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by Jessica Kutz. In each tent, PVC piping extends from the dirt, creating a six inch passageway to the human made bureau. The tunnel measures about sixteen feet long and descends to a depth of roughly four feet, which ensures bureau's stakehool as outside temperatures increase. The tunnel connects to a main den created by cutting a plastic fifty five gallon drum in half to simulate the size of a

typical dwelling and owl might find in the wild. Thirty days, the two birds inside each tent will be fed a daily diet of three dozen of three frozen mice to share. Once the canopies are removed, volunteers will return for a week to provide more snacks while the animals get accustomed

to their new hunting grounds. The idea for such specifically engineered and executed translocations began more than three decades ago, when avid conservationist Bob Fox and his now late wife Sam were volunteering to help injure animals at an Arizona Game and Fish Department facility. In nineteen ninety one, Sam was granted permission to foster a baby barn owl named Chia, and the couple built a small aviary in their backyard.

When Chia was old enough, they were surprised to watch him enthusiastically begin to foster displaced nestlings that required a permit from both Arizona and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which encouraged the Foxes to open their own rehabilitation center, a professional grade facility in the Phoenix suburb of Cave Creek that houses hert raptors like barn owls, ospreys, and hawks. It had to become a passion because the work is

so involved, Fox says. The Fox's home phone became a sort of twenty four hour hotline from people who discovered injured birds in Arizona. Burrowing owls are listed as a species of concern, and the state's Game and Fish Department has become proactive, recommending that construction sites be surveyed ahead of any building so owls can be removed. Over the past twenty years, Wild at Heart has grown to a small staff and a larger volunteer cores, fielding increasingly frequent

calls for humane trapping and relocating. The idea for an artificial burrow came from Sam Fox. There was no mechanism for relocations Bob Fox recalls, and so when they were ready for relief, Sam said, well, you can't just toss them out. You've got to build something for them. The rescue group ultimately designed nests that were inexpensive to build and easy to install, but it faced a difficult learning curve. One year, a single badger chewed through fifty burrows in

search of an easy meal. Another year, heavy rain led to flooding, making the nests nests unlivable. The burrows now feature mesh wire below the drum to protect the dens from burrowing critters. Most of the pipe entrances are slightly raised and surrounded by rocks, keeping them elevated in case of flooding. The team also added wooden stake perches to give the owls a spot above ground to scan for predators. However,

the real challenge happened once the tents came down. We had these puzzles, says Greg Clark, the nonprofit's habitat coordinator. The owls would lay lots of eggs in the tents, and everyone thought that was wonderful, except some eggs were being abandoned, and no one really understood that. Several years ago, the Fish and Wildlife Service had questions about habitat simulation efforts.

In twenty seventeen, an agency study of Wild at Heart's practices compared one hundred twenty two nest sites, some translocated with others in undisturbed areas that didn't require relocation. For the next two years, Wild at Heart worked with an independent team that included Martha Desmond, an ecology professor at New Mexico State University, and David H. Johnson, founder of the Global Owl Project, which provides evidence backed strategies to

help guide owl relocation. It turned out that Wild at Heart had been placing too many owls together, six to ten owls in the enclosures. That seemed to be a big stressor for all of the owls and how well the eggs would be brooded. Clark says relocating males in breeding season marched to August caused another issue. The males didn't have experience hunting in the area, and once the tents came down, the free mice disappeared. The females often

abandoned their nests in search of better partners. Everything crashes and burns, says Johnson. All of this led to high fatalities. By affixing radio transmitters to forty three translocated owls and forty two resident owls, the researchers could track the fallout, knowing that translocated birds always suffer higher mortality rates. In this case, the death toll among them recently moved was more than double, with twenty four translocated owls dying compared

with eleven resident ones. It was not a good situation at all, says dead Desmond, But the new data inspired changes. Wild at Heart now uses smaller tents, spread farther apart, and only pairs the owls. Those steps, plus the continuous feeding schedule, demand a lot from volunteers to find sites that are protected from development and near good food sources. Clerk is looking beyond big population centers, making it difficult

