Science Friday - Kākāpō Conservation, NYC Parrots, One Year After the Dobbs Decision. July 28, 2023, Part 1

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   No, The Gulf Stream Is Not Collapsing A sobering climate study came out this week in the journal Nature Communications. It suggests that a system of ocean currents—called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC)—could collapse sometime between 2025 and 2095, which could have dire climate consequences for the North Atlantic. SciFri director of news and audio John Dankosky talks with Swapna Krishna, a journalist based in Philadelphia, about what this means and what could be at stake. They also chat through other big science news of the week, including the detection of water vapor around a very distant star, a new image depicting the first detection of gas giants being formed around stars, a new theory for the origin of the world’s “gravity hole,” why the fuzzy asp caterpillar packs such a scary sting, and what scientists can learn from ticklish rats.   The State Of Reproductive Health, One Year After Dobbs In the year since the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning the federal right to an abortion, states jumped into action. Thirteen states banned abortion with limited exemptions, and three others have banned abortion after the first trimester. A handful of other states have extremely restrictive abortion access, or otherwise remain in legal limbo, awaiting court decisions or new laws to be signed. Leading up to Dobbs decision, SciFri delved into the science behind reproductive health and the potential ripple effects on access to care. Now, a little over a year later, we’re following up what’s going on. SciFri guest host and experiences manager Diana Plasker talks with Usha Ranji, associate director for Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, based in San Francisco, California, about her survey of 569 OB-GYNs across the country. They discuss the growing disparities in states between where abortion is banned and where it remains legal. Later, John Dankosky talks with Dr. Rebecca Cohen, chief medical officer at the Comprehensive Women’s Health Center, based in Denver, Colorado, about providing abortion and pregnancy care in a state where abortion is legal, and seeing patients who are traveling from states with bans in place.   The Kākāpō Parrot Returns To New Zealand Before humans arrived in New Zealand, parrots called kākāpō freely roamed across the islands. They are the world’s only living flightless parrots, and they’re a bit smaller than the average chicken. But the kākāpō’s population started crashing centuries ago, due to human interference and the arrival of predators like cats, rats, and stoats. At one point, the species was teetering on the brink of extinction. For decades, scientists have been capturing and relocating kākāpō to safe islands, hoping their population would grow. It did, and the kākāpō’s recovery team just reached a huge milestone: bringing four birds back to the mainland, a place they haven’t existed since the 1980s. Guest host and SciFri events manager Diana Plasker talks with Deidre Vercoe, operations manager for the New Zealand Department of Conservation’s kākāpō and takahē teams, about the history of kākāpō conservation, what this win means, and what’s next for these beloved birds.   Far Beyond Their Native Habitat, Parrots Rule The Roost In many urban areas across the U.S. and abroad, feral, non-native parrots have become established. This is true in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, where a colony of lime green monk parakeets have inhabited a massive nest on top of the gothic entrance gate. How exactly these parrots wound up here is a bit of a mystery. “The lore that’s passed around is that at some point a box of parrots, perhaps at the airport, got overturned,” said science writer Ryan Mandelbaum. “What’s more likely is a combination of people releasing their [pet] parrots and parrots escaping in some critical mass.” Mandelbaum wrote the cover story for July’s issue of Scientific American all about the resilience of parrots. SciFri producer Kathleen Davis interviewed them at Green-Wood Cemetery, where they discussed why these parrots are not just surviving, but thriving.   To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Listener supported WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski. And I'm Diana Plasker. I'm CyFRI's events manager, and we're excited to fill in for IRA this week. Later in the hour, looking back at a year since the Dobbs decision, and getting to know some parrots. But first, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the 300-mile Mountain Valley pipeline to continue construction. This natural gas pipeline is highly contentious.

It is supported by the Biden administration, by Congress, and a key player in this story, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. But environmental groups strongly oppose the giant project and say it threatens our water, our air, and our climate. We will keep following this story as it evolves. In other climate change news today, a sobering study came out this week. Its author suggests that a system of ocean currents called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation could collapse sometimes. time between 2025, that's pretty soon, and 2095. So what exactly does this mean? And what is its stake at this system known as AMOC goes belly up? Here with this story, another science news of the week is Swapna Krishna. Freelands science writer and journalist based in Philadelphia, PA. Swapna,

welcome back to Science Friday. Thank you so much. So first of all, explain what exactly is AMOC and what does it do? Okay. Amok is a system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean and basically warm, water travels from tropical regions to the north where it chills, and then it sinks because cold water is denser than warm water, and then it moves back south and warms up again and rises. That's the amic, and it's important to note that we're not talking about the Gulf Stream here because a lot of people have gotten this confused. The Gulf Stream is a surface level current, and it'll basically exist as long as the Atlantic ocean has water and the Earth rotates.

