|
By Karen Benzel,
IBRRC
Adopt
a pelican
O
n Christmas Eve 2002, pelicans were the top story on all
the Los Angeles television stations. Seven endangered California
Brown Pelicans were found on San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach,
dead or dying from what appeared to be gunshot wounds. One
also had its right wing broken in two.
Over the next two weeks,
seven more pelicans were brought
to the center, all with their right
wings broken. None survived and
all were of breeding age. This was
a tragic loss for a species that
survived for 40 million years, yet
could barely hang on for the last
l00. Pelicans have endured one obstacle
after another in their fight to
survive the past century. Untold
numbers die from oil spills and
fishing line entanglement.
From plume hunters in the 1800’s to domoic acid and
botulism in the past decade, pelicans have endured one battle
after another. Learn how IBRRC plans to help them, and how
you can too.
Exploitation and slaughter for feathers
Just like today, when someone feels fashionable wearing a
fur coat made from wild animals cruelly killed in traps,
so it was with hats in the 19th century. Large elaborate
hats were the “must have” fashion item of that
era, and almost all had plumes, feathers, real birds nests,
bird wings and even small dead birds adorning them. Birds
with beautiful long plumes, especially wading birds like
herons and egrets, were slaughtered
by the millions to supply
the millinery industry.
By 1903, the price of feathers had risen to $80 an ounce,
and at far more than the price of gold, it became apparent
that nature could no longer sustain itself to supply fashion,
or the dinner table. With no laws in place to protect wildlife,
whether it was for feathers or food, hundreds of millions
of birds were killed by plume and market hunters. The passenger
pigeon, whose flocks literally darkened the sky, became extinct,
as did Carolina parakeets, eskimo curlews and Labrador ducks.
Pelicans were not spared, and they too almost became extinct
for their feathers.
Inspired by Pelicans: Nation’s
first wildlife refuge
On March 14, 1903, Pelican
Island National Wildlife Refuge was created by presidential decree. Its creation didn’t
come easily; a battle of epic proportions between conservationists
and plume hunters had preceded it.
When President Teddy Roosevelt learned pelicans were being
killed for their feathers, he found it despicable. Yet, the
idea of refuge and sanctuary for birds, where they were protected
from market hunters and plume hunters was virtually unheard
of. Realizing that if something wasn’t done on a federal
level, there would be no wildlife left, President Roosevelt
acted to protect the last remaining area vital to the survival
of the pelicans, Pelican Island in Florida. It was only five
acres in size, but it was the beginning of our National Wildlife
Refuge System, which today totals over 95 million acres.
The first and oldest wildlife sanctuary is the Lake Merritt
Refuge in Oakland, California. It was declared a refuge from
hunters in 1870, and remained the only declared public wildlife
refuge until 1903.
Fortunately, attitudes where changing. As Americans became
more aware, the pendulum began to slowly swing from unregulated
destruction to greater awareness of the need for laws to
protect wildlife and the areas they inhabited.
The Audubon
Society wasn’t started by John Audubon but by a group
of women in Massachusetts who refused to buy or wear hats
and clothing decorated birds and their feathers.
By 1899,
15 other states had formed Audubon societies. However, it
would take another two decades before pelicans would have
federal protection everywhere, not just on Pelican Island
and more setbacks and challenges to their existence lay ahead.
Egg Hunters decimate entire colonies of birds
As the population of the United States grew, pollution and
loss of habitat would challenge all species. The burgeoning
population and rapid influx of immigrants also needed to
be fed. Massive factory farming didn’t exist yet, so
eggs were not cheap and readily available like they are today,
unless you stole them from wild birds.
When egg hunters discovered
millions of seabirds breeding on islands just off the coast
of San Francisco, an industry was started. The Farralon Egg
Company set a record when they removed over 120,000 murre
eggs within a two-day period. Birds like pelicans and murres,
who nested in large colonies, were targets of the egg hunters.
With the going price for fresh eggs reaching two dollars
apiece, greed outweighed conservation and many bird species
nearly became extinct due to this practice.
Pelicans slaughtered by fisherman
During the First World War canned sardines were a cheap nutritious
food for the troops and another industry was formed, canneries
and fish reduction plants, largely
based in Monterey, California.
25 tons of sardines would be caught in a single night. So
many sardines were harvested that other uses needed to be
found for them; most became chicken and pig feed and fertilizer
before the industry totally collapsed.
