Heartbreaking footage reveals a plastic 'death trap' in birds' nests - with chicks getting entangled in ropes that strangle their limbs
Heartbreaking photos and video footage reveal white storks – one of Europe's biggest birds – tangled up in plastic waste, rope and other harmful human debris.
Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) say the species, once common in the UK, is harvesting carelessly disposed trash to build their nests.
It is turning their home into a plastic 'death trap' – often killing young chicks through limb loss, strangulation, ingestion and more.
The photos, snapped in Portugal, reveal several white stork nests littered with blue rope, plastic bags, wrappers, tissues, fabric and even a soft toy.
White storks are opportunistic foragers when searching for food or building nests, meaning they often end up collecting our junk.
Aldina Franco, a professor in ecology and global environmental change at UAE who took some of these images, said the birds 'suffer a horrible death', calling it a 'serious issue'.
'These chicks get entangled in synthetic ropes when they are very young and the ropes slowly strangle their limbs as they grow, mostly legs and feet,' he said.
The UAE scientists worked with colleagues in Portugal to examine the impact of plastics and rope in the nests of white storks there.
They monitored and photographed 32 white stork colonies and 568 nests in Alentejo and the Algarve, southern Portugal, over four years.
Overall, they found human-derived materials present in a whopping 91 per cent of the 568 stork nests monitored during the period.
Soft plastic, like plastic bags, was the most common material, found in 65 per cent of the nests, followed by synthetic ropes (the main cause of entanglement) in 42 per cent of nests.
Baler twine, a slow-degrading polypropylene rope, accounted for 63 per cent of the entanglements and was present particularly in colonies surrounded by agricultural areas.
Overall, white stork chicks in nests containing a higher number of rope material were more likely to become entangled and had lower survival rates.
During one year of weekly checking (2023), 35 out of 290 birds too young to leave their nest (nestlings) became entangled in some type of synthetic material. Many of these nestlings died, often due to injuries such as necrosis (death of body tissue) and limb loss.
Where possible, researchers accessed nests with ladders to free the nestlings from the materials – but many other nests were inaccessible.
White stork leg has become tangled in tightly-wound fibre, causing pain and leaving a potentially permanent mark. The leg is still swollen from the entanglement
'In some cases they still died from the consequences of their wounds,' lead author Ursula Heinze, a postgraduate researcher at UEA, told MailOnline.
The white stork (Ciconia ciconia) has a wide range across Europe, but is clustered in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and much of eastern and central Europe.
The species – known for clattering their bills as a form of communication – frequently nests near or within human settlements and tends to rely on landfills as foraging grounds.
'White storks are known to incorporate discarded human-made materials into their nests, frequently nest near or within human settlements and often forage on organic waste at landfill sites,' said co-author Dr Inês Catry at the University of Lisbon.
'The reasons for using these materials in nest-building are not fully understood.
'But they may relate to their availability and the scarcity of natural ones, while some might also be mistaken for food, being inadvertently incorporated in the nests.'
The authors acknowledge that their study, published in the journal Ecological Indicators, only looked at one species in one country.
But they say white stork is an 'indicator species', meaning it will reflect a broader trend in the environment – not limited to Portugal.
Pictured, healthy chicks in a nest built with no synthetic waste. On land, the incorporation of human-derived materials into bird nests is already well documented
White storks are native to the British Isles and evidence suggests that they were once widely distributed here before their decline, due to factors such as overhunting with guns and habitat loss.
Thanks to reintroduction efforts, white storks are making a comeback in Britain, including at Knepp Estate in Sussex.
The research team, including researchers from the University of Montpellier and University of Lisbon, know pollution like this is widespread – on land and in the sea.
Such materials are also now being found in nests in the UK and other countries, such as Ukraine.
'In Ukraine, for example, solders are finding nests with fibre optic wires from remote controlled drones,' said Professor Franco.
'In the UK, several passerines, such as goldfinches and wrens, have also started using different colour polypropylene threads to build their nests.
