How farmers can help rescue water-loving birds

James Gentz has seen birds aplenty on his East Texas rice-and-crawfish farm: snow geese and pintails, spoonbills and teal. The whooping crane couple, though, he found “magnificent.” These endangered, long-necked behemoths arrived in 2021 and set to building a nest amid his flooded fields. “I just loved to see them,” Gentz says.

Not every farmer is thrilled to host birds. Some worry about the spread of avian flu , others are concerned that the birds will eat too much of their valuable crops. But as an unstable climate delivers too little water, careening temperatures and chaotic storms, the fates of human food production and birds are ever more linked—with the same climate anomalies that harm birds hurting agriculture too.

In some places,

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