Why we interfere…

For those not following the story of George and Gracie the peregrine falcons that live in San Francisco, a quick update:

Gracie laid three eggs on the Bay Bridge which were retrieved and incubated for safety. Gracie subsequently laid one egg on 77 Beale, a safer location, but she abandoned the egg for unknown reasons.

Some people have questioned the wisdom of doing this, one person on the discussion group drew parallels to the Jim Carey movie “The Truman Show” and mentioned that she felt sad and that we were interfering and making the falcons into semi-wild creatures by our interference.

Here is my response to that and the other people who have criticised the egg removal.

While there is some parallels in G&G’s situation to the movie “The Truman Show”, there is one very big difference among many and that is the peregrines are not captive in a dome, they are free to move about and leave as the desire moves them.

Peregrines have actually been in close relationship with humans for thousands of years, the art of falconry dates back to prehistory. Falcons have been bird-napped, eggs stolen, chicks stolen since before anyone could write. Other animals and birds have preyed upon their young, so there is nothing new going on here except that now the interference is occurring for their benefit and aid rather than for us.

If the chick had been left on the bridge to fledge, the most likely scenario would have been that the chick would have flown when no one was looking and ended up in the water and drowned. And no one would have seen it or been able to recover it in time.

Since the pair is nesting on a man-made structure that is similar enough to their natural habitat, but different enough to cause extreme risk to the young produced there, it seems only right that humans have the obligation to minimize the number of deaths caused by the artificial environment.

If the peregrine were not threatened, having only recently been taken off the endangered species list, pulling the eggs for incubation etc, would perhaps not be done. This would let the birds that nest on natural cliffs in safer locations reproduce while letting the birds attracted to man-made bridges that cause higher mortality die out because they do not reproduce. But I hope that would not be the case, as I mentioned up above, I believe we have the duty to try to mitigate and minimize any deaths to the falcons caused by environmental changes that we create, including deaths caused by window strikes, windmill power generation deaths, power line electrocutions, as well as the obvious need to keep the air and water clean and the environment clear of toxic substances.

I believe this applies to all creatures and all situations, not just to the falcons we love, but to all the creatures both great and small. I don’t think I am alone in this belief, members of Audubon, the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife fund and hundreds of other groups are lobbying every day to try to make this world safer for animals of all kinds.

Anyway that’s my two cents…

Regards,
Glenn Nevill

Young condors reach Pinnacle of national recovery program

Came across this headline and article in the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Here are some excerpts from the article…

In many ways, the flock of California condors at Pinnacles is symbolic of the state of the condor recovery program overall. The captive breeding program was producing so many chicks that they needed to add more release sites, and Pinnacles was a natural choice because it had been a recent nesting area for the species.

Lead, along with collisions with power lines, is a leading cause of death among condors. Scientists have long thought that lead in hunting ammunition was the main culprit, and recent studies have confirmed that belief.

Funding for the condor recovery program does not specifically provide for efforts to control lead in the environment, so most of the work has been done piecemeal to get hunters and landowners to voluntarily make the switch to non-lead ammunition, which performs as well or better than lead. Hunters who don’t want to make the switch can also adopt safe practices with carcasses shot by lead ammo, such as removing or covering up the gut pile so the birds can’t find it.

These efforts have been helpful, but they have not been enough. A high number of birds continue to be brought in for lead poisoning on a regular basis. When biologists find that the birds have high levels of lead in their blood, they treat them with a painful series of shots, or, in more severe cases, blood transfusions and surgery.

“Some people thought that until you get lead out of the environment there was no sense reintroducing them into the wild,” Petterson says.

This article was written by Aeron Noe and appeared on page G9 of the April 1, 2007 issue of the Chronicle.

Ok, so the Condors which were down to only 22 is now up to 278 and they are being constantly threatened by lead ingested from left over remains of animals shot by hunters using lead ammunition. There is a group that has been raising awareness of the problem and here is the link, Project Gutpile

There is a change of awareness happening amoung hunters, but there are still some out there who don’t want to change. The lead ammunition costs half as much as the copper ammo and they feel put out about the extra cost. If you know a hunter that is still using lead ammo, check out Project Gutpile and spread the word. The lead doesn’t just hurt condors, it get into the environment and all kinds of creatures including humans end up ingesting it. A lead bullet can fragment into hundreds of pieces on impact leaving traces throughout the carcass, not just the guts left behind for scavengers, but in the muscle taken for eating.

So if you love birds or love to hunt or fish for that matter, either way, lead is not cool.

Spread the word.

Regards,
Glenn