English & Honors Alum Autumn Bryan Essay on Roseate Spoonbills in Compassion Crossing

Congratulations to B.A. English alum (and Honors English and Honors Creative Writing alum) Autumn Bryan on publication of her essay, "Think Pink: What the Roseate Spoonbill Can Teach Us About Adaptability in the Face of Climate Change" in Compassion Crossing.

Raucous, bustling colonies of Roseate Spoonbills once flourished along the Florida coast and throughout its wetlands. Now, the painted, powder-pink birds are struggling inland, driven from their once robust ecosystem by the effects of climate change and man-made “restoration” efforts. More than a million wading birds once lived in the Everglades, however, plume hunters and the destruction of their diverse habitats have radically diminished their numbers. Over the last 20 years, since their initial recovery in the 1970s, the spoonbills have abandoned their longtime nesting grounds in the South. In the Florida Bay alone, their numbers have depleted from around 400 active nests in 2012 to 157 this past season – a fact diligently recorded by Jerry Lorenz, director of Audubon’s Florida Everglades Science Center. [ . . . ]

Read more of Bryan's essay in Compassion Crossing .

Roseate Spoonbill photo by Lolame via Pixabay; licensed for use under Creative Commons 0/Public Domain Declaration (CC0 / public domain declaration).