'People spotting empty nests at the end of the breeding season may have started to notice this.
'Impact of plastic in the nests can be underestimated because the negative effects of human-produced materials tend to happen in the early life of the chicks, at an average age of two weeks, and the deaths can go unnoticed.'
White storks are now enjoying a population boom of their own amid a conservation project that has seen them return to English skies for the first time in centuries.
The White Stork Project, which is based at the Knepp Estate in West Sussex, has 25 home-grown storks which have chosen to spend the winter in the UK.
The birds first laid eggs in 2020 and conservationists say the numbers are getting close to a 'critical mass' which could see the birds finally recover to numbers not seen for centuries.
2024 saw 53 chicks fledge at Knepp - double the previous year's 26 - giving high hopes that storks will start to recolonise other parts of England.
The secret of Knepp's success is creating a colony of more than 20 non-flying storks rescued from accidents with powerlines and roads in Poland.
These are kept in a six-acre pen in the middle of the rewilding project. This helps attract wild birds from Europe and also gives Knepp's free-flying storks - offspring of the penned birds - confidence and security in numbers.
As well as stretching their wings in the air, the overwintering white storks can be found following the Tamworth pigs and longhorn cattle around the rewilding estate, trailing them for unearthed worms in the disturbed soil.
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Daily Mail
14-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Heartbreaking footage reveals a plastic 'death trap' in birds' nests - with chicks getting entangled in ropes that strangle their limbs
Next time you drop rubbish on the ground, it could end up killing a bird in its own nest. Heartbreaking photos and video footage reveal white storks – one of Europe's biggest birds – tangled up in plastic waste, rope and other harmful human debris. Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) say the species, once common in the UK, is harvesting carelessly disposed trash to build their nests. It is turning their home into a plastic 'death trap' – often killing young chicks through limb loss, strangulation, ingestion and more. The photos, snapped in Portugal, reveal several white stork nests littered with blue rope, plastic bags, wrappers, tissues, fabric and even a soft toy. White storks are opportunistic foragers when searching for food or building nests, meaning they often end up collecting our junk. Aldina Franco, a professor in ecology and global environmental change at UAE who took some of these images, said the birds 'suffer a horrible death', calling it a 'serious issue'. 'These chicks get entangled in synthetic ropes when they are very young and the ropes slowly strangle their limbs as they grow, mostly legs and feet,' he said. The UAE scientists worked with colleagues in Portugal to examine the impact of plastics and rope in the nests of white storks there. They monitored and photographed 32 white stork colonies and 568 nests in Alentejo and the Algarve, southern Portugal, over four years. Overall, they found human-derived materials present in a whopping 91 per cent of the 568 stork nests monitored during the period. Soft plastic, like plastic bags, was the most common material, found in 65 per cent of the nests, followed by synthetic ropes (the main cause of entanglement) in 42 per cent of nests. Baler twine, a slow-degrading polypropylene rope, accounted for 63 per cent of the entanglements and was present particularly in colonies surrounded by agricultural areas. Overall, white stork chicks in nests containing a higher number of rope material were more likely to become entangled and had lower survival rates. During one year of weekly checking (2023), 35 out of 290 birds too young to leave their nest (nestlings) became entangled in some type of synthetic material. Many of these nestlings died, often due to injuries such as necrosis (death of body tissue) and limb loss. Where possible, researchers accessed nests with ladders to free the nestlings from the materials – but many other nests were inaccessible. White stork leg has become tangled in tightly-wound fibre, causing pain and leaving a potentially permanent mark. The leg is still swollen from the entanglement 'In some cases they still died from the consequences of their wounds,' lead author Ursula Heinze, a postgraduate researcher at UEA, told MailOnline. The white stork (Ciconia ciconia) has a wide range across Europe, but is clustered in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and much of eastern and central Europe. The species – known for clattering their bills as a form of communication – frequently nests near or within human settlements and tends to rely on landfills as foraging grounds. 