Dengue e a explosão de casos no Brasil

Elgison da Luz dos Santos

A dengue é uma doença viral transmitida pelo mosquito Aedes aegypti e tem sido uma preocupação constante no Brasil. Nos últimos anos, o país tem enfrentado uma verdadeira explosão de casos, com consequências devastadoras para a saúde pública e a qualidade de vida da população.

Vários fatores têm contribuído para o aumento significativo dos casos. Em primeiro lugar, temos a urbanização desordenada, que resulta no acúmulo de lixo, água parada e falta de saneamento básico adequado. Essas condições criam o ambiente ideal para a proliferação do mosquito transmissor. Além disso, o clima tropical do Brasil proporciona condições favoráveis ao desenvolvimento do Aedes aegypti, durante todo o ano. As altas temperaturas e a umidade aumentam a velocidade de reprodução do mosquito, aumentando a transmissão da doença. Outro fator relevante é a falta de conscientização e engajamento da população, pois é essencial que as pessoas adotem medidas preventivas, como eliminar recipientes com água parada, utilizar repelentes e telas nas janelas, para evitar a reprodução do mosquito e reduzir os riscos de contaminação.

Importante destacar que as consequências da explosão de casos de dengue no Brasil são alarmantes e impactam negativamente diversos aspectos da sociedade. Primeiramente, a doença sobrecarrega o sistema de saúde, aumentando a demanda por leitos hospitalares e atendimentos de profissionais de saúde, o que compromete a capacidade de atendimento e qualidade dos serviços de saúde, afetando não apenas os pacientes de dengue, mas também as pessoas que necessitam de assistência médica por outros motivos. Além disso, a dengue causa um grande impacto econômico, visto que a doença leva ao afastamento de trabalhadores, gerando redução na produtividade e prejuízos para as empresas. Os gastos com tratamentos médicos e campanhas de combate ao mosquito também representam um ônus significativo para os cofres públicos e que pode minimizar os investimentos em outros programas de saúde já que os recursos para a saúde são limitados.

A dengue também tem impacto direto na qualidade de vida da população. Os sintomas da doença, como febre alta, dores musculares e cansaço extremo, podem ser debilitantes e afetar a capacidade das pessoas de desempenharem suas atividades diárias. Além disso, casos mais graves podem levar à hospitalização e até mesmo ao óbito.

Diante disso, é fundamental que haja abordagens abrangentes e integradas para que todos busquem combater efetivamente a dengue. Algumas medidas essenciais incluem:

- Investimento em saneamento básico e infraestrutura adequada, visando eliminar locais propícios à reprodução do mosquito;

- Fortalecimento das ações de controle vetorial, como a aplicação de larvicidas e inseticidas;

- Educação e conscientização da população sobre a importância de medidas preventivas, como a eliminação de criadouros do mosquito;

- Melhoria na capacidade de diagnóstico e tratamento da doença, com investimentos em equipamentos e treinamento de profissionais de saúde.

- Ações de mobilização social e parcerias entre governo, sociedade civil e setor privado para enfrentar o problema de forma conjunta.

Em síntese, a explosão de casos de dengue no Brasil representa uma grave ameaça à saúde pública e exige ação imediata e coordenada, visto que as consequências trazem impactos negativos no sistema de saúde, na economia e na qualidade de vida das pessoas. É imprescindível que sejam implementadas medidas efetivas e sustentáveis para o combate à dengue, envolvendo ações preventivas, investimentos em infraestrutura e engajamento da sociedade como um todo. Somente assim, poderemos reverter essa situação preocupante e garantir um futuro mais saudável para todos os brasileiros.