to recruit people willing to drive. Being limited to certain seasons for the releases is also a challenge because Waldette Heart can't control how many owls it gets. Johnson, who conducts research with organizations around the world on translocation, says that waldett Heart stands for the sheer number of owls it receives. In a typical year, it has around two hundred owls that need to be relocated, but in peak home building years that average rises to more than two

hundred fifty. Lately, renewable energy has added to that pressure, with over a hundred owls being relocated in the past two years. Because of solar projects. Many relocation sites can house only about fifty birds if the sites are full Uprooted owls might stay longer in the aviaries, where they may lose their fitness that can affect survivability when they're released. In search of solutions, the team has begun to build relationships with some of the solar developers that are moving

into existing owl territory. Long Road Energy, a company developing around ten thousand acres in the area, recently agreed to leave thousands of acres undeveloped. It's also working with the non profit to build new boroughs on designated land. Owls are adaptable, Johnson says. We can be successful. We just have to think through our methods a lot more. That's

what's changing now. Two months after the tents were taken down at Martin Farm, Jennon Reedon, a biologist at Wild at Heart, drove across the dusty grassland, weaving between widely spaced borough sites which were marked by their wooden stake purchase. By now, the relocated birds should have fled or taken roost, and below ground the owlets were getting ready to fledge. Redon spotted something in the distance and slowly rolled to

a stop. Breezing her binoculars wore a better look. Through the lenses, she could see a family of owls, complete with eager fledglings, stretching their wigs for some test flights at five weeks. They don't necessarily leave, but they can fly well, Readen says, and if they know how to hunt, then they'll be independent. On top of the burrol, a juvenile owl stretched its wings while another got a running start and took off in flight, completing a short loop

before returning to the ground. Because the fledgings weren't banded, it was hard to tell if they were the progeny of the translocated owls, or perhaps owls from elsewhere in the area. In a typical release, around a quarter of translocated owls might stay and breed. They usually lay about six eggs, the rate observed in non translocated owls, but not all end up surviving. On average, a new owl family can raise two juveniles, marking this making this family

one of the luckier ones. Inevitably, some owls move to natural burrols they liked better. That's part of why the arid grasslands of Martin Farm were chosen in the first place. The area has good proximity to natural burrow builders like badgers and ground squirrels that still populate surrounding fields that have yet to be developed. Crucially, none of the owls were returned to the land they came from, which has since transformed into construction sites for housing developments or solar fields.

Redent saw Cooper's hawk circling far above the little owls. It was a potentially dangerous predator, but she didn't seem concerned the family could always retreat underground or take their chances. Offering them that opportunity felt like its own kind of success. Burrowing owls in a booming megacity built on the flat expanses of the Sonoran Desert, Metropolitan Phoenix is growing dramatically as it absorbs farm fields and wild scrublands trained favored

by burrowing owls. In a unique effort to save the underground nesters, experts and volunteers have relocated hundreds of hours away from encroaching development. Next. Hunting for my Father's Butterfly, a daughter's epic quest to find one of the world's rarest butterflies, a species named for her father by Rena Effendi. My father once told me that the average life span of butterflies is seldom more than a few weeks. Obsessed with them since he was a boy, he caught thousands

during his lifetime using pins and tweezers. He'd straighten their wings on a wooden spreader, not a single antenna damaged. He'd then affixed the insects to a foam board by piercing tiny needles through their thorax, and apply chemicals to preserve their bodies and wings. He'd meticulously arrange butterflies and moths according to their species and family in display cases. With the help of a magnifying lens, he'd inscribed their Latin names on labels smaller than a sunflower seed. Encased

in glass. His specimens glistened. My father, Rustam Effendi, was a Soviet Azerbaijani lepidopterists, a pre eminent authority on butterflies and moths of the Caucasas region. In my childhood home in Baku, Azerbaizan, he was a rare guest. He spent most winders hibernating in his studio apartment in a different part of the city, waiting for the butterfly season to begin. In late spring. As soon as the last patches of snow melted on the lower plains, he'd journey into the

mountains to study, hunt, and collect. He'd bring back cocoons in jars, caterpillars squirming in match boxes, and butterflies folded into envelopes, all of which he fussed over with the keenness of a mother tending to her newborn. He dedicated his life to his work and died in his mid fifties when I was turning fourteen. I hardly knew my father. My memories of him are disparate snippets, a collection of faded photographs and conflicting accounts. Over the past three decades.

