Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jerome Lorenz, Biology Researcher, Florida International University

Hurricane Idalia blew a flamboyance, or flock, of 300-400 flamingos that was likely migrating between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba off course in August 2023 and unceremoniously deposited the birds across a wide swath of the eastern United States, from Florida’s Gulf Coast all the way up to Wisconsin and east to Pennsylvania.

I’m an estuarine scientist. That means I study ecosystems where fresh water flows into the ocean. I’ve spent 35 years with Audubon Florida studying the ecology of American flamingos and other wading birds in Florida Bay, Everglades National Park. So naturally, I was thrilled and intrigued by the sudden arrival of these flamingos.

One of the birds was rescued in the Tampa area after nearly drowning in the Gulf of Mexico. His rescuers named him Peaches.

A colleague and I were able to place a GPS tracking device and a bright blue band around his spindly leg, with the code “US02” engraved in white letters.

We were hoping to track his movements and see whether he ended up settling in Florida. Unfortunately, a few days after Peaches was released back into the wilds of Tampa Bay, the tracking device failed. His last reported sighting was on a beach near Marco Island on Oct. 5, 2023.

Then, in June 2025, I received an email from colleagues at the Rio Lagartos Biosphere Reserve in Yucatan, Mexico, who had photographed Peaches, blue band still in place, nesting in the reserve.

Peaches’ story is the latest piece in the historical puzzle of flamingos in Florida. Though the native population disappeared more than 100 years ago, recent events lead me to believe that flamingos may be coming back to the Sunshine State, and that their return has been facilitated by the concerted effort to restore the Everglades and coastal ecosystems.

Decimation of a population

In 1956, ornithologist and founder of the National Audubon’s Everglades Science Center Robert Porter Allen wrote “The Flamingos: Their Life History and Survival,” which is still considered a seminal document on the history of flamingos in Florida.

In his book, Allen cites several historical and scientific manuscripts from the 1800s that indicate flamboyances of hundreds to thousands were seen in the Everglades, Florida Bay and the Florida Keys.

Allen documents the demise of flamingos in the late 1800s, in Florida and throughout their Caribbean and Bahamian range. Like all wading birds in Florida, they fell victim to the women’s fashion trend of adorning hats with bird feathers. Wading bird feathers were literally worth their weight in gold.

Led by the National Association of Audubon Societies’ vocal opposition, the grassroots environmental movement that followed brought about laws prohibiting the hunting and sale of bird feathers. But enforcement of those laws in sparsely populated Florida was difficult, and on two occasions deputized Audubon wardens were murdered protecting wading bird nesting colonies.

Fortunately, within a few years, societal pressure turned the tide against the practice of wearing feathers. The passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918 officially ended the feather trade.

Given legal protection, most species managed to reestablish huge nesting populations in the Everglades by the 1930s-1940s, presumably migrating from remote populations in Central America and the Caribbean.

Flamingos, however, did not.

A long road to recovery

In 1956, 40 years after hunting had ended, Allen estimated flamingo populations were only about 25% of what they had been in the previous century, with numbers plummeting from 168,000 to 43,000 breeding adults. They nested in significant numbers at only four locations, compared to 29 historically.

Flamingos’ unique breeding behaviors and their longevity – they can live up to 50 years in the wild – may account for their struggle to bounce back. Other Florida wading birds can nest multiple times a year at different locations, laying three to five eggs at a time.

Flamingos, on the other hand, nest only once a year, generally returning to the same location year after year, and lay only one egg. Furthermore, they prefer forming huge nesting colonies, with thousands of nests, in part due to their elaborate group courtship rituals.

Reason to hope

As a result of their rarity from the 1950s to 1980s, scientists – including myself – believed that any flamingos sighted intermittently around Florida were not wild birds but rather escapees from captive populations.

The largest flock observed in the state between 1930 and 1976 was 14 birds spotted in Biscayne Bay in 1934, on the day after Hialeah Race Track in Miami imported a group of about 30 flamingos. The track’s owners had failed to pinion the birds, and they simply flew away upon release.

But my opinion began to change in 2002, when a flamingo that was banded as a chick at Rio Lagartos was photographed in Florida Bay. In 2012, a second bird from Rio Lagartos was photographed.