Disponível em: https://www.em.com.br/app/noticia/opiniao/2023/06/29/interna_opiniao,1513712/dengue-e-a-explosao-de-casos-no-brasil.shtml Acesso:01/04/24

How an English castle became a stork magnet

By Sophie Hardach

White storks are breeding again in Britain, helped by a rewilding project (Credit: Knepp Estate)

Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

It is a cool morning in March and I am wading along a muddy path, part of the vast, ancestral grounds of Knepp Castle in southern England. The scenery looks ancient and dramatic, a patchwork of well-trodden grass, deep puddles and tangled scrubs, studded with majestic, bare-branched oak trees. High up in the crowns of the trees are huge storks' nests the size of tractor wheels, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the pale blue sky. White storks glide through the sky and land in the nests, while others sit and warm their eggs. Every now and then, the air is pierced by a joyful clattering sound as they greet each other.

"We sometimes describe this as stork headquarters," says biologist Laura Vaughan-Hirsch, gesturing at the nests around us. She leads the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, which started in 2016 and is part of a wider stork reintroduction project in southern England. As we talk, a stork in one of the highest nests climbs on top of another: "They're mating," says Vaughan-Hirsch. A short while later, a clattering sound is heard from the nest, which is, she explains "all part of the bonding".

"The first time I saw them here, it was a bit like Jurassic Park (the movie) really, the way they were flying over your head," says Amy Hurn, a volunteer who has been helping monitor the birds for two years. "I had never seen a white stork in the wild before, I never knew that that was near to where I live."

Since 2019, the younger birds have started migrating – adding a whole new dimension to the project. A number have been equipped with trackers, allowing the team to trace their epic journeys. Their travels are connecting Knepp Castle with storks' wintering sites as far as Spain, Portugal and Morocco. But in the process, new hazards to the rebounding population have emerged, including collisions with power lines.

This poses another challenge for those keen to protect England's new stork community: how do you go from providing suitable nesting sites, to helping the birds travel safely and find supportive habitats across a whole continent?

Storks generally try to choose the shortest route across water, research suggests, since they can't use their usual soaring flight strategy there as thermal updrafts over water tend to be weaker than on land. They therefore need to flap their wings to cross water, instead of just gliding. As this is tiring, they look for the shortest crossing – and the tracking lines indeed show most of them choosing the shortest stretch of water, between Dover in England and Calais in France, Franco points out.

There are some exceptions, however; one stork ended up on a fishing vessel in Cornwall and used it to travel to the west coast of France.

Once they reached the other side, the storks appeared to instinctively use a tactic common among young wild storks: follow more experienced wild storks. As young storks join the flocks along the way, the travelling flocks can swell to hundreds of storks all flying and circling up the thermals together, in one of nature's great spectacles.

Source: adapted from <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240326-how-an-english-castles-grounds-became-a-stork-paradise>

How an English castle became a stork magnet

By Sophie Hardach

White storks are breeding again in Britain, helped by a rewilding project (Credit: Knepp Estate)

Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

It is a cool morning in March and I am wading along a muddy path, part of the vast, ancestral grounds of Knepp Castle in southern England. The scenery looks ancient and dramatic, a patchwork of well-trodden grass, deep puddles and tangled scrubs, studded with majestic, bare-branched oak trees. High up in the crowns of the trees are huge storks' nests the size of tractor wheels, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the pale blue sky. White storks glide through the sky and land in the nests, while others sit and warm their eggs. Every now and then, the air is pierced by a joyful clattering sound as they greet each other.

"We sometimes describe this as stork headquarters," says biologist Laura Vaughan-Hirsch, gesturing at the nests around us. She leads the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, which started in 2016 and is part of a wider stork reintroduction project in southern England. As we talk, a stork in one of the highest nests climbs on top of another: "They're mating," says Vaughan-Hirsch. A short while later, a clattering sound is heard from the nest, which is, she explains "all part of the bonding".

"The first time I saw them here, it was a bit like Jurassic Park (the movie) really, the way they were flying over your head," says Amy Hurn, a volunteer who has been helping monitor the birds for two years. "I had never seen a white stork in the wild before, I never knew that that was near to where I live."