For pelicans along the coast of California, sardines were
necessary to live. As the sardines disappeared a life and
death struggle ensued between the California’s brown
pelicans and fishermen, even though pelicans eat fish that
most people do not put on their table, herring, anchovy and
sardines.
With no laws protecting them, fisherman unjustifiably slaughtered
pelicans by the thousands, and not just in Monterey.
Pelicans get some protection with the Migratory Bird Act
Although many people are not aware of this federal law, in
1916, the United States and Great Britain (on behalf of Canada)
adopted a uniform system of protection for certain species
of birds which migrated between the United States and Canada
and on July 3, 1918, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was passed
to implement the earlier treaty. The law made the killing,
capture, possession or sale, import, export or transportation
of any migratory birds, parts of birds, nests or eggs illegal,
unless permitted by regulation.
In 1936 the treaty included
the United States and Mexico, in 1972 the United States and
Japan, and in 1976 the United States and the former USSR.
Pelicans finally had federal
protection but laws are only
as good as their enforcement. What lay ahead was the worst killer the pelicans had ever
encountered, it was invisible, and the pelicans would help
sound the alarm about its power to cause sickness and death.
The Elixir
of Death: DDT
In 1939, a Swiss chemist discovered the “atomic bomb” of
pesticides, DDT. Cheap and easy to produce, it was initially
used in WWII to clear South Pacific islands of malaria-causing
insects for U.S. troops.
The farming industry quickly discovered
that unlike most pesticides, whose effectiveness is limited
to destroying one or two types of insects, DDT was capable
of killing hundreds of different kinds at once.
For more
than 20 years DDT was the most widely used insecticide in
the world; at one point the United States was producing 220
million pounds of DDT a year.
Brown Pelicans nearly went extinct due to DDT, along with
eagles and other raptors. In the 1960’s biologists
discovered the only remaining colony of California brown
pelicans nesting on the Anacapa Islands (off Southern California)
weren’t successfully reproducing.
Pelicans use their
highly vascular feet to incubate their eggs, but their
eggshells were paper-thin and the eggs were crushed under
the weight of the adults. In 1969, 750 nests were found,
but only 4 chicks were born. The scientists found high concentrations
of DDT in the Brown Pelicans' blood. DDT had moved up the
food chain, a process called bio magnification, and the animals
highest on the chain, received the highest concentration
of DDT.
DDT wasn’t banned until a brave woman named Rachel
Carson, wrote Silent Spring, which was published in 1962
and quickly rocketed to the New York Times best-seller list.
Two years later, Rachel
Carson died of breast cancer, but
the fervor generated by her meticulously written book, in
which she labeled pesticides "elixirs of death," would
lead to a nationwide ban on DDT in 1972.
Because DDT can
take up to 15 years to break down in the environment, its
effects remained well into the next decade.
The population of brown pelican colonies off
Southern California shrank by more than 90 percent during
the late 1960s. In
1970, there were 550 nests and only one chick survived; the
California Brown Pelican was put on the federal Endangered
Species list.
It was later discovered that from 1947 to 1983,
the Montrose
Chemical Corporation plant in Los Angeles had
discharged DDT laden wastewater into the city’s sewers,
which emptied into the ocean. There it was absorbed and stored
in the tissues of anchovies and other fish eaten by pelicans.
Because DDT is so long lived, the effects lasted
well beyond the time when the discharge stopped. In 1996
the EPA began
a Superfund investigation off the coast of Palos Verdes,
where the discharge occurred. In 2000, the
state and federal governments settled the final remaining
legal claims brought in 1990 against
the Montrose et al.
The effects of DDT diminish
with time, and the Endangered California
Brown Pelicans attempted a comeback.
But in the late 20th century, all
seabirds along California's coast
were negatively impacted by threats
to their survival caused by human
impact; oil pollution and oil spills,
contaminants and pollution like
plastics, fishing lines and nets,
over-fishing, gill nets, disturbance
at breeding colonies, loss of nesting
habitats, illegal depredation by
humans, agricultural, pesticide
and sewer runoff. The 21st century
has brought new threats like domoic
acid poisoning, starvation of juveniles
that can't find fish and botulism
poisoning.
Life was not easy and
since the California Brown Pelican
was put on the State’s endangered
list in 1971, it has only recovered
to an estimated population of 8,000
breeding pairs.
|
