Every year in Iceland, residents of the Vestmannaeyjar islands, knee-deep in baby puffins, have to pick up these confused babies and toss them for their own good. Before I delve into it, please note that it sounds worse than it is.
Baby puffins are easily led astray. Every night during peak season, volunteers who range from kids to seasoned bird wranglers comb towns for wayward puffins who have been distracted by the artificial lights of civilization. Instead of following the moon’s glow out into the sea, they’re lured inland and end up stranded in backyards and parking lots.
They don’t yet have the strength to fly, making them easy pickings for predators and easily squishable under car tires. To save them, locals use flashlights and cardboard boxes to wrangle them together, point them in the right direction, and then provide these baby puffins the gentlest, sweetest, most well-intentioned yeets you’ve ever seen.
To Save Icelandic Baby Puffins, Citizens Pick Them Up and Throw Them
It’s absurd to say, but tossing a baby puffin, known as a puffling, off cliffs is what’s best for them. It’s even more absurd to say that it actually works. Chucking the confused little birds off a cliff saves thousands of them a year, which is vitally important since puffin populations are plummeting globally.
Once tossed, the puffling’s natural flight instincts kick in, sending it soaring into the air. It’s safe for the pufflings. In fact, it’s actually more dangerous for the rescuing humans. They can suffer sprained ankles as they climb up the rocky cliff sides, risk falling off the cliffs, and occasionally receive scratches from the very creatures they’re trying to save.
It’s all worth it, though. When the puffling finally takes off into the sky, flapping like crazy and soaring through the skies in the right direction for the first time in its life, the human puffling chuckers are filled with a sense of accomplishment.
By doing something seemingly cruel on the surface, they’re helping to save a part of their nation’s ecological legacy.
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