Climate Change Alters Stork Migration Patterns in North Africa

"It is not the cold itself that causes the migration of storks, but the fact that until then there was less to eat in winter," explains Dominique Klein, a specialist in these large waders for franceinfo. While they were still numerous to migrate to Morocco, Tunisia and Mali 20 years ago to spend the winter there and even feed, these birds are becoming rarer in Africa. With global warming making the weather more mild and periods of snow or frost more rare, and the possibility of finding a few earthworms or other frogs during the cool season, storks no longer need to make this journey to meet their basic needs. "The growing sedentariness of storks is mainly linked to the development of sorting or landfill centers that allow them to feed all year round. Today, they know how to spot them and the adults show the young where these sites are, it’s part of their DNA," continues the ornithologist.

In Alsace, in 2017, there were 120 recycling centers, 5 sorting centers and 6 landfill facilities. A real canteen for storks. Moreover, "about a hundred storks are gravitating, for example, around the landfill site of Munchhausen in the Bas-Rhin," it is specified. "These are open-air fast-food restaurants. They find food scraps, resulting from poor sorting of household waste. They also feed on the rats and mice that proliferate on site," estimates Dominique Klein. Alsace would currently have 1,630 pairs, a record since the beginning of the censuses, and only 30% of them continue to go south. "The birds that decide to leave anyway go less far than before, up to the south of Spain maximum in the majority of cases," the specialist says.