Major Decline Found In Some Bird Groups
But Conservation Has Helped Others
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 20, 2009; A02
Several major bird populations have plummeted over the past four decades across the United States as development transformed the nation's landscape, according to a comprehensive survey released yesterday by the Interior Department and outside experts, but conservation efforts have staved off potential extinctions of others.
"The State of the Birds" report, a broad analysis of data compiled from scientific and citizen surveys over 40 years, shows that some species have made significant gains even as others have suffered. Hunted waterfowl and iconic species such as the bald eagle have expanded in number, the report said, while populations of birds along the nation's coasts and in its arid areas and grasslands have declined sharply.
"Just as they were when Rachel Carson published 'Silent Spring' nearly 50 years ago, birds today are a bellwether of the health of land, water and ecosystems," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. "From shorebirds in New England to warblers in Michigan to songbirds in Hawaii, we are seeing disturbing downward population trends that should set off environmental alarm bells."
Conservation efforts have saved birds such as the peregrine falcon and have allowed various wetland birds to flourish, and scientists said that shows that other species can reverse their declines if they receive sufficient support from federal agencies and private groups.
"When we try, we can do it," said John Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University. "There are now populations and habitats across the country begging for us to do it."
The species in decline are being affected by climate change, habitat destruction, invasive species and disease, among other factors, the report said. More pedestrian threats, such as collisions with buildings and attacks by feral cats, have diminished birds' numbers in some urban and suburban areas.
Hawaii, more than any other place in the country, highlights the challenge that native American birds face. Seventy-one bird species have disappeared since humans colonized the Hawaiian islands in A.D. 300, and 10 others have not been spotted in years. At the moment, more than a third of the bird species listed under the Endangered Species Act are in Hawaii, but state and federal agencies spent $30.6 million on endangered birds there from 1996 to 2004, compared with more than $722 million on the mainland.
"In Hawaii we've got lots of imminent extinctions but not enough resources being spent on them," said George E. Wallace, a vice president of the American Bird Conservancy.
With sufficient funding, he argued, federal managers could restore Hawaiian birds' habitat and protect them from introduced species such as pigs, sheep and deer that threaten their survival. He estimated it would cost $15 million to install extensive fencing for the Palila, a Hawaiian honeycreeper whose numbers declined from 6,600 birds in 2003 to 2,200 in 2008.
Bird advocates have had more success raising money to protect North American waterfowl, which have the support of a powerful political constituency in sport hunters. The U.S. government has raised $700 million for wetlands conservation through the sale of Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamps, better known as "duck stamps," and a coalition of private groups and agencies in Canada, the United States and Mexico has raised more than $3 billion over the past 20 years to protect more than 13 million acres of waterfowl habitat. Taken as a whole, the 39 species of hunted waterfowl that federal managers track have increased 100 percent over the past 40 years.
In some cases, however, public and private protections for key bird species are in jeopardy. The Conservation Reserve Program provides federal money to farmers to preserve vital habitat on which species such as the lesser prairie chicken depend, but contracts encompassing 3.9 million acres are set to expire by the end of September. Michael J. Bean, who directs the wildlife program for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, said losing those grasslands "could be the tipping point that makes an endangered species designation for the lesser prairie chicken unavoidable."
Placing the bird on the endangered species list, Bean added, could make it more difficult for entrepreneurs to build wind projects in the southern Plains. Birds that breed only in grasslands have declined by 40 percent over the past four decades.
Elsewhere in the country, conservationists are trying to protect rare bird species before disease can strike. On Santa Cruz Island, off California's southern coast, part of the Channel Island chain, Nature Conservancy officials are conducting a vaccination campaign aimed at protecting the island scrub jay from the West Nile virus, which has hurt some related species on the mainland.
Scott Morrison, the conservancy's director of conservation science in California, said his group has determined that the virus has yet to infect the island's unique bright blue birds even as incidence of West Nile among birds in nearby Ventura County nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008. While the scrub jay's remote location offers some protection, vaccination offers even more.
