Saturday, May 28, 2005

It’s a Bad Time to be a Sea Bird

The news is just bad. I wasn’t happy about the seal culling in Canada, and this news isn’t much better:

Virginia to Shoot Gulls Nesting on Highway - too many gulls on the highway are causing accidents so the solution is to kill the gulls.

Wildlife Officials to Kill 4,000 Cormorants - Cormorants are thought to be behind a decrease in the number of walleye in Leech Lake. So they’re going to kill 4,000 of them to see if the fishery will rebound. I’ve seen lots of coromorants, they lovely birds to watch and very graceful under water. I wouldn’t call them “voracious, predatory birds.” So much for dispassionate reporters.

There’s also a contract out on about 500 cormorants on the western side of Lake Erie.

The trouble seems to be that we don’t remember there being so many cormorants in the Great Lakes area because we killed them off so long ago with habitat incursions and DDT.

The DDT problem has brought a host of other conservation/restoration issues here in Southern California. The loss of Bald Eagles on the Channel Islands meant that there was no top predator. Even though there is still plenty of residual DDT floating around (literally) in SoCal, the effort is underway to re-establish the Bald Eagles. But the struggle doesn’t end there, in some areas the Golden Eagle has taken the Bald’s place, especially on Santa Cruz island, where domestic pigs were released scores of years ago and have now become prey to the Golden Eagle. Not only have the pigs destroyed the native flora, but now the top predator on the island, the Island Fox is severely threatened because the Golden Eagles find Island Fox kits so damn tasty.

The process of saving the Island Fox is complex and they’re approaching it from all sides ... reintroducing Bald Eagles to displace Golden Eagles, killing the non-native pigs and building protected breeding pens for the foxes. Hopefully the combination will help to return Santa Cruz Island to a better balance.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:40 pm    

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During November it's all about me writing a novel. Sometimes it's about whalewatching. You know, and then there's other stuff.