Okay, so that's not what's falling apart, but scientists are saying it's pretty sure that this largest system, this AMOC will collapse. How sure are they? So we aren't sure, actually. The scientists behind the paper seem pretty convinced, but the larger scientific community is asking some questions. There's generally agreement that AMIC is slowing down, but we're not sure it's on the verge of collapse, and especially not in two years. This paper, it was in nature communications, and it used sea temperatures from 1870 as a proxy for the health of the amic current. Cruise at sea actually would bring buckets of seawater on board

and stick a thermometer in it to measure ocean temps back in the 1870s, and that's how we have temperatures going back that far, which I think is pretty cool. But the community at large isn't convinced because they don't know if sea temperatures are a good proxy for the health of amic. So we all agree it's slowing down, but we don't really know if it'll actually collapse this imminently.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that gets headlines, though, is what exactly is at stake if it does collapse? Maybe you can just take us through those doomsday scenarios. Yeah, it's not as doomsday as you might think. It's not great. The weather in Europe would get a lot colder, and the storm intensity and patterns would change on the U.S.'s east coast. And tropical regions would get even hotter, which nobody needs.

And so there'd probably be some mass migration if this happened. So not the end of the world scenario, but generally not great. Generally not great. Well, let's keep talking about why. but we'll talk about water in space. The JWST has found some evidence of water vapor very far away in outer space. Maybe you can tell us more about that. Yeah, so we found water vapor in a system called PDA 70, about 370 light years away.

So this is a new system that's in the process of forming. It has an inner ring of dust and gas, two gas giants, and then an outer ring of gas and dust. And those rings of gas and dust will probably eventually become planets. But the news here is we found water vapor in the air. that inner ring. Wow. So that's pretty big news. How exactly do we know that water is there and how do we know that it formed? So believe it or not, water does have an emission spectrum. Because it absorbs EM radiation, we can actually tell, thanks to telescopes like JWST, whether there's water in a system. So I think that's really cool. But there's two theories here as to how this might have

formed. First, it could be happening on the spot. Hydrogen and oxygen could be colliding and forming water vapor. The other theory is a little more complicated. Ice particles might be traveling from the outer part of the system where there's ice into the inner part of the system. But that's a really long way to travel. Think about ice traveling from Neptune to Earth. And we don't really know what mechanism might cause that. It's super interesting. It feels like kind of a big deal. Can it tell us anything about how water might have formed on Earth? Yes. So the big question here is that these These inner planets aren't forming, and this would be the habitable zone of that star. Earth is about 93 million miles away from the sun.

This water vapor is within 100 million miles of the star. So the question here now is, will this mean that water will be available from the beginning to these planets? Because if that's the case, what if water was available to the Earth from the very beginning, from our creation? It's a really interesting question. It really is. We've got some more exciting space news this week, and I know you're excited about it. A new image tells us a bit about the formation of gas planets. What exactly does the photo look like, first of all?

So this photo has a brilliant orange background of gas and dust. And it's got these kind of spiral-ish arms that are bigger than our solar system. And then there's these blue clumps dispersed throughout the image kind of on top of it. And all of this will eventually become a planetary system. So what exactly can we learn from this swirly image far out in space? So it's actually a composite image taken with two different telescopes, so we're able to see matter in different kinds of light. Orange is infrared. Blue is from a radio telescope.

What's interesting is that these blue clumps of gas and dust are matter as big as planets, so that what we're learning here is how gas giants like Jupiter might form. How they might form. I mean, what do we know right now or what we think we know about how gas giants form? Well, so there's two major theories. The first is core accretion, which is basically when a collision of part of, builds more and more mass until a planet forms. But this image is cool because it shows us evidence for the first time for the second theory, which is called gravitational instability. And this occurs when large swaths of materials surrounding the star collapse into these blue

clumps. I want to head back to Earth quickly. And we're going to head to the Indian Ocean for this next story. More specifically, to the world's gravity hole. Maybe you can explain what the gravity hole is, first of all. Yeah, this is not my favorite term. I'll admit. So there's a weird spot in the Indian Ocean. It's called the Indian Ocean geoid low. And at this spot, the Earth's gravitational pull is actually lower than anywhere else. And the sea level is 328 feet lower than surrounding areas. It's like just hole in the ocean. It's located off the tip of southern India. And it covers about 1.2 million square miles. So how was this whole form? Do we know? A group of Indian scientists theorized that about 140 million years ago, there was a gap between the Indian tectonic plate and the rest of Asia.

It was basically an ancient ocean there that no longer exists. So as that gap closed and the world formed the way we see it now, that that oceanic plate may have sunk into the mantle. And that would have brought low density material up. And that would have spurred the formation of hot magma plumes rising up. And these plumes may be what created the gravity hole. Oh, interesting. So how exactly did they figure this out? They used computer models going back 140 million years to see how something like this could happen.