By that time, I had observed flamingos in Florida Bay on several occasions, including larger flamboyances of 24 and 64 individuals. Although I still thought the majority of these flocks were escapees, the banded birds provided some evidence that at least a few wild flamingos were starting to spend time in Florida.

Then in 2015, my colleagues put a tracking device on a flamingo they had captured at the Key West Naval Air Station. Conchy, as we called him, was given the blue band US01 and released in Florida Bay in December 2015.

He lived in Florida Bay for two years, and the fact that he stayed for that long was proof to me that it was possible for flamingos to make a more permanent home in Florida.

In 2018, several colleagues and I published a paper laying out both evidence from historical accounts and also previously overlooked evidence from museums that flamingos were native to Florida. We also presented new data from researchers and citizen science portals that strongly indicated that wild flamingo numbers were increasing in Florida. This suggested that the population might be finally recovering.

Call it a comeback

Fast-forward to today, and it appears that this slow comeback may finally have legs. Six months after Hurricane Idalia, my colleagues at Audubon Florida and I conducted a weeklong online survey of flamingo sightings in Florida.

We received more than 50 reputable observations. After sorting through these observations to remove duplicates, we concluded that at least 100 flamingos were left in the state.

Then in July 2025, a flock of 125 individuals was photographed in Florida Bay. Based on our observations, my colleagues and I believe that the flamingos that arrived with Idalia may be reestablishing a home in Florida.

Progress toward restoration

The question is, why now? The 24 flamingos I saw in 1992 and the 64 I saw in 2004 didn’t take up permanent residence in the state. So what’s changed?

To me, the answer is clear: Efforts to restore the Everglades and Florida’s coastal ecosystems are beginning to show progress.

When I arrived in the Keys in 1989, Florida Bay was undergoing an ecological collapse. A 1993 interagency report by the federal government found that a hundred years of draining, diking and rerouting the flows of the Everglades to create urban and agricultural lands had raised the salt content of the water, making it uninhabitable for many estuarine animals.

The report noted that the bay’s famous seagrass beds were undergoing a massive die-off, accompanied by algal blooms that depleted oxygen levels, thereby killing fish in large numbers. Mangrove trees were dying on its myriad islands, and birds that for decades had nested in them had disappeared.

These events kick-started Everglades restoration efforts, and in 2000 the U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan with nearly unanimous bipartisan support. With a cost in the tens of billions of dollars, it was to be the largest and most expensive ecological restoration project the world has ever seen.

Today, the bay’s health is vastly improved from the condition I observe in the 1980s. Water flow has gotten better, and the salinity is back to appropriate levels to support wildlife.

In 2018 and 2021, more than 100,000 pairs of wading birds such as white ibis, wood storks and roseate spoonbills nested in the Everglades. These numbers hadn’t been seen since the 1940s. In the 1980s and 1990s, 20,000 nesting pairs was thought to be a banner year.

While the Everglades and Florida Bay are still a long way from full restoration, I believe that the return of flamingos such as Conchy and Peaches is evidence that these efforts are on the right track.

Jerome Lorenz has received funding from The Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation, the Batchelor Foundation and the Ron Magill Conservation Endowment. He is retired from the National Audubon Society but still does some volunteer work for the Everglades Science Center.

– ref. Flamingos are making a home in Florida again after 100 years – an ecologist explains why they may be returning for good – https://theconversation.com/flamingos-are-making-a-home-in-florida-again-after-100-years-an-ecologist-explains-why-they-may-be-returning-for-good-258658

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Joanne Hsu, Research Associate Professor at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

The ongoing federal shutdown has resulted in a pause on regular government data releases, meaning economic data has been in short supply of late. That has left market-watchers and monetary policymakers somewhat in the dark over key indicators in the U.S. economy.

Fortunately, the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers is unaffected by the impasse in Washington and released its preliminary monthly report on Oct. 10, 2025; the final read of the month will be released in two weeks.

The Conversation U.S. spoke with Joanne Hsu, the director of the Surveys of Consumers, on what the latest data shows about consumer sentiment – and whether the shutdown has left Americans feeling blue.

What is consumer sentiment?