Since 2019, the younger birds have started migrating – adding a whole new dimension to the project. A number have been equipped with trackers, allowing the team to trace their epic journeys. Their travels are connecting Knepp Castle with storks' wintering sites as far as Spain, Portugal and Morocco. But in the process, new hazards to the rebounding population have emerged, including collisions with power lines.

This poses another challenge for those keen to protect England's new stork community: how do you go from providing suitable nesting sites, to helping the birds travel safely and find supportive habitats across a whole continent?

Storks generally try to choose the shortest route across water, research suggests, since they can't use their usual soaring flight strategy there as thermal updrafts over water tend to be weaker than on land. They therefore need to flap their wings to cross water, instead of just gliding. As this is tiring, they look for the shortest crossing – and the tracking lines indeed show most of them choosing the shortest stretch of water, between Dover in England and Calais in France, Franco points out.

There are some exceptions, however; one stork ended up on a fishing vessel in Cornwall and used it to travel to the west coast of France.

Once they reached the other side, the storks appeared to instinctively use a tactic common among young wild storks: follow more experienced wild storks. As young storks join the flocks along the way, the travelling flocks can swell to hundreds of storks all flying and circling up the thermals together, in one of nature's great spectacles.

Source: adapted from <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240326-how-an-english-castles-grounds-became-a-stork-paradise>

How an English castle became a stork magnet

By Sophie Hardach

White storks are breeding again in Britain, helped by a rewilding project (Credit: Knepp Estate)

Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

It is a cool morning in March and I am wading along a muddy path, part of the vast, ancestral grounds of Knepp Castle in southern England. The scenery looks ancient and dramatic, a patchwork of well-trodden grass, deep puddles and tangled scrubs, studded with majestic, bare-branched oak trees. High up in the crowns of the trees are huge storks' nests the size of tractor wheels, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the pale blue sky. White storks glide through the sky and land in the nests, while others sit and warm their eggs. Every now and then, the air is pierced by a joyful clattering sound as they greet each other.

"We sometimes describe this as stork headquarters," says biologist Laura Vaughan-Hirsch, gesturing at the nests around us. She leads the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, which started in 2016 and is part of a wider stork reintroduction project in southern England. As we talk, a stork in one of the highest nests climbs on top of another: "They're mating," says Vaughan-Hirsch. A short while later, a clattering sound is heard from the nest, which is, she explains "all part of the bonding".

"The first time I saw them here, it was a bit like Jurassic Park (the movie) really, the way they were flying over your head," says Amy Hurn, a volunteer who has been helping monitor the birds for two years. "I had never seen a white stork in the wild before, I never knew that that was near to where I live."

Since 2019, the younger birds have started migrating – adding a whole new dimension to the project. A number have been equipped with trackers, allowing the team to trace their epic journeys. Their travels are connecting Knepp Castle with storks' wintering sites as far as Spain, Portugal and Morocco. But in the process, new hazards to the rebounding population have emerged, including collisions with power lines.

This poses another challenge for those keen to protect England's new stork community: how do you go from providing suitable nesting sites, to helping the birds travel safely and find supportive habitats across a whole continent?

Storks generally try to choose the shortest route across water, research suggests, since they can't use their usual soaring flight strategy there as thermal updrafts over water tend to be weaker than on land. They therefore need to flap their wings to cross water, instead of just gliding. As this is tiring, they look for the shortest crossing – and the tracking lines indeed show most of them choosing the shortest stretch of water, between Dover in England and Calais in France, Franco points out.

There are some exceptions, however; one stork ended up on a fishing vessel in Cornwall and used it to travel to the west coast of France.

Once they reached the other side, the storks appeared to instinctively use a tactic common among young wild storks: follow more experienced wild storks. As young storks join the flocks along the way, the travelling flocks can swell to hundreds of storks all flying and circling up the thermals together, in one of nature's great spectacles.