And they modeled the shift of magma inside the Earth's mantle. And that's the level below the crust to try and figure out what might have led to this. And they found in every simulation that they ran, there were magma plumes when a geoid hole was created. But it's not for sure. For example, these models didn't protect the specific shape of it. this hole, but it's a good start, at least. Okay, so we've been talking about some really big ideas, a formation of planets and gravity holes.

Let's talk about smaller things. I want to talk about some critters before I let you go, especially a very strange caterpillar called the Asp caterpillar. If you take a look at it, it kind of looks like a tiny toupee. Tell me what we know about them. Asp caterpillars are located in the southern United States, and they look fuzzy and adorable, but stay away. They have a terrible, terrible sting.

A terrible sting. So is it like a spiky sting? What exactly is causing this sting? So they have hidden venomous spines that inject a poison. And it can hospital people that this pain has been described as akin to like being hit with a baseball bat or breaking a bone. So why exactly is it so painful, this cute little caterpillar? Scientists have identified a protein in the venom. And that's what makes it sting so painful.

And what's really interesting is actually how it behaves. I think this is really cool. It actually behaves like bacteria. The proteins bind to the cell, and then the shape changes into a sort of donut. And then they punch their way into the cell. And that's when scientists think that the pain signals are sent to the brain. Okay. So what does this tell us?

I mean, what does this teach us other than don't touch this caterpillar? Yeah, right. What I think is really interesting about this is the way this kind of mutation must have formed. The transfer would have had to go through something very specific to be heritable or passed down to offspring. Bacteria normally just do like a horizontal gene transfer, which means those genes don't get passed down. So for this to have happened, the bacteria would have needed to specifically insert the DNA into cells that would become sperm and eggs. And it's the only way it could have been passed on. And it's uncommon for this to happen.

So it's actually very cool that scientists were able to identify this. That is really cool. Okay. Let's end on one more critter story. Kind of a happy note here. It's a study that came out just today. Researchers, they tickled rats to study their brains. Okay, tell us what's happening here.

I love this story. Researchers wanted to study if a play was centered in a certain area of a brain. So for this experiment, scientists let the rats run free for a few days and got them comfortable with their humans. And then once they were, they played kind of this chase the hand game where they would tickle the rats. And the scientists monitored rats' brains while they laughed or in this case squeaked because rats don't really laugh. So we assume that that stands in for a laugh, a little rat squeaks. So what exactly do these giggling rats teach us?

Well, it's really important to laugh during play because it's kind of what signals that people are enjoying themselves. And scientists suspected that there was something that regulated this behavior. And what they found was that there were strong neural responses and a part of the rat brand called the para-aqueductal gray. And that's where laughing in play is centered. Okay. So that's what laughing in play center? What else do we know about this part of the brain?

We know it plays a role in autonomic function and humans have one as well in the midbrain. Oh, okay. So I guess that this must teach us something important about, I don't know, the importance of play. I think it teaches us that play is important and more important than we realize it's probably underrated and it serves a way as to actually grow the brain in this case. I honestly, one of the things I learned is I didn't know you could tickle a rap. Who knew? Who exactly knew? It sounds to me like this story tells us that we should get out and play a bit this weekend. I want to thank Swapnak Krishna. Freeland science writer and journalist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So good to have you here. Thank you so much. Coming up after the break, it's been about a year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. This cut off access to abortions and other reproductive health care in many states. We're going to look back at a year since the Dobbs decision to learn what's happened across the U.S. and also hear what OBGY are saying about this new reality.

Abortion care is not important only for providing abortions, but it's incredibly important for an OBGYN to understand how to manage a miscarriage, how to manage a complication of a pregnancy. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski. And I'm Diana Plasker. It's been a little over a year since the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion.

Since then, we've seen states jump into action. 13 have banned abortion, with limited exceptions. Three more have banned abortion after the first trimester. And a handful of other states have extremely restrictive access to abortion, or otherwise remain in legal limbo. Last year, we dug into the science of reproductive health care in the U.S. Today, we'll follow up to get a better sense of this new reality. I'm joined by Ushah Runji, Associate Director for Women's Health Policy

at the Kaiser Family Foundation. based in San Francisco, California. She recently co-authored a report which surveyed just under 600 OBGYNs from across the U.S. about their experiences. Ushah, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Well, let's start off by talking about states where abortion has been banned. What are OBGYNs reporting on how their patients are able to access abortions across state lines? We have now many states that have banned abortion except for very, very limited.

