Johannes Fritz, a maverick Austrian biologist, must come up with a plan, and fast, if he is to prevent his rare and beloved birds from disappearing, once again.
To survive the winter in Europe, the northern bald ibis – which once disappeared entirely from the wild on the continent – had to migrate south for the winter, over the Alps, before the mountains became impassable.
But shifting climate patterns are delayed when the birds begin to migrate, and they reach the mountains too late to make it to the peaks, trapping them in an icy death trap.
“Two or three years, and they’ll be wiped out again,” Mr. Fritz said.
Determined to save them, Mr. Fritz that he would teach the birds a new, safer migration route by guiding them himself in a small aircraft. And he’s confident he can succeed in this daring and unconventional plan — because he’s done it before.
When Mr. Fritz was born 56 years ago, the northern bald ibis, a goose-sized black bird with a bald head and enormous beak, was only found in Europe in captivity. About 400 years ago, Europeans probably swallowed the last of them.
But Mr. Fritz has spent his career reintroducing birds into the wild, and an important part of their education is teaching the young the migration paths they will follow as adults.
Mr. learned to fly. Fritz, modified an ultralight aircraft so that it would cruise at a speed slow enough for his winged students to keep up.
He’s been the sole provider of food, love and hugs to his young students since they were a few days old, and the ibises eagerly follow their teacher — who just happens to be the pilot of a rather noisy machine.
In 2004, three years after some initial bumpy experiments, Mr. Fritz led the first herd from Austria to Italy, and since then he has led 15 such migrations. Over time, he rewilded 277 young ibis, many of which began to pass the route to their own children.
But the route he originally pointed to the ibis was no longer viable. With climate change warming the area where the birds roost – along Lake Constance in Germany and Austria – they now begin their migration at the end of October instead of at the end of September, as they did them just a decade ago.
Last year, while he was following the birds’ progress, Mr. Fritz found snow covering the feathers of the ibises, and their long beaks struggling to find worms and grubs in the frozen ground. Three colonies of ibis each tried twice to cross the mountains in November, but failed each time, with Mr. Fritz hypothesizing that the rising warm air flow was too weak by November to allow the birds that soar easily over the mountains.
Mr. Fritz and his team lured hungry animals with mealworms, trapped them in crates and took them over the Alps.
But a private coach service, Mr. Fritz realized, was not a sustainable solution, so he came up with the idea of showing the birds a new migration path.
On Lake Constance this summer, humans and birds are in flight school, training in escort flights for their epic journey. By October, they hope to reach the southern Atlantic coast of Spain, via Cadiz, where the birds can comfortably winter.
Crossing the mighty Alps, the new route is about 2,500 miles, or about three times longer than the previous one directly south into Tuscany. Flying at a top speed of 25 miles per hour, the trip is expected to take about six weeks, compared to two to reach Tuscany.
Still, “we hope it will work,” Mr. Fritz said as he pushed his aircraft into a field that served as a landing strip.
His aircraft is a three-wheeled vehicle attached to a propeller and canopy that resembles a parachute, but Mr. Fritz insists it’s safe — and unlike the gliders he learned to fly, it doesn’t hurt the him.
Growing up on a mountain farm in Tyrol, Mr. Fritz to watch how cows and horses interact more freely with each other — petting and playing — once they’re out of the barn and out into the pasture. This young man’s observations fueled his dream of becoming a biologist.
At age 20, he enrolled in a program that would eventually allow him to study biology at university but first, he had to train as a state hunter responsible for monitoring local animal populations .
In the rough Alpine terrain, he monitors the health of herds of chamois and deer, while refusing to kill them. Only once, with repeated insistence by his master, did he pull the trigger. “An orphaned deer, that should have died,” said Mr. Fritz, who called the shooting a “dark spot” in his professional life.
He was 24 when he began studying at the universities of Vienna and Innsbruck. He later landed a job at Austria’s Konrad Lorenz Research Center, raising crow chicks by hand and teaching graylag geese how to open boxes while he pursued his Ph.D. Working closely with free-living animals is exactly what he dreamed of as a child.
In 1997, a zoo gave the research center its first northern bald ibis chicks. Nowhere near as educated as geese – and not even close to superintelligent crows – ibises have disappointed most scientists.
But Mr. Fritz was fascinated. When people joke that their red, curly heads and black mohawks put them in the running for world’s ugliest bird, he points to their charisma, helpfulness and love. He knew what the chicks wanted to eat — shredded mice and beef hearts, eight times a day — and the curious birds enjoyed sticking their long beaks into his ears.
After first releasing ibis into the wild more than 20 years ago, Mr. Fritz found that spending generations in zoological confinement did not dampen their desire to migrate, although it left them geographically ignorant. In their search for the “south,” some ended up in Russia.
What the ibis needed, Mr. Fritz thought, was a guide.
“At that time, ‘Fly Away Home’ was a huge hit among us biologists,” said Mr. Fritz, recalling the 1996 film in which the characters played by Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin played the lead. on the transfer of orphaned Canada geese in a hang glider. When Mr. Fritz that he would do the same with the ibis, he was ridiculed at first.
But through years of trial and error, he succeeded. He even learned to fly like a bird, he said, floating with ease.
Followed by the two children of Mr. Fritz, who are now both teenagers, their flying father and the birds that migrate on the ground, and his family and colleagues witness the dangers he takes.
“Fortunately, every time the motor stopped, we were somewhere we could still land,” Mr. Fritz said. Once, he fell so hard in a cornfield, his team feared he was dead. When they found him mostly unharmed in a wrecked aircraft, his first response was: “We’ve got to fix this right away.”
Now, he puts safety first, he said, in part because he’s no longer the only one taking risks. The ibises are now being raised by two research assistants who act as human foster mothers, one flying behind Mr. Fritz, one has a second pilot.
On a hot morning at their campsite on Lake Constance, Mr. Fritz zipped up his olive-green jumpsuit and boarded his aircraft, turned to look at the 35 ibises and motioned for one of the foster mothers to sit down. behind him. . As they climb the grassy airfield, the birds flap their black wings, trailing just behind.
Soon, they will fly west to France, then south to the Mediterranean, where they will follow the coast to Andalusia, one of the hottest and driest regions on the continent, facing unpredictable weather along the way.
But the inevitable risks are “necessary,” Mr. Fritz said.
“It’s not so much work,” he added, “but my life’s purpose.”