Source: adapted from <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240326-how-an-english-castles-grounds-became-a-stork-paradise>

How an English castle became a stork magnet

By Sophie Hardach

White storks are breeding again in Britain, helped by a rewilding project (Credit: Knepp Estate)

Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

It is a cool morning in March and I am wading along a muddy path, part of the vast, ancestral grounds of Knepp Castle in southern England. The scenery looks ancient and dramatic, a patchwork of well-trodden grass, deep puddles and tangled scrubs, studded with majestic, bare-branched oak trees. High up in the crowns of the trees are huge storks' nests the size of tractor wheels, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the pale blue sky. White storks glide through the sky and land in the nests, while others sit and warm their eggs. Every now and then, the air is pierced by a joyful clattering sound as they greet each other.

"We sometimes describe this as stork headquarters," says biologist Laura Vaughan-Hirsch, gesturing at the nests around us. She leads the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, which started in 2016 and is part of a wider stork reintroduction project in southern England. As we talk, a stork in one of the highest nests climbs on top of another: "They're mating," says Vaughan-Hirsch. A short while later, a clattering sound is heard from the nest, which is, she explains "all part of the bonding".

"The first time I saw them here, it was a bit like Jurassic Park (the movie) really, the way they were flying over your head," says Amy Hurn, a volunteer who has been helping monitor the birds for two years. "I had never seen a white stork in the wild before, I never knew that that was near to where I live."

Since 2019, the younger birds have started migrating – adding a whole new dimension to the project. A number have been equipped with trackers, allowing the team to trace their epic journeys. Their travels are connecting Knepp Castle with storks' wintering sites as far as Spain, Portugal and Morocco. But in the process, new hazards to the rebounding population have emerged, including collisions with power lines.

This poses another challenge for those keen to protect England's new stork community: how do you go from providing suitable nesting sites, to helping the birds travel safely and find supportive habitats across a whole continent?

Storks generally try to choose the shortest route across water, research suggests, since they can't use their usual soaring flight strategy there as thermal updrafts over water tend to be weaker than on land. They therefore need to flap their wings to cross water, instead of just gliding. As this is tiring, they look for the shortest crossing – and the tracking lines indeed show most of them choosing the shortest stretch of water, between Dover in England and Calais in France, Franco points out.

There are some exceptions, however; one stork ended up on a fishing vessel in Cornwall and used it to travel to the west coast of France.

Once they reached the other side, the storks appeared to instinctively use a tactic common among young wild storks: follow more experienced wild storks. As young storks join the flocks along the way, the travelling flocks can swell to hundreds of storks all flying and circling up the thermals together, in one of nature's great spectacles.

Source: adapted from <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240326-how-an-english-castles-grounds-became-a-stork-paradise>

How an English castle became a stork magnet

By Sophie Hardach

White storks are breeding again in Britain, helped by a rewilding project (Credit: Knepp Estate)

Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

It is a cool morning in March and I am wading along a muddy path, part of the vast, ancestral grounds of Knepp Castle in southern England. The scenery looks ancient and dramatic, a patchwork of well-trodden grass, deep puddles and tangled scrubs, studded with majestic, bare-branched oak trees. High up in the crowns of the trees are huge storks' nests the size of tractor wheels, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the pale blue sky. White storks glide through the sky and land in the nests, while others sit and warm their eggs. Every now and then, the air is pierced by a joyful clattering sound as they greet each other.

"We sometimes describe this as stork headquarters," says biologist Laura Vaughan-Hirsch, gesturing at the nests around us. She leads the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, which started in 2016 and is part of a wider stork reintroduction project in southern England. As we talk, a stork in one of the highest nests climbs on top of another: "They're mating," says Vaughan-Hirsch. A short while later, a clattering sound is heard from the nest, which is, she explains "all part of the bonding".

"The first time I saw them here, it was a bit like Jurassic Park (the movie) really, the way they were flying over your head," says Amy Hurn, a volunteer who has been helping monitor the birds for two years. "I had never seen a white stork in the wild before, I never knew that that was near to where I live."