exceptions. They're heavily concentrated in the southern part of the United States. And what we heard was that overall, half of OBGYNs who practice in those states say that they have had patients in their practice who were unable to obtain an abortion that they were seeking in the past year. And the states with abortion bans or severe restrictions are concentrated in the South and Great Plains. What's been the effect of this big block of states with abortion bans? Yeah, that means for patients, for people living in those states, if they are seeking abortion services, for the most part, they need to travel out of state. And depending on exactly where someone lives, that can be really far. It may mean several hundred miles. It also depends, you know,

what stage of pregnancy there and before they can obtain abortion services. So what we've seen from other research is that there has been an increase in states where abortion remains legal. There has been an increase in patients coming from out of state. You know, what this survey also shows is that a lot of people just are not getting the abortion care that they're seeking. And so that means that they are, you know, having to continue the pregnancy. So even before this decision in the U.S., there are huge disparities in who has access to timely and affordable reproductive health care. Has this decision further deepened that divide? Well, I think that's a good point. You know, many of the states that have now banned abortion since the Dobbs ruling already had great limits

on abortion access. The state of Mississippi, for example, only had that one clinic providing abortion services prior to the Dobbs decision. So access was already limited. In those states where abortion is now banned, there are virtually no OBGYNs providing abortion services. Some do provide referrals out of state, but we also see that 30 percent of OBGYNs in states with abortion bans, are not offering their patients' referrals or even any information about abortion services. So it does absolutely make a bigger difference. And it doesn't just seem like it's only affecting abortions. This can also impact miscarriage care and other pregnancy-related emergencies.

What did your research find in that case? Yeah, absolutely. I think what some people don't realize is that the same medicines and procedures that are used for abortion are often used to manage miscarriages as well. And miscarriages are really common. So what we saw was that nationally, one in five, OBGYNs said that they personally have felt constrained in their ability to provide care for patients who are experiencing miscarriages or other pregnancy-related medical emergencies since the job decisions. But again, it is much higher in states with abortion bans. It's 40% of OBGYNs that they personally have been constrained in caring for patients who are experiencing

miscarriages. Wow. So it just seems like the effects are just so widespread. You also found that the type of birth control that patients were seeking has changed too. Tell me a little bit about that. More than half of OBGYNs nationally across the U.S. say that they have had seen an increase in the share of patients seeking some form of contraception in the past year and particularly sterilization and the longer acting methods, IUDs and implants. So, you know, 43% of OBGYN so that they've had a increase in patients seeking sterilization services, that is getting tubes tied, and about the same share saying that they've had an increase in patients asking for IUDs and implants. Well, what's happening in states where abortion remains

legal? What are the differences? In states where abortion remains legal, doctors are still affected in the provision of care. Some of the states where abortion remains legal now, it's not clear that it's going to remain legal going forward. There are several cases pending in Iowa. You may have heard the governor there held a special legislative session specifically for restricting abortion access. The state legislature actually passed a law that restricts abortion access, but then just a day or two later is not in effect due to a court order. But that's a lot of change in policy in a very short amount of time. And so that can create a lot of confusion. for doctors and patients in those states.

What does this mean for the future of abortion care and reproductive health at large? Yeah, I think, you know, looking to the future, we asked OBGYNs about what they think, you know, the effects are down the road. And over half said that they think that the ability to attract new OBGYNs to the profession has actually gotten worse because of Dobbs. And those are concerns that are shared by OBGYNs in states with different abortion policies. I think that's something we really want to watch because some of the states that have banned abortion already had severe clinician shortages and also had some of the worst maternal health outcomes. And now, you know, OBGYNs are telling us that there's the possibility that those are going to be exacerbated in the post row world. Thank you so much. We've gotten to the end of our times together.

Ushah, and I just want to thank you so much for this report and for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Ushah Runji is Associate Director for Women's Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, based in San Francisco, California. As we just heard, there's a big disparity between states where abortion is banned or severely restricted versus those states where it remains legal. So we wanted to speak with a doctor who's navigating some of these realities, practicing in a state where abortion is legal and protected,

but seeing patients who are traveling from states with bans in place. Dr. Rebecca Cohen is the medical director of the Comprehensive Women's Health Center based in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Cohen, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me. So to start off, give us an overview. What's different about the patients that you're seeing since last year's dog's rolling? Yeah, there have been really a lot of changes.

First, as you mentioned, we are seeing a lot more people from out of state. before the Dobbs decision, only about one in 20 of our patients came from outside of Colorado, and now it's closer to one in three, primarily from states that are nearby Colorado, like Texas, but truly from across the country as it becomes harder and harder for people to seek care. We are also seeing more people for abortion care later in pregnancy, often because it's taking such a long time to navigate the logistics and the barriers of finding child care, of getting a flight in a hotel and an appointment, but also just because there are so many fewer places now that can care for people who've developed complications of their pregnancy

beyond the first trimester. So what's the impact on patients' care when they do have to travel so far to get to your clinic? Yeah, there are a lot of impacts, unfortunately. Really, what we're seeing is a lot of stress from being in and navigating an unfamiliar environment. So instead of being able to go to a doctor that they know in a city that they live, they have to take more time off of work, they have to go to an airport potentially that they're unfamiliar with, get a car and trust strangers in a time that is really stressful. All of that also involves a lot more expense. So abortion care is often not covered by insurance so people are paying out of pocket. But then they have the additional expenses for travel and lodging and, again, kind of time away from work or school. So on the program in the past, we've talked about what the expansion of medication abortion versus surgical abortion could mean in a post row landscape.

