“As a global community, we face a choice. Do we want migration to be a source of prosperity and international solidarity, or a byword for inhumanity and social friction?”
—Antonio Guterres
We live in a world defined by imaginary lines—dissecting not only land and sea, but our very humanity. And while our lives are expected to conform to such containers—particularly under hypernationalist, authoritarian regimes like the one unmasking itself here in the United States—more-than-human life journeys on. Each year, billions of other animals partake in epic migrations across rugged terrains, vast oceans, and undivided skies. Here are a few of them.
Every fall, hundreds of thousands of monarch butterflies begin a 2,500-mile journey from breeding grounds in southern Canada and the northern United States to the forests of central Mexico for wintering. They’ve never made this trip; it takes four generations to complete the journey, meaning a butterfly’s descendants return to where their great-grandparents embarked. Instead of lived experience, they are guided by cues from their environment and an inner knowing: a combination of internal sun compasses, the Earth’s magnetic field, and biological clocks in their antennae that help them determine what time it is based on the sun’s position.
Elsewhere in the skies, an even longer journey unfolds. Every year, Arctic terns travel anywhere from 25,000 to 60,000 miles—the longest migration of any known animal. They fly from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back, gliding across the equator twice annually in pursuit of perpetual summer. These birds may witness more daylight than any other creature, which helps illuminate prey and other food below—chasing not only warmth, but light. In their 30-year lives, they may travel the equivalent distance of three or four trips to the moon and back.
Meanwhile, beneath the waves, humpback whales make their own impressive migrations. They live in seas all around the globe, and travel as far as 5,000 miles from tropical breeding grounds to polar waters more suited for feeding, and then the same distance back. Some swim through the waters of 28 countries in a single journey—and their songs travel with them. All of the males in a population of humpbacks sing the same song at their breeding grounds. The songs evolve year to year, and can be passed to other whale populations across the world.
Few migrations are as inspiring as those of Pacific salmon. They are anadromous, meaning they spend part of their lives in freshwater and part in saltwater, altering their endocrine systems to adapt from one to the other. Before leaving home, the salmon memorize the exact chemistry of the streams, rivers, and lakes they are born in. They swim as far as 600 miles from where they are born, and another 600 back to the exact spot to spawn and die. In doing so, they nourish otherssustaining more than 100 other species that rely on the nutrients they carry from the ocean.
The longest land migration belongs to caribou or reindeer. Each year, large herds trek some 1,600 miles across Arctic tundras and boreal forests in search of sustenance. They are considered keystone species not only for the food they provide to others, but for the crucial role they play in maintaining the ecosystems they travel through. As they trample and graze over wild landscapes, they help cycle nutrients in the soil and support plant and lichen communities. They are stewards of the lands they traverse, engineering the ecologies they call home, even transiently.
All across the Earth, in its seas and skies, over manmade borders, courageous crossings and voyages are underway: generations making sacrifices for the ones to follow, seeking new suns, carrying culture and songs, sustaining and shaping life along the way. From Los Angeles to Gaza, all beings should be free to roam or remain. For ferried in the refrain of every whalesong, in every breeze that monarchs float on, nature reminds us that migration is sacred.
Leave a Reply