Flamingos are making a home in Florida again after 100 years – an ecologist explains why they may be returning for good

Storm Idalia blew a flamboyance, or flock, of 300-400 flamingos that used to be most probably migrating between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba off direction in August 2023 and unceremoniously deposited the birds throughout a large swath of the japanese United States, from Florida’s Gulf Coast the entire means as much as Wisconsin and east to Pennsylvania.

I’m an estuarine scientist. That suggests I learn about ecosystems where fresh water flows into the ocean. I’ve spent 35 years with Audubon Florida learning the ecology of American flamingos and alternative wading birds in Florida Bay, Everglades National Park. So naturally, I used to be delighted and intrigued through the surprising arrival of those flamingos.

One of the most birds used to be rescued in the Tampa area after nearly drowning within the Gulf of Mexico. His rescuers named him Peaches.

A laborer and I had been ready to park a GPS monitoring software and a glorious blue band round his spindly leg, with the code “US02” engraved in white letters.

We had been hoping to trace his actions and spot whether or not he ended up settling in Florida. Sadly, a couple of days nearest Peaches used to be released back into the wilds of Tampa Bay, the monitoring software failed. His ultimate reported sighting used to be on a seaside close Marco Island on Oct. 5, 2023.

Next, in June 2025, I gained an e mail from colleagues on the Rio Lagartos Biosphere Keep in Yucatan, Mexico, who had photographed Peaches, blue band still in place, nesting within the secure.

Peaches’ tale is the fresh piece within the historic puzzle of flamingos in Florida. Regardless that the local society disappeared greater than 100 years in the past, fresh occasions govern me to imagine that flamingos is also coming again to the Sunshine Circumstance, and that their go back has been facilitated through the concerted struggle to revive the Everglades and coastal ecosystems.

Decimation of a society

In 1956, ornithologist and founding father of the National Audubon’s Everglades Science Center Robert Porter Allen wrote “The Flamingos: Their Life History and Survival,” which remains to be regarded as a seminal record at the historical past of flamingos in Florida.

In his accumulation, Allen cites a number of historic and clinical manuscripts from the 1800s that point out flamboyances of masses to hundreds had been evident within the Everglades, Florida Bay and the Florida Keys.

Allen paperwork the death of flamingos within the overdue 1800s, in Florida and all through their Caribbean and Bahamian area. Like every wading birds in Florida, they fell sufferer to the ladies’s type pattern of adorning hats with bird feathers. Wading fowl feathers had been actually importance their weight in gold.

Led through the Nationwide Affiliation of Audubon Societies’ vocal opposition, the grassroots environmental motion that adopted led to regulations prohibiting the looking and sale of fowl feathers. However enforcement of the ones regulations in carefully populated Florida used to be tough, and on two events deputized Audubon wardens were murdered protective wading fowl nesting colonies.

Thankfully, inside a couple of years, societal power grew to become the wave in opposition to the follow of dressed in feathers. The passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918 formally ended the feather industry.

Given prison coverage, maximum species controlled to reestablish plenty nesting populations within the Everglades through the Thirties-Nineteen Forties, probably migrating from faraway populations in Central The us and the Caribbean.

Flamingos, on the other hand, didn’t.

A protracted street to cure

In 1956, 40 years nearest looking had ended, Allen estimated flamingo populations had been most effective about 25% of what that they had been within the earlier century, with numbers plummeting from 168,000 to 43,000 breeding adults. They nested in important numbers at most effective 4 places, in comparison to 29 traditionally.

Flamingos’ distinctive breeding behaviors and their longevity – they may be able to reside as much as 50 years within the wild – might account for his or her attempt to bop again. Alternative Florida wading birds can nest more than one occasions a presen at other places, laying 3 to 5 eggs at a while.

Flamingos, at the alternative hand, nest most effective as soon as a presen, normally turning back the similar location presen nearest presen, and lay just one egg. Moreover, they like settingup plenty nesting colonies, with hundreds of nests, partly because of their elaborate workforce courtship rituals.