'White storks are known to incorporate discarded human-made materials into their nests, frequently nest near or within human settlements and often forage on organic waste at landfill sites,' said co-author Dr Inês Catry at the University of Lisbon. 'The reasons for using these materials in nest-building are not fully understood. 'But they may relate to their availability and the scarcity of natural ones, while some might also be mistaken for food, being inadvertently incorporated in the nests.' The authors acknowledge that their study, published in the journal Ecological Indicators, only looked at one species in one country. But they say white stork is an 'indicator species', meaning it will reflect a broader trend in the environment – not limited to Portugal. Pictured, healthy chicks in a nest built with no synthetic waste. On land, the incorporation of human-derived materials into bird nests is already well documented White storks are native to the British Isles and evidence suggests that they were once widely distributed here before their decline, due to factors such as overhunting with guns and habitat loss. Thanks to reintroduction efforts, white storks are making a comeback in Britain, including at Knepp Estate in Sussex. The research team, including researchers from the University of Montpellier and University of Lisbon, know pollution like this is widespread – on land and in the sea. Such materials are also now being found in nests in the UK and other countries, such as Ukraine. 'In Ukraine, for example, solders are finding nests with fibre optic wires from remote controlled drones,' said Professor Franco. 'In the UK, several passerines, such as goldfinches and wrens, have also started using different colour polypropylene threads to build their nests. 'People spotting empty nests at the end of the breeding season may have started to notice this. 'Impact of plastic in the nests can be underestimated because the negative effects of human-produced materials tend to happen in the early life of the chicks, at an average age of two weeks, and the deaths can go unnoticed.' White storks are now enjoying a population boom of their own amid a conservation project that has seen them return to English skies for the first time in centuries. The White Stork Project, which is based at the Knepp Estate in West Sussex, has 25 home-grown storks which have chosen to spend the winter in the UK. The birds first laid eggs in 2020 and conservationists say the numbers are getting close to a 'critical mass' which could see the birds finally recover to numbers not seen for centuries. 2024 saw 53 chicks fledge at Knepp - double the previous year's 26 - giving high hopes that storks will start to recolonise other parts of England. The secret of Knepp's success is creating a colony of more than 20 non-flying storks rescued from accidents with powerlines and roads in Poland. These are kept in a six-acre pen in the middle of the rewilding project. This helps attract wild birds from Europe and also gives Knepp's free-flying storks - offspring of the penned birds - confidence and security in numbers. As well as stretching their wings in the air, the overwintering white storks can be found following the Tamworth pigs and longhorn cattle around the rewilding estate, trailing them for unearthed worms in the disturbed soil.
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- The Guardian
Killer in the nest: how young storks are being strangled by plastic
On a late spring morning in the farmlands of southern Portugal, Dr Marta Acácio set her ladder against a tree and began to climb. Four metres up, she reached the giant white stork nest that was her goal. She knew from telescopic camera shots there was a healthy looking chick inside – and now she wanted to ring it. But when Acácio, an ecologist from University of Montpellier in France, tried to scoop up the chick, it would not come away: it was tethered to the nest by a piece of plastic baler twine. She turned the chick over and recoiled: its belly was a mass of maggots. 'It was being eaten alive from underneath,' says Acácio. With the pocketknife she now carries for dealing with this increasingly common situation, she cut the twine away, put the chick in a carrier bag and climbed back down. She and her colleagues cleaned and disinfected the wound before returning the chick to the nest. 'I was hopeful that the chick would survive,' she says. 'But unfortunately it did not recover from the wounds.' The nest was one of 93 a team of ecologists inspected weekly during the 2023 breeding season. Storks build gigantic nests over decades, weighing up to 1,000kg (2,200lb). They balance not just on branches, but on structures such as telephone poles. Many other bird species, including sparrows, starlings and kestrels, live within the nests. 