As a journalist and photographer, I became fixated on reconstructing the story of his life. Years ago, I came across his Wikipedia page and clicked on a link that led me to a picture of a modestly colored butterfly. The description underneath read Satirus efendi, species of the Nymphalidai family. At the bottom of the page, I learned that Yuri Nekrutenko, a Lepidopterus from Ukraine, discovered a new butterfly species in the Caucasas in nineteen eighty nine and named it in

honor of Rustom, his close friend and colleague. Later I found out that Yuri had joked with my father at the time, since you've only had daughters, your surname will live on with a butterfly. Let's hope it does not go extinct. But his namesake is perhaps one of the rarest butterflies in the world. Only a single generation hatches between mid July and mid August, flying in its mountainous habitat ten thousand feet above sea level two withstand harsh conditions.

Setyrus efendi has furl like scales on its wings and a dark brown color that may keep it warm. Its most distinguishable physical trait is two black markings like eyes with white pupils, each glaring from the center a corner of the wings. For two weeks, the insect flutters over the Zengezer Ridge, which spans a hundred miles across the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia, two countries in the grips

of a decade's long conflict. As one of the few lepidopteras in Soviet Azerbaisan, my father captured numerous species, each one stored at the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology in Baku, where he worked for more than three decades. Many years have passed since, and much of his collection is turning to dust. I searched for mentions of Setyris efendi in scientific works he authored in his field journals and among the remaining specimens in his collection,

but found no trace of it. I concluded it was one of the only endemic species he hadn't caught. I wondered if I could my father's hunting grounds to find the butterfly. I laid out a path retracing my father's footsteps, consulting the maps he had made of the places he had traveled, a research area that is now constrained by the politics of the day. Despite his reputation as one of the Soviet unions leading butterfly and moth experts, he was never able to obtain a doctoral degree because he

adamantly refused to join the Communist Party. The decision narrowed his career options. Authorities forbade him from traveling outside the USSR, so instead he criss crossed his home region of the Caucasas, making his maps with black dots to show where he'd hunted. A constellation of them run along the southeastern mountains toward Armenia. The world he traversed in those days has changed dramatically.

When he died in nineteen ninety one, the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse and wars loomed in the Caucasus. Today, the plains and mountain passes where he had peacefully hunted more than forty e years ago would be largely unrecognizable to him. These changes wrought by time and conflict, added new obstacles to my journey a hostile habitat. Ideally I would have traveled over land from Azerbaijan to Armenia as my father had, but the countries are now

bitter rivals, their borders sealed and militarized. Since the early nineteen nineties, they fought over control of Nagorno Carbash, an autonomous region in the mountains of Azerbaijan home to a majority ethnic Armenian population. In the thirty years of war and occupation since the towns and villages my father regularly visited had been reduced to rubble. The Zangaynzer Railway, his main transportation across the plains, had long ago been dismantled,

its tracks repurposed as anti anti tank traps. Many of the fields where he'd hunted for butterflies had been dug out with trenches and littered with land mines. The conflict is ongoing. Five years ago, Azerbaijan fought a forty four day war to recapture the provinces surrounding Nigorno Karbak, which it had lost to Armenia three decades earlier. A ceasefire was broken by Russia and resulted in a handover of

large territories to Azerbaijan. Most recently, in the fall of twenty twenty three, Agerbaijan captured the Autonomous Regions de facto capital of Zenkendi Stepanokert, displaying displacing more than one hundred thousand of its ethnic Armenian inhabitants. To recreate my father's commute, a petitioned top government agencies in both countries. After months of negotiation, Azerbaijan gave me permission to approach the Armenian

border from its territory with a military escort. On this trip, I got to see the same mountain roads where my father traveled by bus or hitched car rides from strangers, but I was never allowed to cross into Armenia clues from the past. In spring of twenty twenty two, I was finally permitted to fly to Armenia from Istanbul to Yerevan on one of the first operated direct flights in two years. Ahead of the trip, I was curious if there was some one on that side of the border

who still remembered my father. His former colleagues introduced me to parkv Khazaryan, An ethnic Armenian taxidermist and insect collector. A native of Baku, Parkhev sixty nine, now lives in northern Armenia in his ancestor's remote village. Where I visited him, we were like the two halves of the same apple, he said of my father, who was twenty years older

