Carlton Ward Jr

1 week ago | nationalgeographic.com | Jason Bittel |Carlton Ward Jr

On the dry prairies of the Sunshine State, there’s a tiny, camouflaged bird known as the Florida grasshopper sparrow. Each one weighs about as much as three U.S. quarters yet has to survive against a backdrop of torrential floods, herds of stomping cattle, and waves of ravenous fire ants. Not to mention the humans. “We’ve lost over 90 percent of their habitat,” says Fabiola “Fabby” Baeza-Tarin, a senior conservation ecologist with a Tampa-based consulting firm known as Common Ground Ecology.