So what is the ratio of surgical versus medication abortions that you're seeing? Yeah. So that's actually more of a complicated question than it seems at first, because my practice, ironically, is seeing fewer patients now for medication abortion, precisely because the options have expanded so drastically since the Dobbs decision last year. It used to be that for a medication abortion, we had to see someone face to face, even just to provide the medication. And during COVID, those rules were lifted. And Colorado has been at the forefront of expanding medication. abortion access through telemedicine, so remote visits, through use of what we call advanced

practice providers like nurse practitioners and nurse midwives. So even though my practice is seeing fewer people seeking medication abortion, we know that there are more now than 10 organizations offering medication abortion in Colorado, and so a lot more people are having access to it. Are you also seeing more patients who are seeking care for miscarriages or pregnancy-related health issues who are traveling from out of state? Because they can't get. care in their home states or they're not sure if they can get care in their home states. Yeah, absolutely. And that's been, you know, one of the hardest parts of this for everyone involved. So for patients, for providers, is just the uncertainty of what is allowed and what is not.

Generally speaking, we have pretty well-defined guidelines for how to say this is a miscarriage or this is an ectopic or tubal pregnancy. Those are not considered viable pregnancies. They will not proceed to a live birth. And so we're generally able to intervene quickly for medical safety. But as people have been so concerned to say, well, this could be perceived as providing abortion care. So doing a procedure to end a miscarriage, intervening in an ectopic pregnancy, they've made the guidelines or kind of brought on these guidelines that are much more stricter than what is medically necessary.

We're also seeing patients that are just, they are too scared to seek care within the formal health system. I have cared for patients in the past who would take a positive pregnancy test at home. And then rather than go to a doctor to say, hey, I got this test, like, can you confirm that I'm pregnant? If they know they don't want to be pregnant, they become afraid and just go. So we have seen people now a few times over the last year that when we see them in our clinic, after that, you know, again, 10, 12, 14 hour drive, we found out that they're not pregnant, that they may have miscarried recently in the past or they may have misread the test. And so people are really going these extraordinary lengths for care that could be provided in their

home state, but because of fear is not. And that's a really important distinction, right? People who in the past might have right away gone to a doctor and said, well, let's find out if I'm pregnant right now, knowing that you're pregnant, if you're not sure you want to carry the pregnancy to term, that can be a problem in a lot of states. Absolutely, because there are times where it's imperative that someone seeks care. And one of those times is if there is a possibility of an ectopic pregnancy. So a pregnancy growing outside of the uterus in a space that it can't be sustained,

that pregnancy can rupture. So it can outgrow the fallopian tube tear open and cause very dangerous internal bleeding. And there have been times where people are so afraid that if it's not an ectopic pregnant, or if it's deemed not dangerous enough yet that they may get in legal trouble in their home state. And so they take that risk to their own health of going outside of the place that they are to seek care, even when it's medically advised to seek care closer because of the legal risks. If you're just joining us, we're talking about the state of reproductive health care one year after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. I'm John Dankowski. This is Science Friday from WNYC, students.

studios. One of the things that we heard earlier is that a lot of OBG buy-ins in the U.S. are worried about increasing disparities in access to reproductive health care and abortion. Have you seen some of these disparities at play where you work? We have. And it's really at every level. You know, what we know is that when abortion care is restricted or banned, it takes more resources to find it. That is everything from health literacy or understanding how to navigate the health care system. It's having, you know, a computer or a smartphone to be able to look up information about where to go to get an abortion. It's understanding, you know, what is and is not legal in the place that you live to find that information to make those

arrangements. And then again, it really is about having the financial and logistical support to overcome what is becoming bigger and bigger barriers in terms of making travel arrangements, being able to spend the money and have time away from family, work, school, without having such a negative or insurmountable impact on your life. We've also been reading that medical training is starting to change in states where abortion is illegal. And medical residents are trying to find training opportunities elsewhere. So have you seen an uptick in medical residents or nurses who want to train at your clinic? Yeah, we've gotten a lot of interest. And the challenge with procedural specialties like abortions is that it really does,

require experience to get the skills to be safe. And so we, although we're seeing an increase in volume, it's not to the point that my particular clinic can safely, you know, double the amount of people that we're training. Definitely getting people trained to a point that they are safe when the training opportunities have been so drastically restricted is a big problem for our field going forward. That's what I was going to ask. Going forward, do you see that it's possible that we will just not have enough OBGYNs and nurses trained in this work that we just won't have enough people to provide the care. Yeah, and you'd mentioned equity earlier, and this is definitely a huge equity issue for people

