Traffic noise is just another inconvenience for many of us. But for wildlife, noise from honking, and zooming vehicles can often be an insidious threat: it can degrade habitats without leaving any physical evidence of change, warns a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Road noise \u2014 even in moderate levels \u2014\u00a0pushes migrating birds away from their stopover habitats,\u00a0researchers from Boise State University in Idaho found. Those that stay back\u00a0become weak.\u201cI was initially surprised that even moderate road noise \u2014 comparable to a suburban setting \u2014 would have such a wide-ranging impact on migrating birds,\u201d William Laurance, a professor at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, who was not involved in the study, told Mongabay. \u201cOn reflection, however, I guess such migrators have to be hyper-vigilent about noise, as they\u2019re constantly moving to new areas where unseen predators could be lurking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-1132131","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n