"There's evidence, anecdotal, this [vaccination] could actually be a useful strategy to guard against this disease," Morrison said, noting that scientists had already vaccinated California condors against the virus. "If it comes over tomorrow, maybe we would avoid some of these scary drops in numbers, for at least a subset in population."
Judge Blocks Rule Permitting Concealed Guns In U.S. Parks
By Juliet Eilperin and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 20, 2009; A09
A federal judge yesterday blocked a last-minute rule enacted by President George W. Bush allowing visitors to national parks to carry concealed weapons.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by gun-control advocates and environmental groups. The Justice Department had sought to block the injunction against the controversial rule.
The three groups that brought the suit -- the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees -- argued that the Bush action violated several laws.
In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly agreed that the government's process had been "astoundingly flawed."
She noted that the government justified its decision to forgo an environmental analysis on the grounds that the rule does not "authorize" environmental impacts. Calling this a "tautology," she wrote that officials "abdicated their Congressionally-mandated obligation" to evaluate environmental impacts and "ignored (without sufficient explanation) substantial information in the administrative record concerning environmental impacts" of the rule.
Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said the department could not comment because of "ongoing litigation."
The regulation, which took effect Jan. 9, allowed visitors to carry loaded, concealed guns into national parks and wildlife refuges if state laws there allowed it in public places. In most cases, a state permit would be required to carry a concealed weapon into a national park.
In the past, guns had been allowed in such areas only if they were unloaded, stored or dismantled; gun rights advocates said they saw no reason to be denied the right to carry concealed weapons in parks when they could in other public places.
Bryan Faehner, associate director for park uses at the National Parks Conservation Association, said his group is "extremely pleased" with both the court decision and the fact that Interior is now conducting an internal review of the rule's environmental impact. "This decision by the courts reaffirms our concerns, and the concerns of park rangers across the country, that this new regulation . . . has serious impacts on the parks and increases the risk of opportunistic poaching of wildlife in the parks, and increases the risk to park visitors," Faehner said.
ECOLOGY: All Washed Up
Caroline Ash
Toxic algal blooms, or red tides, caused by dinoflagellates pose a danger for humans and many other vertebrates. In November 2007, a late red tide of Akashiwo sanguinea in Monterey Bay caused a mass stranding and high mortality of winter visiting seabirds. Jessup et al. report that the birds' plumage had become coated in a sticky green froth exuded from the algae that contained surfactant mycosporinelike amino acids, which acted like a detergent to strip the feathers of their natural waterproofing oils. Consequently, the soaking birds, already weakened from migration, became hypothermic, and many died. If the surviving birds were cleaned as if they had been caught in an oil spill, then most made a full recovery. The algae seemed to have no other toxic activity, although inhaling aerosolized green scum apparently caused lung pathology. With the major shifts currently affecting the marine environment that are favoring other types of red tides, this kind of algal hazard is likely to become a more widespread occurrence. -- CA
PLoS ONE 4, e4550 (2009).
Road Through Alaskan Refuge Wins Senate Backing
Provision, Opposed by Environmentalists, Is Part of Broad Bipartisan Lands Measure
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 20, 2009; A03
A controversial road project through a prized wildlife refuge in Alaska, tucked into a sweeping bipartisan lands package, appears poised to make it into law.
With Senate passage yesterday of legislation to protect more than 2 million acres of wilderness in nine states, the proposal to build a road traversing Izembek National Wildlife Refuge is a step closer to fruition after a decade-long battle. The 800 residents of King Cove -- a fishing village that abuts the refuge -- argue they need a one-lane road to connect them to the nearest all-weather airport, in Cold Bay.
Environmentalists objected that the project would undermine Izembek's pristine landscape and that taxpayers have already paid to construct a terminal and supply the hovercraft that ferries residents across the bay.