in restricted states. We know that OBGYNs are choosing not to practice in areas where their practices are so, so curtailed or where things that we can do safely and should be doing safely or not allowed. And the other is that abortion care is that abortion care is. not important only for providing abortions, but it's incredibly important for an OBGYN to understand how to manage a miscarriage, how to manage a complication of a pregnancy, and how to do things like provide contraception, which are often also restricted in those same ways. We also know that restricting abortion leads to increases in maternal mortality, in infant mortality, as people who are not healthy enough, to carry a pregnancy to term safely, are often forced to by those circumstances or to give birth

to a child who's also not healthy. There are a lot of medical realities of pregnant people that you've talked about. And many of those are overlooked in conversations about access to reproductive health care. Before we leave, I guess I'm wondering if there's anything else you wish people would know when they think about access to abortion or reproductive health care. It is not just about access to abortion. These restrictions take place in the setting of inequitable care. The states that are most restricting access to abortion are also the ones that generally provide the least support for contraceptive care, for prenatal care, for postnatal care, and all of those things have impacts on women, on children, on families, and that merely limiting or restricting access to abortion

is not the way to make people healthier or safer. As all the time we have, I want to thank our guest, Dr. Rebecca Cohen, is the medical director of the Comprehensive Women's Health Center based in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for your time. We have to take a break. And when we come back, saving one of New Zealand's most iconic and beloved birds, the cockapoe. Stay with us. This is Science Friday.

I'm John Dankoski. And I'm Diana Plasker. Our next story takes us to New Zealand to meet a very very very important. special, quirky, and critically endangered parrot, the cockapoe. It's the only parrot that walks instead of flies. It's almost as big as a chicken, and it kind of has the face of an owl with the body of Oscar the Grouch. In other words, they're perfect. But their situation is far from perfect. The cockapo population started crashing centuries ago, and at one point, they were teetering on the brink of extinction. But after decades of rallying, to save the cockapoe, New Zealand

has reached a huge milestone. Four birds were brought back to the mainland, a place they haven't lived since the 1980s. My next guest has dedicated her career to saving New Zealand's birds. Deirdre Virko, Operations Manager for the New Zealand, Department of Conservation's Kakapo and Takehi teams, joining me from Invicogil, New Zealand. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Diana. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for joining us. So can you give me a quick history of the Kakapo Conservation? Yeah, I can. So Karkapur used to be prolific, so found right throughout New Zealand, and they were a real feature, particularly of the night forest, really raucous, loud birds. But when humans arrived in New Zealand, their story changed. About 130 years ago, it was

known that Karkopo had essentially disappeared from New Zealand. There was one man, man by the name of Richard Henry, who was New Zealand's first ranger, really, first conservation ranger, and he identified that karkopo and other ground-dwelling birds like the Kiwi were going downhill because they were being predated on by introduced mammals, particularly the stout, which is in the Mustalid family. And then, yeah, about 75 years ago, 1950 or so, there were some huge efforts made to find what were thought to be the last living Karkopo, deep in Fjordland, which is a crazy part of New Zealand, really remote. And over 60 trips were made by some pretty hardy people back then,

and they only found a handful of Karkapur, I think it was 18 all up, and unfortunately they were all male. But roll forward a little bit to around 1977, and there's a Stuart Island right at the bottom of New Zealand, and a pretty remote place. Not many people go there, but the odd hunter was starting to come back with some, reports of booming heard down in the southern Stewart Island.

And of course, booming is the noise that a male karkopo makes in their breeding season. And sure enough, a small population of kakopo was found to be still living down the bottom of Stewart Island in the south. And a lot of work went into finding birds down there. And in 1980, the first females were found. And so that was a real turning point for the species. You know, here was a species people were convinced was. practically extinct, and finally a few females were found.

So that was a real turning point. And so over the next few decades, a lot of work was put in to try and rescue as many Karkopo from Southern Stewart Island and transfer them to safe, predative free islands. Because when they discovered that population in Southern Stewart Island, they also discovered that they were being eaten by feral cats. So they definitely weren't safe there. And so it was a lot of hard work. Karkopo are very hard to find, hard to, you know, that very thick bush.

They called it 10,000 acres of hedge. So there was just a team moving through this hedge trying to find these completely camouflaged, nocturnal parrots. And they managed over a decade or two to transfer 50 Kakopo to safe predatory islands. And that was 1995 was really when the current recovery program kicked off from that low of 50 Kakop. and that included about 20 females. Amazing. And so your team just moved four birds from those islands to the mainland.