Since 2019, the younger birds have started migrating – adding a whole new dimension to the project. A number have been equipped with trackers, allowing the team to trace their epic journeys. Their travels are connecting Knepp Castle with storks' wintering sites as far as Spain, Portugal and Morocco. But in the process, new hazards to the rebounding population have emerged, including collisions with power lines.

This poses another challenge for those keen to protect England's new stork community: how do you go from providing suitable nesting sites, to helping the birds travel safely and find supportive habitats across a whole continent?

Storks generally try to choose the shortest route across water, research suggests, since they can't use their usual soaring flight strategy there as thermal updrafts over water tend to be weaker than on land. They therefore need to flap their wings to cross water, instead of just gliding. As this is tiring, they look for the shortest crossing – and the tracking lines indeed show most of them choosing the shortest stretch of water, between Dover in England and Calais in France, Franco points out.

There are some exceptions, however; one stork ended up on a fishing vessel in Cornwall and used it to travel to the west coast of France.

Once they reached the other side, the storks appeared to instinctively use a tactic common among young wild storks: follow more experienced wild storks. As young storks join the flocks along the way, the travelling flocks can swell to hundreds of storks all flying and circling up the thermals together, in one of nature's great spectacles.

Source: adapted from <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240326-how-an-english-castles-grounds-became-a-stork-paradise>

How an English castle became a stork magnet

By Sophie Hardach

White storks are breeding again in Britain, helped by a rewilding project (Credit: Knepp Estate)

Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

It is a cool morning in March and I am wading along a muddy path, part of the vast, ancestral grounds of Knepp Castle in southern England. The scenery looks ancient and dramatic, a patchwork of well-trodden grass, deep puddles and tangled scrubs, studded with majestic, bare-branched oak trees. High up in the crowns of the trees are huge storks' nests the size of tractor wheels, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the pale blue sky. White storks glide through the sky and land in the nests, while others sit and warm their eggs. Every now and then, the air is pierced by a joyful clattering sound as they greet each other.

"We sometimes describe this as stork headquarters," says biologist Laura Vaughan-Hirsch, gesturing at the nests around us. She leads the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, which started in 2016 and is part of a wider stork reintroduction project in southern England. As we talk, a stork in one of the highest nests climbs on top of another: "They're mating," says Vaughan-Hirsch. A short while later, a clattering sound is heard from the nest, which is, she explains "all part of the bonding".

"The first time I saw them here, it was a bit like Jurassic Park (the movie) really, the way they were flying over your head," says Amy Hurn, a volunteer who has been helping monitor the birds for two years. "I had never seen a white stork in the wild before, I never knew that that was near to where I live."

Since 2019, the younger birds have started migrating – adding a whole new dimension to the project. A number have been equipped with trackers, allowing the team to trace their epic journeys. Their travels are connecting Knepp Castle with storks' wintering sites as far as Spain, Portugal and Morocco. But in the process, new hazards to the rebounding population have emerged, including collisions with power lines.

This poses another challenge for those keen to protect England's new stork community: how do you go from providing suitable nesting sites, to helping the birds travel safely and find supportive habitats across a whole continent?

Storks generally try to choose the shortest route across water, research suggests, since they can't use their usual soaring flight strategy there as thermal updrafts over water tend to be weaker than on land. They therefore need to flap their wings to cross water, instead of just gliding. As this is tiring, they look for the shortest crossing – and the tracking lines indeed show most of them choosing the shortest stretch of water, between Dover in England and Calais in France, Franco points out.

There are some exceptions, however; one stork ended up on a fishing vessel in Cornwall and used it to travel to the west coast of France.

Once they reached the other side, the storks appeared to instinctively use a tactic common among young wild storks: follow more experienced wild storks. As young storks join the flocks along the way, the travelling flocks can swell to hundreds of storks all flying and circling up the thermals together, in one of nature's great spectacles.