than Parkhev, who is my teacher, my mentor. Parkhev had fled to Azerbaizan amid ethnic tensions in nineteen eighty nine, taking with him his most prized possession, eleven boxes of preserved butterflies. In his sparsely furnished home, time appeared frozen in the late eighteenth. In the late eighties, a bulky old Soviet Ukrainian refrigerator held his rhinoceros beetle collection in one room. Under the bed. I noted a green canvas

backpack identical to my father's. The sight of it brought back memories of him packing for his hunts, fitting his whole life into a bag like this, Bottomless like a magician's hat, it contained jars, lamps, vials, match books, a set of tools to spread wings, strips of paper soaked in cyanide, poisoned for the butterflies and so much more. From a stack of duck dusty boxes, Parkhev pulled out a pink one full of pinned butterflies. Two caught my attention,

satirus offending. The mail was still intact, large and deep brown, with velvety, furry looking wings. Parkhev told me he caught the specimens on the Armenian side of the border, in the mountains of Vayot's Zoor in the summer of nineteen ninety one, just a few months after my father died. It's not a coincidence. I caught it then, he said.

Roustam made himself known my father's tools. A few months later in the summer, I returned to Armenia, this time to search for the butterfly with Parkv, where he'd found the pear in his collection more than thirty years ago. Together we've traveled up the Serpentine Road in the mountains of kayatt Zor in the back of a Soviet Army all trained vehicle. We combed the idyllic mountain plateau carrying translucent butterfly nets, round at the bottom, not pointy like

the regular kind. The net was attached to a bamboo stick with a brass grip, just like my father's. This is Rustom's technology. The net is in the shape of a woman's bra. You go whoosh like that, said Parkuev as he swung it as the sun set behind the jacked rocks. On our first day we left empty hamden Ah ross Dam. I hope you're watching us from up there, Parkev said, pointing theatrically toward the sky. We've arrived at

ere Parnassos. We returned to the same spot every day for a week, but the butterfly evaded us each time, the mythical butterfly. Aside from Parkhev, there are only two other people alive today who are known to have encountered Satir effendi in nature. One of them is a Russian entomologist named Dmitri Morbun, who observed a small cluster as recently as twenty sixteen flying over the Zangezer Ridge in the Nestivan Autonomous Republic and Azerbaizani Enclave bordering Armenia. For

three years, I enlisted Dmitri's help and expertise. It's a truly mythical butterfly, said Dmitri, who told me my father's work influenced his early career. The habitat is so remote and inaccessible most scientists refuse to believe it actually existed.

Sertius efendi appears to have gone extinct in a few of its early known habitats, including where it was first discovered by Yuri Nek Rutenko, and its threatened populations are even more vulnerable because the rise in global temperatures has forced shepherds to graze their flocks at higher altitudes than the animals feed on the same cereals, as does the

butterfly species. After ascending the wrong part of the ridge on the first attempt, I came back to Nassivan in the summer by air, circumventing Armenia Armenian airspace by flying over Iran Dmitri joined me to identify the exact location on Zeizer Ridge where he had found the butterfly several years ago. The steep seven hour climb parts gree part narrow goat trails was more arduous than my previous one.

I kept asking myself what am I doing? Unlike my father, who was at home in the mountains, I have felt more at ease in the city. About halfway through the climb, my heart was beating frantically and I was dizzy with vertigo. When we finally reached the top, there were no butterflies in sight. As I recovered the following day, Dmitri speculated the shifting seasons made it difficult for us to predict

the timing of their hatching. My discovery. For a third straight summer, I treked up the mountain in twenty twenty three. Muscle memory had formed over time, and I was fueled by my own stubbornness. Dmitrie accompanied me again, but on this trip opted to bring back pack horses and set up camp for four nights. Temperatures dropped drastically after sunset, and my tent flapped in the persistent wind. Every day at dawn we ascended the ridge to hunt, and each