Consumer sentiment is something that we at the University of Michigan have measured since 1946. It looks at American attitudes toward the current state of the economy and the future direction of the economy through questions on personal finances, business conditions and buying conditions for big-ticket items.

Over the decades, it has been closely followed by policymakers, business leaders, academic researchers and investors as a leading indicator of the overall state of the economy.

When sentiment is on the decline, consumers tend to pull back on spending – and that can lead to a slowdown in the economy. The opposite is also true: High or rising sentiment tends to lead to increased spending and a growing economy.

How is the survey compiled?

Every month, we interview a random sample of the U.S. population across the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia. Around 1,000 or so people take part in it every month, and we include a representative sample across ages, income, education level, demography and geography. People from across all walks of life are asked around 50 questions pertaining to the economy, personal finances, job prospects, inflation expectations and the like.

When you aggregate that all together, it gives a useful measure of the health of the U.S. economy.

What does the latest survey show?

The latest survey shows virtually no change in overall sentiment between September and October. Consumers are not feeling that optimistic at the moment, but generally no worse than they were last month.

Pocketbook issues – high prices of goods, inflation and possible weakening in the labor market – are suppressing sentiment. Views of consumers across the country converged earlier in the year when the Trump administration’s tariffs were announced. But since then, higher-wealth and higher-income consumers have reported improved consumer sentiment. It is for lower-income Americans – those not owning stock – that sentiment hasn’t lifted since April.

In October, we also saw a slight decline in inflation expectations, but it remains relatively high – midway between where they were around a year ago and the highs of around the time of the tariff announcements in April and May.

Has the government shutdown affected consumer sentiment?

The government shutdown was in place for around half the time of the latest survey period, which ran from Sept. 23-Oct. 6, 2025. And so far, we are not seeing evidence that it is impacting consumer sentiment one way or another.

And that is not super-surprising. It is not that people don’t care about the shutdown, just that it hasn’t affected how they see the economy and their personal finances yet.

History shows that federal shutdowns do move the needle a little. In 2019, around 10% of people spontaneously mentioned the then-shutdown in the January survey. We saw a decline in sentiment in that month, but it did improve again the following month.

Looking back, we tend to see stronger reaction to shutdowns when there is a debt ceiling crisis attached. In 2013, for example, there was a decline in consumer sentiment coinciding with concerns over the debt ceiling being breached. But it did quickly rebound when the government opened again.

Whether or not we see a decline in sentiment because of the current shutdown depends on how long it lasts – and how consumers believe it will impact pocketbook issues, namely prices and job prospects.

Joanne Hsu receives research funding from NIA, NIH, and various sponsors of the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers.

– ref. Government shutdown hasn’t left US consumers glum about the economy – for now, at least – https://theconversation.com/government-shutdown-hasnt-left-us-consumers-glum-about-the-economy-for-now-at-least-267264

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Brittany Romanello, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Arkansas

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has spent the past few weeks in a moment of both mourning and transition. On Sept. 28, 2025, a shooting and arson at a Latter-day Saints meetinghouse in Michigan killed four people and wounded eight more. What’s more, Russell M. Nelson, president of the church, died the day before at age 101. Dallin H. Oaks, the longest-serving of the church’s top leaders, was announced the new president on Oct. 14.

Oaks will inherit leadership of a religious institution that is both deeply American and increasingly global – diversity at odds with the way it’s typically represented in mainstream media, from “The Secret Life of Mormon Wives” to “The Book of Mormon” Broadway musical.

As a cultural anthropologist and ethnographer, I research Latter-day Saints communities across the United States, particularly Latina immigrants and young adults. When presenting my research, I’ve noticed that many people still closely associate the church with Utah, where its headquarters are located.

The church has played a pivotal role in Utah’s history and culture. Today, though, only 42% of its residents are members. The stereotype of Latter-day Saints as mostly white, conservative Americans is just one of many long-standing misconceptions about LDS communities and beliefs.

Many people are surprised to learn there are vibrant congregations far from the American West’s “Mormon Corridor.” There are devout Latter-day Saints everywhere from Ghana and the United Arab Emirates to Russia and mainland China.

Global growth

Joseph Smith founded The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in upstate New York in 1830 and immediately sent missionaries to preach along the frontier. The first overseas missionaries traveled to England in 1837.