What is the goal there? Why move them off of those islands back to the mainland? Yeah, so since 1995 we've been intensively managing Kakopo, or managing the nesting, really. And we have had some success. So we now have 248 Kakopo. Wow. They're still obviously very critically endangered,

but much better than more. 50, we're making progress. And one of the challenges we now have on the back of that progress is we're actually running out of space on those predator-free islands. It's a good problem to have. Yeah, sure is. And so we really need to test some new habitat. And so this translocation to the mainland is into a fenced sanctuary. It's a huge fence sanctuary in the middle of the North Island called Mangatotari. It's a pretty amazing place, gorgeous bush, but it's surrounded by a 47-kilometer-long predator-proof fence, which is designed to keep predators out. So you mentioned this. These birds seem pretty elusive. They're camouflaged. They're nocturnal.

How do you continue to study them? We've attached transmitters, like a little backpack-style transmitter, to each bird that we have in the population. And, yeah, we can track their movements with the transmitters. We know if they're alive or if they've died. It's actually a bit big brother-like, really. with these transmitters, and we get these activity signatures from them daily. And that tells us a lot of information and all remotely. And we can download that every morning and see what the birds have been up to. So we get information on how active they've been,

and that's been incredibly useful. We also learn a lot about their breeding with these activity levels. Really? Yeah. Yeah, they don't have much privacy. Kaka-po, when they mate. So the males have this really, intriguing breeding system. It's called a leck breeding system and they dig these shallow bowls

into the ground and they sit in these bowls every night and they've got thoracic air sacs that they blow up so they become like a little mini Swiss ball. They're quite large and they sit there in these bowls all night booming. Cool. And when they finally do get a mate, their activity suddenly changes from being really still all night long to being suddenly quite energetic and the activity signals detect that and so we can tell who's mated with who for how long and it even gives us a score on their mating strength. So all of this information we can learn every morning when we wake up and find out what's happened on the island the night before. It's a little bit of drama. Wow. I don't know that I would want to be a kakapo in that situation

exactly to be scored but it's good to know. So this effort was a partnership with Maori tribes, including Na'a Tahu. Is that right? Can you tell us about that partnership? Yeah, so Ngaitahou are a Māori tribe in the South Island. And because Kākapo were found in the South Island, the current population, Naita Hu, have a really deep connection with Kākapo. They're part of their family, really. They call it Fakapapa. part of their family connections, they're very deeply spiritually connected to the land and to the fauna.

And so they call kakopo a taunga, which is a treasure. And so we've been working really closely with Naitahu on Kakopo recovery, setting strategy, working side by side really on bringing this bird back from the brink of extinction. And ideally, Naitaou would love to have kākopo recovered within their own area, within the South Island of New Zealand. But there are not a lot of areas that are currently suitable for kakopo in their area.

And so the sanctuary that we've just translocated kakopo too is in the middle of the North Island, where there is a different collection of Māori tribes. And so Ngaita Hu have developed a relationship with the tribes in the North Island. And it's been beautiful to watch, actually, just this really lovely developed. of relationships, connections, and it feels like as you're restoring the life, they call it the mauri or the life force of the kakopo, the kakopo is also restoring these lovely connections between the people. Naitahu were with us and we went together to transfer kakopo to the northern iwi. And the northern iwi tribes take kakopo care deeply as a deep responsibility as if

they're looking after their own children. So it's been this lovely exchange of guardianship or Kaitiakitanga. So what's next for the Kakapo? Yeah, well, we've still got a long road ahead of us. 248 birds is critically endangered number. So the most important thing is that we keep our current population safe. Up at Mangatotari, what that will mean will be tracking these four birds to see how they cope in this new environment. The vegetation is very different up north from what they're used to in the south, but we are very confident that they'll adapt to that very well.

What we're really curious about, though, is how they interact with that predator-proof fence. So that 47-kilometer fence is being built to keep predators out, but it wasn't built to keep Karkopur in. So we've had to carry out some trials down on the islands in the south to see how we can make sure that Karkopo can't escape the fence.

They may not fly but they're exceptionally good climbers. They can climb right into the canopy of huge trees. So that'll be really interesting to see. And this site, Mangatoturi, could be a really important stepping stone for us in terms of our longer term goals. One of our more medium term goals is to release Karkopo back onto

Stewart Island or Rakiura, which is the island that this current population came from. At the moment, Stuart Island has cats, it has possums and rats, and so we have this predator-free 2050 movement, and there's a lot of technology development, a lot of research, a lot of work going in towards, can we eradicate these predators from large areas of New Zealand and bring our endemic wildlife back?

