From squirrels to newts, many animals have lost an incredible ability to roam vast distances. But researchers say there’s hope. One fall day in 1856

Are we living through the end of wildlife migrations?

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2024-12-23 15:30:05

From squirrels to newts, many animals have lost an incredible ability to roam vast distances. But researchers say there’s hope.

One fall day in 1856, a family of Eastern gray squirrels in rural New York uncurled from a cozy nest in a chestnut tree, looked around, and joined half a billion other squirrels on a multi-state walkabout. Waves of fur, claws, and sharp incisors swarmed like locusts in squirrel armies that could be up to 150 miles long, “devouring on their way everything that is suited to their taste,” wrote John Bachman, a 19th-century naturalist.

Walls of Sciurus carolinensis pulsing across the landscape befuddled naturalists and frustrated farmers, but these movements were a survival strategy, says John Koprowski, the dean of the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming and a longtime squirrel expert.

“Squirrels have an amazing sense of smell. They often find fruiting trees, trees with good crops, from miles away,” Koprowski says. “When you had continuous forests with acorns or chestnuts that are all blooming or fruiting at the same time or producing seed crops, that had to be a pretty powerful smell moving through the forest.”