Florida Flamingos From Hurricane Idalia Might Be Here to Stay
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It’s been more than 11 months since Hurricane Idalia ripped through the Caribbean and Southeastern United States. The storm impacted the lives of millions of people across multiple nations and states. It had major effects on the region’s flamingo population, too.
Since the hurricane, flamingos have popped up in unexpected parts of the U.S. The fabulous fowl was found in more than 10 states, some as far north as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New York. As extraordinary as these sightings have been, they come with the understanding that they do not represent the formation of flamingo flocks in the Midwest and Northeast.
But Florida is something else. In February, Audubon Florida, the Florida Flamingo Working Group, and the Caribbean Flamingo Conservation Group coordinated a census of American flamingos in their ranges. Survey respondents reported the discovery of 101 flamingos in Florida, a sign of the staying power these birds might have in the Sunshine State.
“I actually suspect that 100 flamingos is the floor of this population, and there could be more that were not counted during the one-week survey,” Jerry Lorenz, the state director of research for Audubon Florida, said in a press release. “We are continually monitoring for breeding flamingos.”
If flamingos were seen breeding in Florida, it would further cement the implication here: flamingos have returned to the Sunshine State for the foreseeable future.
The pink birds spotted in Florida spread through the state. Florida Bay, situated north of the Florida Keys, had the most with more than 50 reported sightings. Other notable locations included Pine Island west of Fort Myers (18) and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge east of Orlando (14).
The survey was the first of its kind. Its findings have brought a lot of smiles to the faces of Everglades restorationists.
The South Florida nature gem was once a hub for flamingo life, but development over the last 100-plus years as humans have flocked to the area and disrupted the freshwater that flowed freely south to the Florida Bay. From the early 1900s to the 1980s, the flamingo population dropped by almost 90 percent.
Priorities have shifted in the last couple of decades. In 2000, the federal government promised more than $23 billion into fixing the freshwater flow into the Everglades. Other wading birds have been found patronizing and multiplying in places they’d previously been forced from in the years since. That work appears to be paying off for flamingos now, too.
“You get kind of giddy when you see these things,” Lorenz told Marlowe Starling in the Fall 2024 issue of Audubon Magazine.
It’s been a long time coming, but flamingos are slowly making their way back to the Sunshine State. Plenty of human sweat has gone into making Florida a friendlier home for flamingos for their hopeful return, but climate change has contributed, too.
The warming of the ocean and rising sea levels, plus changing rain patterns, have made waters further north more viable for the fabulous fowls and made life more difficult for them in their traditional areas. Stronger and more frequent major weather events, like the hurricane that swept up so many flamingos and plopped them in Florida last year, could keep the unwitting one-way trips from the Yucatan to Florida going.
But if work hadn’t been done preparing the Sunshine State - the Everglades, specifically - would the stranded birds have stuck around or headed south at the first chance? As philosopher Seneca the Younger said thousands of years ago: “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”
