what comes up for me is the impact that humans have had on endangering so many species. And then to have someone like Johannes who in many ways is prepared to risk his life to mend that bond between animals and people. I know this whole idea kind of blows my mind and what I was so interested to learn is that these migration techniques are not about the birds becoming dependent on humans but instead giving them new internal maps and tools to help them return to the wild and thrive in nature again. So it's an empowerment model, not one that creates dependency. Okay, so I am really interested in the mechanics of this.

How do you actually get the birds to follow the aircraft? Can you tell us more about the process? So we collect the chicks from zoo breeding colonies at an age of two to seven, eight days. And they are raised by human foster parents. This parent imprinting takes place not on the biological parents, but on human foster parents. And this is the key mechanism we use. There is a social bonding between the foster parents and each of these birds. So there is trust. We habituate them to the microlights, to the noise of the engine, to this parachute.

And then it's training all over the summer. And at the end, the birds follow the microlight. But in fact, they follow the foster parent, which is on the backseat of the microlight. That's why they follow the plane, because they learned that the foster parent is on the back seat as a co-pilot. And that's the motivation for them. Wow, this idea of using human foster parents to make the birds follow the plane is really interesting. Can you paint us a picture of what the aircraft looks like? They are microlight planes.

The special type is the so-called paraplane. It's a gondola for two people with a strong engine. And the wing is not a static one. It's a dynamic wing. It's a parachute, actually. And we use a very big parachute with a dimension of 16 square meters, an exceptionally huge, but it allows to fly with a very low speed, 40 to 45 kilometers per hour, and this equals the speed of the birds. It's perfect. It fits very well to the requirements of the birds. So will these birds always need human-led migration,

or will they be able to do it themselves at some point in the future? So it's very important to explain. All we do is leading the birds from the breeding site to the wintering site. There the release takes place and from then on the birds never again follow the microlight. They got what they need to survive in the wild as a migratory bird. The migration route and in particular the wintering site, is stored in the memory of the birds lifelong, and they start up with this migration on their own. So it's just once.

And every year, if we perform a human-led migration, we do it with a new generation of birds which we take out of the zoos. So in the last years, we released more than 300 birds into the wild. And based on that, we could build up a migratory population. The birds migrate since 2011, and are increasing number of birds, about 260 birds, divided into four breeding colonies with a common wintering site. They also started to breed in the wild since 2012. And they do that very successfully. This year, in 2023, we had more than 70 chicks fledged in the wild.

That's huge. That's fantastic. It's a very high number of chicks. And they never follow a microlight. They follow their parents. So the tradition which we started up was already best to the third generation in the wild. We really have a wild, independent, migratory population. It's fantastic.

Congratulations. And I imagine as someone that has been doing this now for, I mean, it's getting close to 20 years that you've been running this experiment, it must be hugely gratifying to be able to see those numbers and to see the genuine restoration of this population in the wild. Yes, it is satisfying. It's also a big honor to contribute to the survival of a species.

It's something which has a very high value to all of us indeed. The population per se is close to what we call self-sustainability. The Leibniz Institute in Berlin did a modeling work on population dynamics and they came up with a threshold of about 330 birds. And when the population is beyond this threshold, it's regarded as self-sustaining. So that means their introduction is successful. We are close to this threshold, so we expect to exceed it in 2025, 2026. However, that's the good side of the story. The problem is that this species already faces new threats, which are quite serious. And these are threats which are related to climate change so the border

bases are strongly affected by climate change and so we basically changed from the reintroduction project we had to change into a new phase of this project and this is a mitigation project it's mitigating and compensating the effects of climate change. Johannes, can you tell us a little bit more about this? How do you help a reintroduced species mitigate climate change? Yes, it was quite unexpected for us as well. We knew that climate change will have an effect on the population, but we didn't expect it on this short term and in this very concrete version.

The problem is in Europe, temperatures are beyond the mean, particularly in autumn and late autumn. It's very warm, food is available. And so we observe later and later onset of the autumn migration. When the migration of this wild population started in 2011, they crossed the mountain range, the Alps, second half of September. Now they start the autumn migration and approach the Alps in November, even early December. So it's really a very significant change of the timing in a period of a little bit more than 10 years. This is not a problem per se.

However, the birds need uplift in the mountains to reach a flight level, which allows them to cross the mountain range. And the later in the year, the less thermals, the less uplift in the mountain range. And so more and more birds fail to cross the mountains in autumn. They try, but they return back to the northern foothills of the Alps. At the end, they give up and remain there. There's a high probability that they do not survive north of the Alps.

