M
igration season is under way,
Meet nature’s greatest migrants.
Elephants
When the March and April rains soak the lowlands in Kenya, African elephants come loping down off the mountain peaks to find new forage.
The Nature Conservancy is helping to protect elephant migration corridors, recently partnering with private landowners to help construct a highway underpass for animals traveling from Mount Kenya.
You can witness this great trunk-to-tale migration on land protected by the Conservancy’s partner, the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, as the elephants travel from the mountains on their way to the Ndare Ngare Forest.
Monarch Butterflies
Having wintered and mated in Mexico, golden mottled monarchs flutter north to the United States beginning in March.
When they reach Texas, the adult butterflies lay eggs on milkweed plants and then drift off to their demise. After the next generation hatches, they fly to the next way point, lay eggs, and repeat the cycle for at least one or two more generations before the monarchs finally reach Canada—only to head south again.
Watch the first leg of the journey at several Texas Nature Conservancy reserves: Dolan Falls, Independence Creek, and Fred and Loucille Dahmer Caddo Lake.
Great White Sharks
These fierce predators may be lightning-fast hunters, but they’re even better long-distance swimmers out in the open ocean.
One female great white now holds the record for the fastest out-and-back migration for a swimming species, speeding from South Africa to Australia and back—12,400 miles—in nine months.
Good places to catch a glimpse of these elusive sharks are around Mexico’s Guadalupe Island and California’s central coast, where the Conservancy is working to restore fisheries.
Salmon
Each spring and fall, salmon leave the sea and return to the rivers where they were hatched, surging up rapids and waterfalls to spawn and then die in the shallows where they began their lives.
From California to Alaska, Nature Conservancy preserves protect the rivers and streams that support salmon species: sockeye, pink, chum, coho and chinook.
Visit British Columbia’s 19-million- acre Great Bear Rainforest, which the Conservancy helped protect, and you just might spot a returning salmon snagged by a rare white-coated grizzly known as a spirit bear.
Sandhill Cranes
Each year, a stunning ballet of birds plays out along parts of Nebraska’s Platte River as half a million sandhill cranes—90 percent of the species’ population—stop through on their journey north to Canada, Alaska and Siberia.
March and April are the best times to see the cranes and listen to their chorus of woodwind calls as they halt at Nature Conservancy preserves along a 100-mile stretch of the Platte called Big Bend Reach.
Once on the ground, the majestic gray birds begin poignant singing duets between mates and leaping dances that ripple out through the flock.
Leatherback Sea Turtles
Found in oceans around the world, leatherback turtles in the Pacific swim across the ocean round-trip each year, setting out from North American foraging grounds to Southeast Asia to lay their eggs.
Leatherback turtles are one of the farthest-traveling migrators at sea. One satellite tracked a leatherback swimming more than 12,700 miles from Indonesia to Oregon.
Nature Conservancy project sites in Raja Ampat in eastern Indonesia host egg-laying females. In the United States, some of the best viewing opportunities are at the Conservancy’s Blowing Rocks Preserve on Jupiter Island, Florida.
Mexican Free-Tailed Bats
Starting in May, millions of these fast-flying bats make their way north from Mexico and Central America to spend the summer in Texas and nearby states.
These bats gather for some of the largest aggregations of mammals in the world; estimates reach 20 million in one cave alone.
At dusk, visit the Conservancy’s Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve near San Antonio to see millions of these bats head out on their nightly excursions.
Caribou
Every May and June, as many as 67,000 caribou thunder into the Teshekpuk Lake area in northernmost Alaska to calve and escape biting insects.
Across the boreal forests of North America, these majestic antelopes travel as far as 3,000 miles to calving grounds, the longest trek of any land mammal.
Conservancy scientists have been studying the Teshekpuk herd and others across Alaska and Canada to understand climate change’s impact, establish greater protected areas and ensure the herds’ migrations will continue.
Each year, a stunning ballet of birds plays out along parts of Nebraska’s Platte River as half a million sandhill cranes—90 percent of the species’ population—stop through on their journey north to Canada, Alaska and Siberia.
March and April are the best times to see the cranes and listen to their chorus of woodwind calls as they halt at Nature Conservancy preserves along a 100-mile stretch of the Platte called Big Bend Reach.
Once on the ground, the majestic gray birds begin poignant singing duets between mates and leaping dances that ripple out through the flock.
Leatherback Sea Turtles
Found in oceans around the world, leatherback turtles in the Pacific swim across the ocean round-trip each year, setting out from North American foraging grounds to Southeast Asia to lay their eggs.
Leatherback turtles are one of the farthest-traveling migrators at sea. One satellite tracked a leatherback swimming more than 12,700 miles from Indonesia to Oregon.
Nature Conservancy project sites in Raja Ampat in eastern Indonesia host egg-laying females. In the United States, some of the best viewing opportunities are at the Conservancy’s Blowing Rocks Preserve on Jupiter Island, Florida.
Mexican Free-Tailed Bats
Starting in May, millions of these fast-flying bats make their way north from Mexico and Central America to spend the summer in Texas and nearby states.
These bats gather for some of the largest aggregations of mammals in the world; estimates reach 20 million in one cave alone.
At dusk, visit the Conservancy’s Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve near San Antonio to see millions of these bats head out on their nightly excursions.
Caribou
Every May and June, as many as 67,000 caribou thunder into the Teshekpuk Lake area in northernmost Alaska to calve and escape biting insects.
Across the boreal forests of North America, these majestic antelopes travel as far as 3,000 miles to calving grounds, the longest trek of any land mammal.
Conservancy scientists have been studying the Teshekpuk herd and others across Alaska and Canada to understand climate change’s impact, establish greater protected areas and ensure the herds’ migrations will continue.
