Salmon transport nutrients from oceans to rivers in the form of wastes, eggs, and sperm as they swim upstream to mate.
"What we really want to protect is the natural phenomenon of abundance," Wilcove said. "If we wait until migrating animals are endangered, then we lose both the ecosystem benefits associated with their abundance and also the wonder and majesty of migration."
Unique Challenges
Every migration scientist has his or her own favorite animal migration. Wikelski remembers standing on a New Jersey beach a few years go, transfixed by a moving wall of dragonflies migrating south from Canada and the northern U.S.
"All you see in the view of your binocular is just one dragonfly after another, zooming through your field of vision," he said.
But protecting the migratory routes of dragonflies and other transient creatures is fraught with unique social and political challenges, the authors write.
Their journeys can cross many state and country borders, so their preservation will require international cooperation.
But Wikelski sees hope in joint projects, such as one between Israelis and Palestinians to understand and protect birds migrating between their home states.
"Vultures go between Palestine and Israel, and Syria, and Lebanon. Storks and cranes do the same thing," Wikelski told National Geographic News. "Eventually, people will understand that its just one planet."
Alistair Drake is a migration scientist at the University of New South Wales in Australia who was not involved in the research.
The new paper "implies a need for a more extensive reserve system, and more constraints on blocking developments, than someone focused mainly on resident species and breeding habitats might have envisaged," Drake said.
As the world faces food and fuel shortages, we could face some uncomfortable choices, Drake added. "It's easy to envision a situation where you have a choice between conserving an important stopover habitat or growing food or biofuel on it."
But Wikelski believes humanity is up to the task.
"It's like global warming," he said. "You have to alert people, and after a while, the public knows about it and they do something about it. Thats when the big changes will come about. I think theres absolute hope."
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