Source: adapted from <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240326-how-an-english-castles-grounds-became-a-stork-paradise>

How an English castle became a stork magnet

By Sophie Hardach

White storks are breeding again in Britain, helped by a rewilding project (Credit: Knepp Estate)

Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

It is a cool morning in March and I am wading along a muddy path, part of the vast, ancestral grounds of Knepp Castle in southern England. The scenery looks ancient and dramatic, a patchwork of well-trodden grass, deep puddles and tangled scrubs, studded with majestic, bare-branched oak trees. High up in the crowns of the trees are huge storks' nests the size of tractor wheels, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the pale blue sky. White storks glide through the sky and land in the nests, while others sit and warm their eggs. Every now and then, the air is pierced by a joyful clattering sound as they greet each other.

"We sometimes describe this as stork headquarters," says biologist Laura Vaughan-Hirsch, gesturing at the nests around us. She leads the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, which started in 2016 and is part of a wider stork reintroduction project in southern England. As we talk, a stork in one of the highest nests climbs on top of another: "They're mating," says Vaughan-Hirsch. A short while later, a clattering sound is heard from the nest, which is, she explains "all part of the bonding".

"The first time I saw them here, it was a bit like Jurassic Park (the movie) really, the way they were flying over your head," says Amy Hurn, a volunteer who has been helping monitor the birds for two years. "I had never seen a white stork in the wild before, I never knew that that was near to where I live."

Since 2019, the younger birds have started migrating – adding a whole new dimension to the project. A number have been equipped with trackers, allowing the team to trace their epic journeys. Their travels are connecting Knepp Castle with storks' wintering sites as far as Spain, Portugal and Morocco. But in the process, new hazards to the rebounding population have emerged, including collisions with power lines.

This poses another challenge for those keen to protect England's new stork community: how do you go from providing suitable nesting sites, to helping the birds travel safely and find supportive habitats across a whole continent?

Storks generally try to choose the shortest route across water, research suggests, since they can't use their usual soaring flight strategy there as thermal updrafts over water tend to be weaker than on land. They therefore need to flap their wings to cross water, instead of just gliding. As this is tiring, they look for the shortest crossing – and the tracking lines indeed show most of them choosing the shortest stretch of water, between Dover in England and Calais in France, Franco points out.

There are some exceptions, however; one stork ended up on a fishing vessel in Cornwall and used it to travel to the west coast of France.

Once they reached the other side, the storks appeared to instinctively use a tactic common among young wild storks: follow more experienced wild storks. As young storks join the flocks along the way, the travelling flocks can swell to hundreds of storks all flying and circling up the thermals together, in one of nature's great spectacles.

Source: adapted from <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240326-how-an-english-castles-grounds-became-a-stork-paradise>

How an English castle became a stork magnet

By Sophie Hardach

White storks are breeding again in Britain, helped by a rewilding project (Credit: Knepp Estate)

Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

It is a cool morning in March and I am wading along a muddy path, part of the vast, ancestral grounds of Knepp Castle in southern England. The scenery looks ancient and dramatic, a patchwork of well-trodden grass, deep puddles and tangled scrubs, studded with majestic, bare-branched oak trees. High up in the crowns of the trees are huge storks' nests the size of tractor wheels, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the pale blue sky. White storks glide through the sky and land in the nests, while others sit and warm their eggs. Every now and then, the air is pierced by a joyful clattering sound as they greet each other.

"We sometimes describe this as stork headquarters," says biologist Laura Vaughan-Hirsch, gesturing at the nests around us. She leads the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, which started in 2016 and is part of a wider stork reintroduction project in southern England. As we talk, a stork in one of the highest nests climbs on top of another: "They're mating," says Vaughan-Hirsch. A short while later, a clattering sound is heard from the nest, which is, she explains "all part of the bonding".

"The first time I saw them here, it was a bit like Jurassic Park (the movie) really, the way they were flying over your head," says Amy Hurn, a volunteer who has been helping monitor the birds for two years. "I had never seen a white stork in the wild before, I never knew that that was near to where I live."