'The stork nest is actually a colony of other species. It's a fantastic species,' says prof Aldina Franco, an ecologist at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and member of the research team. The scientists were following a hunch that they – and ecologists around the world – were missing a hidden death toll from plastic that birds incorporated into their nests. Scientists tend to inspect nests only at fledging time, yet dead chicks can be swiftly discarded by parents, so those killed by plastic early in their lives might go uncounted. Over four years, the researchers from UEA and Lisbon University photographed nearly 600 white stork (Ciconia ciconia) nests. Then, in each week of the 2023 breeding season, Acácio and Ursula Heinze of UEA physically inspected a selection of nests. The results, published in the journal Ecological Indicators on Monday, are alarming. About 90% of the 600 photographed nests contained plastic. In those the scientists climbed up to, more than a quarter – 27% – contained entangled chicks. Most were only two weeks old. The chief culprit was baler twine, a plastic string used to secure hay bales: either the twine or its wrapping was responsible for almost all the entangled chicks. A few were caught up in domestic plastics such as bags or milk containers. The chicks died from strangulation, amputation and infected wounds. 'They roll and roll and they go around and it's almost as if they tie the rope around their legs even harder as they move,' Franco says. Acácio likes to talk about successful rescues, too. Once, she peered into a nest built on the stump of a cork oak tree to find two three-week-old siblings, their limbs coiled in spirals of blue baler twine. 'I thought the chicks were so badly entangled that neither would survive,' says Acácio, 'Unfortunately the smaller chick did not survive but the larger one, which still has the marks of the entanglement, survived and fledged.' Birds on every continent use plastic and other human litter in their nests. The downsides of plastic debris are well known in the marine world, with graphic images of plastic harming turtles, seabirds and fish. But less is known about its effect on land-based birds. 'This is not a Portuguese problem or even a white stork problem,' says Dr Inês Catry, an avian ecologist at the University of Lisbon who led the project. 'Baler twine is widespread in many areas in many countries.' The few other studies that have been done, in the Americas and Europe, have not involved weekly nest visits and have found lower entanglement rates, of 0.3% to 5.6%. This study found a nestling entanglement rate of 12%. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion In Montana in the US, Marco Restani, a wildlife biologist for the power company NorthWestern Energy, has been working with volunteers to monitor ospreys that nest along 600km of the Yellowstone River. Restani says that while plastic entanglement is not yet a population-level threat to ospreys, the cases he does find are 'gruesome'. 'It's a horrible way to die. And it's horrible for people who are discovering it as well.' In Argentina, Dr María Soledad Liébana, a raptor biologist at the Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences of La Pampa, has studied plastic entanglement among baby southern caracaras, a type of raptor. 'Plastic entanglement does appear to be a serious and growing threat to a wide range of bird species, across many different regions of the world,' she says. For birds already under threat from other factors, a 12% entanglement rate could 'apply a lot of pressure', says Dr Neil James, an ecologist at Scotland's University of the Highlands and Islands. James founded a website in 2019, to which anyone can report entanglements and human debris found in nests. So far, the nests of an 'alarming' 160 species globally have been reported to contain human debris and two-thirds of these are terrestrial, he says. Baler twine is accumulating in the landscape at a formidable rate, say Heinze's team. The market was worth $300m (£220m) globally in 2023 and 80,000 tonnes were being used annually across Europe as of 2019. How much of this leaks into the environment is unknown. While farmers play a crucial role in preventing plastic leaking into the environment – for example by ensuring no plastic debris is left in the field – many aspects of the plastic footprint are out of their control, such as whether there are recycling facilities nearby or whether there are any biodegradable alternatives. Collection schemes are patchy across Europe but research has found that where they are offered they have been successful. Scientists are researching how to replace polypropylene twine, and some biodegradable twines are already on the market. In the meantime, for some of the white storks, there is one simple step that could help, says Heinze: mow under their nests. This provides the birds with a convenient abundance of natural nesting material and reduces the amount of plastic they use. Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage
Reuters
04-07-2025
- Reuters
Health Rounds: Widely used pain drug can be made from plastic waste
