He flies with birds to prevent an extinction, it’s not his first time.

Originally reported by Denise Hubry from the New York Times, Australian Biologist Johannes Fritz is once again taking it to the skies to prevent his beloved birds, the Bald Ibis. from going extinct.

The Ibis, who faced extinction before, were taught a new flying route south 19 years ago by Mr. Fritz himself, who built a small flying machine and trained the birds to follow it, leading them through a journey that started on Austria and ended in Italy, until eventually they would do it themselves.

The plan worked; until recently that is, when global warming made it so that the route became an icy death trap for the birds, that’s when knew he had to spring into action once more, saying: “Two or three years, and they’d be extinct again”.

Now a team of researchers is working to teach a new migration path to the Ibis once more, as they’ll fly west to France, then south to the Mediterranean before tracing the coast on their way to Andalusia. This new route is about 2,500 miles, three times longer that the previous one and is expected to take six-weeks, four more than the trip to Tuscany in Italy.

Mr. Fritz said that the risks are “necessary” and that “It’s not much of a job, but my life’s purpose”.