Shortly after World War II, church leaders overhauled their missionary approach to increase the number of international missions. This strategy led to growth across the globe, especially in Central America, South America and the Pacific Islands.

Today, the church has over 17.5 million members, according to church records. A majority live outside the U.S., spread across more than 160 countries.

One way the church and researchers track this global growth is by construction of new temples.These buildings, used not for weekly worship but special ceremonies like weddings, were once almost exclusively located in the United States. Today, they exist in dozens of countries, from Argentina to Tonga.

During Nelson’s presidency, which began in 2018, he announced 200 new temples, more than any of his predecessors. Temples are a physical and symbolic representation of the church’s commitment to being a global religion, although cultural tensions remain.

Among U.S. members, demographics are also shifting. Seventy-two percent of American members are white, down from 85% in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center. Growing numbers of Latinos – 12% of U.S. members – have played a significant role sustaining congregations across the country.

There are congregations in every U.S. state, including the small community of Grand Blanc, Michigan, site of the tragic shooting. Suspect Thomas Jacob Sanford, who was fatally shot by police, had gone on a recent tirade against Latter-day Saints during a conversation with a local political candidate.

In the following days, an American member of the church raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Sanford’s family.

Growing pains

Despite the church’s diversity, its institutional foundations remain firmly rooted in the United States. The top leadership bodies are still composed almost entirely of white men, and most are American-born.

As the church continues to grow, questions arise about how well the norms of a Utah-based church fit the realities of members in Manila or Mexico City, Bangalore or Berlin. How much room is there, even in U.S. congregations, for local cultural expressions of faith?

Latino Latter-day Saints and members in Latin America, for example, have faced pushback against cultural traditions that were seen as distinctly “not LDS,” such as making altars and giving offerings during Dia de los Muertos. In 2021, the church launched a Spanish-language campaign using Day of the Dead imagery to increase interest among Latinos. Many members were happy to see this representation. Still, some women I spoke with said that an emphasis on whiteness and American nationalism, as well as anti-immigrant rhetoric they’d heard from other members, deterred them from fully celebrating their cultures.

Even aesthetic details, like musical styles, often reflect a distinctly American model. The standardized hymnal, for example, contains patriotic songs like “America the Beautiful.” This emphasis on American culture can feel especially out of sync in places in countries with high membership rates that have histories of U.S. military or political interventions.

Expectations about clothing and physical appearance, too, have prompted questions about representation, belonging and authority. It was only in 2024, for instance, that the church offered members in humid areas sleeveless versions of the sacred garments Latter-day Saints wear under clothing as a reminder of their faith.

Historically, the church viewed tattoos as taboo – a violation of the sanctity of the body. Many parts of the world have thousands of years of sacred tattooing traditions – including Oceania, which has high rates of church membership.

Change ahead?

Among many challenges, the next president of the church will navigate how to lead a global church from its American headquarters – a church that continues to be misunderstood and stereotyped, sometimes to the point of violence.

The number of Latter-day Saints continues to grow in many parts of the world, but this growth brings a greater need for cultural sensitivity. The church, historically very uniform in its efforts to standardize Latter-day Saints history, art and teachings, is finding that harder to maintain when congregations span dozens of countries, languages, customs and histories.

Organizing the church like a corporation, with a top-down decision-making process, can also make it difficult to address painful racial histories and the needs of marginalized groups, like LGBTQ+ members.

The transition in leadership offers an opportunity not only for the church but for the broader public to better understand the multifaceted, global nature of Latter-day Saints’ lives today.

This article has been updated with Dallin Oaks officially named president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Oct. 14.

Brittany Romanello does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. New president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints inherits a global faith far more diverse than many realize – https://theconversation.com/new-president-of-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints-inherits-a-global-faith-far-more-diverse-than-many-realize-266337

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Rick Thoman, Alaska Climate Specialist, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Remnants of a powerful typhoon swept into Western Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta on Oct. 12, 2025, producing a storm surge that flooded villages as far as 60 miles up the river. The water pushed homes off their foundations and set some afloat with people inside, officials said. More than 50 people had to be rescued in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, hundreds were displaced in the region, and at least one person died.