Since 2019, the younger birds have started migrating – adding a whole new dimension to the project. A number have been equipped with trackers, allowing the team to trace their epic journeys. Their travels are connecting Knepp Castle with storks' wintering sites as far as Spain, Portugal and Morocco. But in the process, new hazards to the rebounding population have emerged, including collisions with power lines.

This poses another challenge for those keen to protect England's new stork community: how do you go from providing suitable nesting sites, to helping the birds travel safely and find supportive habitats across a whole continent?

Storks generally try to choose the shortest route across water, research suggests, since they can't use their usual soaring flight strategy there as thermal updrafts over water tend to be weaker than on land. They therefore need to flap their wings to cross water, instead of just gliding. As this is tiring, they look for the shortest crossing – and the tracking lines indeed show most of them choosing the shortest stretch of water, between Dover in England and Calais in France, Franco points out.

There are some exceptions, however; one stork ended up on a fishing vessel in Cornwall and used it to travel to the west coast of France.

Once they reached the other side, the storks appeared to instinctively use a tactic common among young wild storks: follow more experienced wild storks. As young storks join the flocks along the way, the travelling flocks can swell to hundreds of storks all flying and circling up the thermals together, in one of nature's great spectacles.

Source: adapted from <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240326-how-an-english-castles-grounds-became-a-stork-paradise>

How an English castle became a stork magnet

By Sophie Hardach

White storks are breeding again in Britain, helped by a rewilding project (Credit: Knepp Estate)

Helped by a bold rewilding project, storks are migrating between Britain and North Africa again for the first time in 600 years. How can we make their journey safer?

It is a cool morning in March and I am wading along a muddy path, part of the vast, ancestral grounds of Knepp Castle in southern England. The scenery looks ancient and dramatic, a patchwork of well-trodden grass, deep puddles and tangled scrubs, studded with majestic, bare-branched oak trees. High up in the crowns of the trees are huge storks' nests the size of tractor wheels, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the pale blue sky. White storks glide through the sky and land in the nests, while others sit and warm their eggs. Every now and then, the air is pierced by a joyful clattering sound as they greet each other.

"We sometimes describe this as stork headquarters," says biologist Laura Vaughan-Hirsch, gesturing at the nests around us. She leads the White Stork Project at Knepp Estate, which started in 2016 and is part of a wider stork reintroduction project in southern England. As we talk, a stork in one of the highest nests climbs on top of another: "They're mating," says Vaughan-Hirsch. A short while later, a clattering sound is heard from the nest, which is, she explains "all part of the bonding".

"The first time I saw them here, it was a bit like Jurassic Park (the movie) really, the way they were flying over your head," says Amy Hurn, a volunteer who has been helping monitor the birds for two years. "I had never seen a white stork in the wild before, I never knew that that was near to where I live."

Since 2019, the younger birds have started migrating – adding a whole new dimension to the project. A number have been equipped with trackers, allowing the team to trace their epic journeys. Their travels are connecting Knepp Castle with storks' wintering sites as far as Spain, Portugal and Morocco. But in the process, new hazards to the rebounding population have emerged, including collisions with power lines.

This poses another challenge for those keen to protect England's new stork community: how do you go from providing suitable nesting sites, to helping the birds travel safely and find supportive habitats across a whole continent?

Storks generally try to choose the shortest route across water, research suggests, since they can't use their usual soaring flight strategy there as thermal updrafts over water tend to be weaker than on land. They therefore need to flap their wings to cross water, instead of just gliding. As this is tiring, they look for the shortest crossing – and the tracking lines indeed show most of them choosing the shortest stretch of water, between Dover in England and Calais in France, Franco points out.

There are some exceptions, however; one stork ended up on a fishing vessel in Cornwall and used it to travel to the west coast of France.

Once they reached the other side, the storks appeared to instinctively use a tactic common among young wild storks: follow more experienced wild storks. As young storks join the flocks along the way, the travelling flocks can swell to hundreds of storks all flying and circling up the thermals together, in one of nature's great spectacles.

Source: adapted from <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240326-how-an-english-castles-grounds-became-a-stork-paradise>