And so Stewart Island is one of these areas of focus, which is currently, there's feasibility work being done right now to see if we can eradicate predators from Stewart Island. And when that is achieved, that would be a real game changer for us to be able to release Carcobo back onto Stewart Island and they would be able to grow to much greater numbers there. And from there, we hope that that would be a stepping stone for transferring Carcopo throughout New Zealand. And what is it about these birds that you love so much. Yeah, they're pretty special. I love watching people's reaction to kakopo when they see them for the first time. People are often really surprised by how big they are. And they, you know, they're a parrot,

so they've got that real intelligent look. They're really sussing you out. You can tell there's a lot going on there and they look at you. The birds themselves are just, they smell gorgeous, as I said, and they are, they look gorgeous, but it's just, They're, yeah, their characters, individual characters, and the characters of the birds themselves. So they live a long time. We don't actually know how long, 60, 70 years, possibly up to 100 years. Wow. Yeah.

Holy. So some of the birds that we're managing right now are the same birds that were found on Stewart Island in the 70s and 80s. And they're still going. You know, we've got a bird called Nora, who, we don't know how old she is. She was one of the founding birds from Stuart Island, and she had 40 years between clutches of chicks. Wow. You know, and that's pretty incredible. So that's one thing I really love about Kakapo is the sense of history you get when you work with these birds.

And you feel like you're part of a, you know, you feel like you're carrying a baton from one generation to the next in this really long-term conservation program. Amazing. Well, perhaps one day we'll be lucky enough to actually smell a Kakapo. I love that. Thank you so much for joining me. You're welcome. Thanks for having me on the show. Deirdre Virko, Operations Manager for the New Zealand, Department of Conservation's Cacapopo and Takihi teams. To check out images of the Cacapo, head to our website, ScienceFriiday.com.

This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. The Cacapo may have conservation woes, but that's not the same for all parrots. In fact, in many urban areas, non-native species of parrots have become. established. Not only have they survived, but they've thrived. Science writer Ryan Mandelbaum wrote about the resilience of parrots for the July issue of Scientific American. Our producer Kathleen Davis met Ryan at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where the most famous living residents are birds. The entrance of Greenwood Cemetery is striking. There's a beautiful Gothic revival gate that arches over the walkway, leading into a nearly 500,

acre green space. It's an oasis in one of the largest urban areas on earth. Some may consider this a place of tranquility in the city, but then you hear the parrots. So right now we're looking at a bunch of brown stone and at the very top is like a huge mass of sticks, not the size of maybe an oil drum or something. And inside that huge mass of sticks at the very top of these beautiful arches are a bunch of little green parrots. These are monk parakeets, also known as Quaker parrots. And how they got here is a bit of a mystery. What we know is that probably during the 60s and 70s, people got really excited about pet parrots. And so there were pet parrots being brought into the United States all over. And the lore that we pass around is that at some point,

some box of parrots, perhaps at the airport, got overturned, and then we had a bunch of parrots that escaped and colonized cemetery. But what's more likely is that a combination of, like, people releasing their parrots and parrots escaping hits some critical mass, and now we have parrots. You're not supposed to release domesticated pets into the wild. That's because most pet species aren't equipped to survive on their own. But these monk parakeets have been perfectly fine. Monk parakeets are actually really common in their native habitat, which is like southern, more temperate, South America, so like Uruguay, northern Argentina. And there, they're like as common as pigeons. And you see them everywhere, doing very similar to what they're doing now.

So when they made it to New York City and to cities across the northern hemisphere, it was like they were fine. They're sort of already used to human-built environments. Monk parakeets have established colonies in a range of northern plains. places like Chicago, Connecticut, all the way to London. New York does get quite a bit colder than the monk parakeets native South American habitat, but they've evolved behaviorally to make this work. So you see that they're building this huge stick nest, which is like a pretty rare behavior in parrots. And this stick nest, you know, their whole life kind of revolves around it. They can kind of stay warm and live their life in there. I think it's like a pretty, it is like a cozy environment.

There's like little different chambers for them, and they've got a whole setup in there. A question top of mind for me during this conversation was, are these parrots invasive? Many experts prefer the term introduced, because these parrots don't cause ecological harm here in New York as far as we know. They can be a nuisance to people, though. A lot of the complaints people have about the parrots are related to their effects on human things. So for example, monk parakeets will build their nests in power line transformers, and then that can start fires. These parrots are really staying in the most transformed part of the city. They're not going out into the forest and eating some endangered species or depleting some endangered resource.

They're like, again, nesting in trees we planted, clipping branches off of non-native trees for their nests, and then, like, eating to garbage. For now, the Greenwood parrots are not only safe, but thriving. For Science Friday, I'm Kathleen Davis. Thanks, Kathleen. And that's all the time we have for this hour. We had help from lots of folks this week, including community manager Santiago Flores, digital producer Emma Gomez, and controller Beth Rammy. BJ Leederman composed our theme music. If you miss any part of this program or you would like to hear it again,

subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. I'm Diana Plasker. And I'm John Dankoski.