July 4 (Reuters) - (This is an excerpt of the Health Rounds newsletter, where we present latest medical studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox for free sign up here.) Common bacteria can turn plastic waste into the over-the-counter painkiller acetaminophen, researchers have discovered. Acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol and also known as paracetamol in some countries, is usually made from fossil fuels. The new method, developed with support from AstraZeneca (AZN.L), opens new tab, transforms a molecule from a widely used plastic known as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into Tylenol's active ingredient, leaving virtually no carbon emissions, according to a report in Nature Chemistry, opens new tab. The plastic is converted to the drug at room temperature in less than 24 hours, using a fermentation process similar to what is used in brewing beer, the researchers said. PET, a strong, lightweight plastic used for water bottles and food packaging, accounts for more than 350 million tons of waste annually. 'This work demonstrates that PET plastic isn't just waste or a material destined to become more plastic. It can be transformed by microorganisms into valuable new products, including those with potential for treating disease,' study leader Stephen Wallace of the University of Edinburgh said in a statement. More work is needed before PET can be used to produce acetaminophen at commercial levels, the researchers said. The majority of men and women have microplastics in their reproductive fluids, according to the results of a small study, opens new tab reported at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, opens new tab meeting in Paris. The presence of the microplastics raises important questions about their potential risks to fertility and reproductive health, researchers said. The tiny contaminants – plastic particles under 5 millimeters in size – were present in the follicular fluid that encases developing eggs in the ovaries in 20 of 29 women, or 69%. Microplastics were found in seminal fluid in 12 of 22 men, or 55%. Both types of fluid play critical roles in natural conception and assisted reproduction, the researchers said. In both groups, the microplastic polymers included polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon), polystyrene, polyethylene terephthalate, polyamide, polypropylene and polyurethane. In animals, microplastics can induce inflammation, damage to tissues and to DNA, and hormonal disruptions, study leader Emilio Gomez-Sanchez of Next Fertility Murcia in Spain said in a statement. In a separate presentation, opens new tab at the meeting, Manel Boussabeh of Fattouma Bourguiba Hospital in Monastir, Tunisia, and colleagues reported that sperm exposed to microplastics in test tubes had impaired motility and damage to DNA. Other researchers have previously found, opens new tab significant amounts of microplastics in the testicles of dogs and humans, and the canine data suggested the particles may contribute to impaired fertility. Researchers can turn off chronic inflammation while leaving intact the ability of cells to respond to short-term injuries and illnesses by targeting a newly identified protein, according to a report in Nature, opens new tab. Chronic inflammation occurs when the immune system is stuck in overdrive, as with persistent conditions such as arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease or obesity. Acute inflammation – with pain, fever, swelling, and redness, for example – resolves relatively quickly. Researchers found that a protein responsible for controlling inflammatory genes becomes degraded and is lost from cells during chronic inflammation. In test tube experiments, restoring the protein called WSTF blocked chronic inflammation in human cells without interfering with acute inflammation, allowing appropriate immune responses to short-term threats. The researchers then designed a medicine that protects WSTF from degradation and suppresses chronic inflammation by blocking the WSTF interaction with another protein in the cell nucleus. The researchers have successfully tested the drug to treat mice with fatty liver disease or arthritis and to reduce inflammation in chronically inflamed knee cells obtained from patients undergoing joint replacement surgery. Studying human tissue samples, the researchers found that WSTF is lost in the livers of patients with fatty liver disease but not in the livers of healthy people. 'Chronic inflammatory diseases cause a great deal of suffering and death, but we still have much to learn about what drives chronic inflammation and how to treat it,' study leader Zhixun Dou of Massachusetts General Hospital said in a statement. 'Our findings help us separate chronic and acute inflammation, as well as identify a new target for stopping chronic inflammation that results from aging and disease.' (To receive the full newsletter in your inbox for free sign up here)