"It is, in our view, a world-class boondoggle," said Evan Hirsche, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, noting that the refuge supports migratory birds such as the Pacific black brant as well as caribou and the Alaskan brown bear. "Izembek is a sacrificial lamb in the public lands bill."
A broad coalition of environmental, outdoor recreation and business organizations, along with local, state and federal officials, has been pushing for years to expand wilderness areas in the United States. These groups hailed the passage of the massive package, now headed for the House, which would provide the highest level of federal protection to areas such as Oregon's Mount Hood and part of Virginia's Jefferson National Forest, along with other sites in California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico, Utah and West Virginia.
"Particularly in these uncertain times, it's good for Americans to know they have some certainty when it comes to public lands protection, and this package definitely provides it," said Mike Matz, executive director of the advocacy group Campaign for America's Wilderness. He added that he and others "would prefer not to see" the Izembek road project in the bill, "but that's the art of legislating. It's about compromise."
Although the Senate bill would put some checks on the Alaska road project -- the Interior Department would have to issue an environmental impact statement on the project and the Interior secretary could block it -- Alaskans hailed the Senate vote.
"This legislation is the key that will provide an improved quality of life for the mostly Aleut [Alaska native] people of King Cove," Mayor Stanley Mack of Aleutians East Borough said in a statement. "They deserve to have safe, affordable, dependable surface transportation."
Hirsche said taxpayers have spent $41 million addressing the medical and transport needs of King Cove residents, including building a medical center and buying the new hovercraft to transport them to Cold Bay. The hovercraft, which has conducted 32 successful medical evacuations, can transport 56 passengers across the bay in 20 minutes in 10-foot waves.
@sumac,
No problem - ehBeth...... Will click for you.
All clicked today.
@danon5,
g'day wildclickers
Spring and March weather = snow and rain
A good day for reading and study.
Check out "Natures Best Awards" {right side of NOAA article - good} and view extrodinary animal and scenic photos.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29783487/
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
Thanks for the link to the great photos, Stradee. I particularly liked the one of the fighting "common buzzards", which are actuallly lawks in Europe. These two didn't look lkike our buzzards.
click-clack !
went to the waterfowl festival today .
most of the northern waterfowl (ducks) had left by the end of february .
it's getting too warm for them already - even though the daytime temps are only a little above freezing .
there were still quite a few "non-native" mute swans . even though the original stock was imported from europe many decades ago , they still seem to like slightly warmer temperatures (the same seems to apply to us - particularly as we are getting "just a little " older) .
more later .
hbg
@hamburger,
Home and clicked!
We spent a good part of the afternoon at the Beach here. The dogs had a great time. Saw a bit of waterfowl that had gone into the lagoon just beside the spit. Hopefully a few of the pix worked out.
~~~~
The WildClickers have supported 2,930,800.4 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 222,103.6 square feet.
American Prairie habitat supported: 68,868.9 square feet.
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,639,827.9 square feet.
@ehBeth,
Well, it's late, but, I'm here to click for you...
Glad to see you had a good visit...
All clicked for me and my guys...
Good news sumac...!!!
@danon5,
from this afternoon's adventure down at the Beach
waterbirds taking flight - they were having so much fun - they seemed positively giddy at times
@ehBeth,
The Mallard Fillmores arrive on the scene.
@hamburger,
Mallard and Millard pose for photos
lovely lovely afternoon
@ehBeth,
Beth, neat photos! Thanks for sharing your outing. Happy critters.
A definite snowday today, expecting 3-5 inches - wildlife fed and hunkered down for weather duration. Deer visited yesterday, and of course me camera was inside the house.
Toting pic lens with cell now.
A relaxing and happy Sunday to all Wildclickers
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
@Stradee,
Sounds like Spring has hit your area, Stradee. Must be wonderful. enjoy.
@Stradee,
Just read about some big snow in the mountains in California. Must be an early Spring surprise.
The temps are still fairly low here, but the trees have started budding out.
<ahchooooooooooo>
