Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.h.u.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer, Public Health on Call.

Last summer, guest host Shelley Hearn and David Keeve, president of the Environmental Defense

Action Fund, found themselves facing down a tiny but fierce golden plover, a bird known for

its migratory patterns from Alaska to Hawaii, and a canary in the coal mine for climate change.

A few months later, Shelley and David meet again on the south lawn of the White House to celebrate the passing of the new climate bill and discuss what it took to get this

massive piece of legislation to the finish line and what lessons we can learn from the tiny

but fierce migratory bird about persistence and protection.

Let's listen.

It's the golden plover greeting on the Arctic tundra on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Refuge.

How blank cool is this?

Pretty blank cool.

I think over these past few days he's, or she, kind of knows you.

Yeah, we're buds. I do worry that, you know, those golden plowers are the canary and the coal mine.

And that's a, is a cry for help

because it was going towards this nest.

But there also may be,

as some of these birds

are dwindling in numbers

...