Editor’s Note

Time may be an abstraction, but we all have our ways of marking its passage—whether it’s with the Gregorian calendar or cyclical changes in temperature and precipitation. We dedicate the final issue of 2021 to migratory species, who, through their seasonal movements across distances great and small, fill us with wonder and serve as a reminder that everything is interconnected.

Awe-inspiring as they are, animal migrations all over the world are under severe threat. The delicate balance of this phenomenon—which evolved gradually over vast evolutionary timescales and independently across several taxa—is being disrupted by ongoing habitat loss, overexploitation of migratory species, and anthropogenic climate change. The fact that migratory animals pay little attention to political boundaries only makes their conservation that much more challenging.

Still, there are things worth celebrating, such as rapid advancements in technology that are helping us better understand migratory patterns and routes, enabling more robust decision-making as well as transboundary cooperation. Read on for a diverse collection on ‘Migratory species conservation’ curated by Editors Eduardo Gallo- Cajiao and Kartik Shanker. We end on a light-hearted note with Kartel Shockington in the year 2084, where only vegans remain.

— Devathi Parashuram