Explanation why to pray

Because of their dearth from the Fifties to Nineteen Eighties, scientists – together with myself – thought that any flamingos sighted intermittently round Florida weren’t wild birds however instead escapees from captive populations.

The most important flock seen within the situation between 1930 and 1976 used to be 14 birds noticed in Biscayne Bay in 1934, at the future nearest Hialeah Race Track in Miami imported a group of about 30 flamingos. The monitor’s house owners had did not pinion the birds, they usually merely flew away upon let fall.

However my opinion started to switch in 2002, when a flamingo that used to be banded as a chick at Rio Lagartos used to be photographed in Florida Bay. In 2012, a second bird from Rio Lagartos used to be photographed.

By means of that while, I had seen flamingos in Florida Bay on a number of events, together with greater flamboyances of 24 and 64 people. Even if I nonetheless idea nearly all of those flocks had been escapees, the banded birds equipped some proof that no less than a couple of wild flamingos had been foundation to spend while in Florida.

Next in 2015, my colleagues put a tracking device on a flamingo they had captured on the Key West Naval Wind Station. Conchy, as we referred to as him, used to be given the blue band US01 and launched in Florida Bay in December 2015.

He lived in Florida Bay for two years, and the truth that he stayed for that lengthy used to be evidence to me that it used to be imaginable for flamingos to assemble a more permanent home in Florida.

In 2018, a number of colleagues and I revealed a paper laying out each proof from historic accounts and in addition in the past overpassed proof from museums that flamingos were native to Florida. We additionally offered unused knowledge from researchers and citizen science portals that strongly indicated that wild flamingo numbers had been expanding in Florida. This urged that the society may well be in spite of everything recuperating.

Name it a comeback

Rapid-forward to lately, and it sounds as if that this sluggish comeback might in spite of everything have legs. Six months nearest Storm Idalia, my colleagues at Audubon Florida and I performed a weeklong on-line survey of flamingo sightings in Florida.

We gained greater than 50 respected observations. Next sorting thru those observations to take away duplicates, we concluded that no less than 100 flamingos were left in the state.

Next in July 2025, a flock of 125 individuals used to be photographed in Florida Bay. In accordance with our observations, my colleagues and I imagine that the flamingos that arrived with Idalia is also reestablishing a house in Florida.

Go towards recovery

The query is, why now? The 24 flamingos I noticed in 1992 and the 64 I noticed in 2004 didn’t soak up everlasting place of abode within the situation. So what’s modified?

To me, the solution is sunlit: Efforts to revive the Everglades and Florida’s coastal ecosystems are starting to display travel.

After I arrived within the Keys in 1989, Florida Bay used to be undergoing an ecological collapse. A 1993 interagency record through the government discovered {that a} hundred years of draining, diking and bypass the flows of the Everglades to develop city and agricultural lands had raised the salt content of the H2O, making it uninhabitable for many estuarine animals.

The record famous that the bay’s well-known seagrass beds had been present process a immense die-off, accompanied through algal blooms that depleted oxygen ranges, thereby killing fish in immense numbers. Mangrove bushes had been loss of life on its myriad islands, and birds that for many years had nested in them had disappeared.

Those occasions kick-started Everglades recovery efforts, and in 2000 the U.S. Congress handed the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan with just about unanimous bipartisan assistance. With a price within the tens of billions of bucks, it used to be to be the biggest and costliest ecological recovery venture the arena has ever evident.

As of late, the bay’s fitness is hugely advanced from the status I practice within the Nineteen Eighties. Aqua current has gotten higher, and the salinity is back to appropriate levels to assistance flora and fauna.

In 2018 and 2021, more than 100,000 pairs of wading birds corresponding to white ibis, wood storks and roseate spoonbills nested within the Everglades. Those numbers hadn’t been evident because the Nineteen Forties. Within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, 20,000 nesting pairs used to be thought to be a banner year.

Year the Everglades and Florida Bay are nonetheless a ways from complete recovery, I imagine that the go back of flamingos corresponding to Conchy and Peaches is proof that those efforts are on track.