This was going to be a Speechless Sunday post. But then I looked up information on the California Brown Pelican, ( I always like to learn about the animals I photograph), and was stunned to read their history.
Excerpted from the International Bird Rescue Research Center
In the 1800's, it became the fashion for ladies to wear hats with long, beautiful plumes from a variety of birds. To cater to this suppy for the millinery industry, birds were slaughtered by the MILLIONS. By 1903, the price of feathers had reached 80 dollars per ounce - much more than the price of gold at the time. By now, the passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeets, Eskimo Curlews, and Labrador Ducks had all become extinct. Pelicans, herons, and egrets were nearly extinct.
Later as the population of the US increased, and more and more people needed to be fed, egg hunters decimated entire populations of migratory birds. The Farralon Egg Company, operating in the San Francisco area, set a record when they removed over 120,000 murre eggs in a two day period, (chicken farms did not exist at the time). Fresh eggs sold for 2 dollars apiece.
During the First World War canned sardines became the answer for cheap and nutritious food for the troops, and another industry was created. So many sardines were caught for this purpose that they couldn't all be used, and other uses were created for them, such as fertilizer. In the meantime, California Brown pelicans were being slaughtered by the thousands by fisherman to prevent them from eating the sardines.
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.
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.
The 21st century has brought new threats like domoic acid poisoning, (which scientists have learned is killing the California Sea Lion as well, click the link to learn more), 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.
And beginning in December 2008, a new, and so far unknown malady has been killing these birds - disoriented and dying birds (click to learn more), are being discovered miles from their coastal homes!
And the state of California, in it's infinite wisdom, and knowing of this new threat,voted on February 5, 2009 to remove the pelican from the endangered species list!
(Click to learn what the IBRRC has to say)
So much for Speechless Sunday.....
Comments(23)