Smithsonian explains the physiological changes of 77 species of birds surveyed.
When the first ever World Climate Conference concluded in February 1979, the scientists in attendance issued a statement calling on world leaders “to foresee and prevent potential man-made changes in climate that might be adverse to the well-being of humanity.” On October 17 of that same year, scientists deep in the Brazilian Amazon unfurled a set of 16 mist nets at 6 a.m. to begin a study of the birds living in the understory beneath the rainforest’s green roof.
In the 40 years that followed, climate change went from a far-off-seeming idea to a grave reality that grips every square inch of the planet, and hundreds of dedicated researchers kept opening the mist nets at dawn to capture and study the feathered inhabitants of an intact patch of Brazilian rainforest about 40 miles north of Manaus.