day we returned having seen nothing. After five days of this, I was exhausted. I had hardly slept, and I had begun to come to peace with the idea that I would never seize a tearce offendi in flight. Yet I also realized that my pursuit had achieved something else. It had brought me closer to my father. I walked in his beloved meadows and mountain peaks where I knew his spirit roomed free. I met people whose faces lit up as they remembered him. I'd gotten to know his old friends,

who opened a window into his life. I had come to know him better than I ever did when he was alive. As Dmitri and I packed up the camp on our last day, the sun suddenly appeared and the wind subsided, so we decided to search one last time. While hiking, we came across a single bush of stepa, an endemic feather grass, swaying gently in the wind, a foods for the species caterpillars. The gray the grass was a sign both hopeful and discouraging. We presumed more of

it had been consumed by live stock. Around noon, we sat down for a break and I closed my eyes to rest. When I opened them, I saw a large, dark insect rapidly flying twelve feet above me. It's him, it's him, I screamed, pointing. Dmitri sprang to his feet and ran in the direction of the northern slope, bouncing on rocks like a mountain goat. I ran after him, but couldn't keep up. Dmitri confirmed it was definitely my setyus Efendi. There was no doubt I spotted the male species.

As I stood up on the spine of the ridge, scanning the slope, it flew right over me once again. For a flash of a second, the brown shimmering wings appeared in stark contrast with the sky and the sand colored terrain. It's here, it's flying, I yelled again to Dmitri, and we both watched it dive over the steeps Rocky Cascade and disappear farther down the slope. These next articles from in the April twenty twenty five National Geographic. Could

this really be the Holy Grail? By Becky Little? Lost for millennia and surrounded in mystery, the Holy Grail is arguably the world's most elusive Christian relic, but for centuries, clergy at Spain's Valencia Cathedral have believed a cup in their possession is the Holy Chalice of the Lord's Supper. Many variations exist in Grail lore, but a common theme is that it is the vessel used by Jesus at the Last Supper and also used to catch his blood

at the crucifixion. In these tellings, it's a sacred object sought by monarchs and king and knights like King Arthur and Sir Galahad to prove their purity and virtue. The Chalice of Valencia first appeared in Spanish historical accounts in thirteen ninety nine, when the monastery of San Juan de la Paiga bestowed it on King Martin of Aragon. One of his successors, King Alphonso the Fifth, was likely the first rus uller to suggest the cup was the Holy Grail.

This may have been a strategic way to legitimize his rule, as only the most virtuous could obtain the relic, says Martin Muveise, a medieval art professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. To day, the chalice can be seen in Valencia Cathedral's Chapel of the Holy Grail. At first glance, it may appear as a solid goblet, but it's actually three separate pieces, a simple stone cup, golden handles, and

a jeweled stone base. Next. Racing to save Hawaii's precious snails, researchers are searching for radical solutions to protect these little understood species. A century ago, the Hawaiian Islands were home to more than seven hundred fifty species of land snails almost all found nowhere else in the world, says David Sishko, a wildlife biologist and National Geographic Explorer coordinating the state's

snail extinction prevention program. But in recent decades, forest clearing and invasive predators like carnivorous snails have wiped nearly half these little understood species off the map. Another hundred species,

including the Oahu land snail, face imminent extinction. Hawaiian researchers have joined with National Geographics Photo Arc Species Impact Initiative to hold off that fate by surrounding small acreages with six foot high solid walls tricked out with booby traps, among them, slick slides, snares, and electrical arrays to strap stop predators. The aim to just keep the snails on Earth, says Cisco, until better technology comes along. There is no time left. It's now or never. By Jason Biddle next.

In eighteen eighty eight, National Geographic was founded by thirty three bold thinkers, scientists, explorers, and scholars who aim to reimagine the way we encounter and understand our world. They were meeting a critical challenge of their time. Has changed since then, of course, but at National Geographic. We are still inspired by the idea that people driven by a shared commitment to make the world a better place can

have an enormous impact. It's in this spirit that we present the inaugural National Geographic thirty three, an initiative that spotlights and onerous visionaries, creators, icons and adventurers from across the globe who believe that our world needs imaginative solutions and urgent action and our answering to call. This concludes readings from National Geographic magazine for to day. The reader

has been Marshall. If you have enjoyed hearing this content, please give us a call at eight five nine four two two six three nine zero. Thank you for listening, and have a great day.