This forced us to take action and we started to catch the birds north of the Alps just at onset of winter, so end of November, beginning of December. We transferred them over the Alps, just at onset of winter, so end of November, beginning of December. We transfer them over the Alps and release them south of the Alps. From there, they head further south, so they're really motivated to migrate.

This saves their life, but it's, of course, not a lasting strategy. Last year, we had to catch more than 40 birds. Last year we had to catch more than 40 birds. This year it may be even 50, 60 birds due to this good reproduction success. But we need a new perspective for these populations north of the Alps. And the alternative is to start a second migration tradition for this population. to start a second migration tradition for this population. And this leads over 2,300 kilometers to southern Spain. It's a long journey, but the big advantage is that it bypasses the main mountain ranges,

the Alps and the Pyrenees. So birds, when they start even late in the year, is. So birds, when they start even late in the year, can easily reach the wintering site without significant barriers. Johannes, I have this image of you and your team as this kind of Uber for birds to ferry them to safety. I mean, it's just, all of this is just so incredible. Is there anybody else doing this kind of human-led migration work? We are currently the only group which use this method. It's actually also the first trial ever to reintroduce a migratory bird species. At the beginning, we had not the right microlights. We did flights of a few kilometers and with a few birds.

Meanwhile, we fly with up to 30 and 35 birds per season. We fly up to 300 kilometers per day. We can cover distances of more than 2,000 kilometers, even more if necessary. So we could develop this human-led migration to a method which is really efficient, an efficient conservation and research tool. And that's not only for the bald ibis. It's a tool which can be used for many other needs and many other species. which can be used for many other needs and many other species.

Migratory birds are among the most threatened by human impact and by climate change because they cover so big distances. They are in different climatic zones, very exposed. So there is an increasing need to take actions, implement conservation measures. raising need to take actions, implement conservation measures. And so we do hope that in the future, the human-led migration becomes a method for migratory species other than the bald ibis. This kind of work, and especially the way you approach it, I'm guessing would not be without its hairy moments. Have you ever had an accident in the aircraft or any other challenges that you can tell us about? Indeed, we have to take risk. And if you make innovations, you have to take risk. And yes, flying is particularly risky compared to other methods of animal translocation and conservation indeed. I mean, yeah, we had a lot of accidents during the last 20 years.

I once crashed just after the start into a crop field with my microlight. It was completely destroyed, but fortunately I was not injured. But we just had to continue. We repaired the microlites and continued the migration. So never give up, always go further and learn out of the mistakes which you did. I think that's the way such projects can develop. Is there any advice that you wish you could give younger conservationists or scientists

who are trying to get into this kind of work? I would say take action. Don't hesitate to take risk. Don't hesitate to make innovations and go new pathways. That's urgently needed. We need a lot of innovation. We need new approaches

because the challenges and the requirements are huge and increasing and we need so many habitats we lose so many species so don't hesitate keep up motivation and try new methods and pathways and johann when you, I suppose, maybe look to the future, let's call it 10, 15 years out from now or even 20 years out from now, where do you hope that this project will be and what kind of impact do you hope

that it would have had? We are now in a period where basically the introduction can be finished in a successful way. But we face these threats by climate change, and this is to a far extent unpredictable what happens in the next 10 to 15 years. I'm an optimistic person. That's necessary.

That's the basis for action. And so we continue with this bald ibis project. I do hope that the bald ibis population has a future, has a sustainable survival also in our changing world. Johannes, I feel like we are going to be unpacking this conversation with you for quite a while. I mean, there is just so much in your story. But before we let you go, we'd love to know, what does the word hope mean to you? What hope means to me? Yes. It means being active. When people are active and committed there is always hope for the future so it's essential it's the basis motivation for action and i think there is always a reason for hope this is by the

way the slogan of our project and i think there is always a reason for hope, in particular when you don't look on the big scale, but look on the people, on the individuals and on their actions. And this is the focus where you always get reason for hope. It's impossible to listen to Johannes' story and not feel inspired to do something, to take a risk, to start thinking outside the box. Mending our planet is going to require the kind of innovation and creativity that Johannes and his team have embraced pretty much every day over the past two decades. If nothing else,

they remind us that we can rewild hope, even if it's one bird at a time. If you want to support Johannes' work, we've added some links in our show notes. We'd like to thank our paying subscribers for making conversations like this possible. If you'd like to find out more about supporting us by becoming a paid subscriber, please check out futurecrunch.com. This podcast is recorded in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Waiwurrung people. There are a lot of podcasts out there. It means a lot to us that you chose this one. lot of podcasts out there. It means a lot to us that you chose this one. If you enjoyed this episode and you would like to support Hope as a Verb,

please subscribe and leave a review. And if you want to reach out directly, email us at hope at futurecrunch.com.au. Thanks for listening.