Typhoon Halong was an unusual storm, likely fueled by the Pacific’s near-record warm surface temperatures this fall. Its timing means recovery will be even more difficult than usual for these hard-hit communities, as Alaska meteorologist Rick Thoman of the University Alaska Fairbanks explains.

Disasters in remote Alaska are not like disasters anywhere in the lower 48 states, he explains. While East Coast homeowners recovering from a nor’easter that flooded parts of New Jersey and other states the same weekend can run to Home Depot for supplies or drive to a hotel if their home floods, none of that exists in remote Native villages.

What made this storm unusual?

Halong was an ex-typhoon, similar to Merbok in 2022, by the time it reached the delta. A week earlier, it had been a powerful typhoon east of Japan. The jet stream picked it up and carried it to the northeast, which is pretty common, and weather models did a pretty good job in forecasting its track into the Bering Sea.

But as the storm approached Alaska, everything went sideways.

The weather model forecasts changed, reflecting a faster-moving storm, and Halong shifted to a very unusual track, moving between Saint Lawrence Island and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta coast.

Unlike Merbok, which was very well forecast by the global models, this one’s final track and intensity weren’t clear until the storm was within 36 hours of crossing into Alaska waters. That’s too late for evacuations in many places.

Did the loss of weather balloon data canceled in 2025 affect the forecast?

That’s a question for future research, but here’s what we know for sure: There have not been any upper-air weather balloon observations at Saint Paul Island in the Bering Sea since late August or at Kotzebue since February. Bethel and Cold Bay are limited to one per day instead of two. At Nome, there were no weather balloons for two full days as the storm was moving toward the Bering Sea.

Did any of this cause the forecast to be off? We don’t know because we don’t have the data, but it seems likely that that had some effect on the model performance.

Why is the delta region so vulnerable in a storm like Halong?

The land in this part of western Alaska is very flat, so major storms can drive the ocean into the delta, and the water spreads out.

Most of the land there is very close to sea level, in some places less than 10 feet above the high tide line. Permafrost is also thawing, land is subsiding, and sea-level rise is adding to the risk. For many people, there is literally nowhere to go. Even Bethel, the region’s largest town, about 60 miles up the Kuskokwim River, saw flooding from Halong.

These are very remote communities with no roads to cities. The only way to access them is by boat or plane. Right now, they have a lot of people with nowhere to live, and winter is closing in.

These villages are also small. They don’t have extra housing or the resources to rapidly recover. The region was already recovering from major flooding in summer 2024. Kipnuk’s tribe was able to get federal disaster aid, but that aid was approved only in early January 2025.

What are these communities facing in terms of recovery?

People are going to have really difficult decisions to make. Do they leave the community for the winter and hope to rebuild next summer?

There likely isn’t much available housing in the region, with the flooding so widespread on top of a housing shortage. Do displaced people go to Anchorage? Cities are expensive.

There is no easy answer.

It’s logistically complicated to rebuild in places like Kipnuk. You can’t just get on the phone and call up your local building contractor.

Almost all of the supplies have to come in by barge – plywood to nails to windows – and that isn’t going to happen in winter. You can’t truck it in – there are no roads. Planes can only fly in small amounts – the runways are short and not built for cargo planes.

The National Guard might be able to help fly in supplies. But then you still need to have people who can do the construction and other repair work.

Everything is 100 times more complicated when it comes to building in remote communities. Even if national or state help is approved, it would be next summer before most homes could be rebuilt.

Is climate change playing a role in storms like these?

That will be another question for future research, but sea-surface temperature in most of the North Pacific that Typhoon Halong passed over before reaching the Aleutian Islands has been much warmer than normal. Warm water fuels storms.

Halong also brought lots of very warm air northward with it. East of the track on Oct. 11, Unalaska reached 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius), an all-time high there for October.

Rick Thoman retired from National Weather Service Alaska Region in 2018.

– ref. Typhoon leaves flooded Alaska villages facing a storm recovery far tougher than most Americans will ever experience – https://theconversation.com/typhoon-leaves-flooded-alaska-villages-facing-a-storm-recovery-far-tougher-than-most-americans-will-ever-experience-267423