A regular roundup of important news on birds and their habitats. Check back often for updates.
1/12/10
A New Election Cycle Begins: Birders Need to Have Their Voice Heard
As we start the year 2010, we enter a new election cycle. This November all 435 members of the House of Representatives are up for reelection as is one third of the U.S. Senate. Primary elections for these positions begin as early as February.
Although 10 months can be an eternity in politics, recent polls suggest that it will be a difficult year for Democrats. Thus it becomes extremely important for birders to organize to defend members of Congress who have been highly supportive of initiatives to preserve wetlands, forests, and other bird habitats and to strengthen protection of birds under the Endangered Species Act and other federal legislation.
Over the course of the next several months, Birders United will identify legislators in close election races who deserve the support of the birding community. Also we will target other legislators and public officials whose voting record has done harm to the nation’s birds.
The Importance of Nature Preserves for Endangered Birds
The Nature Conservancy operates the Waikamoi Preserve in a forest on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. The forest is the habitat of the critically endangered Maui parrotbill. A recent census of the forest has shown that conservation efforts appear to be working as the population of the rare bird is increasing. A survey taken this past December found 20 Maui parrotbills per square kilometer in the preserve. This is more than twice the population found in an earlier survey.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has estimated that as few as 500 of the birds remain. The bird’s remaining habitat is limited to a 19-square-mile area.
Attention, Maryland Voters: A Congressman Who Deserves Birders’ Help and Votes
Just before the Christmas recess the U.S. Senate passed the Joint Ventures for Bird Habitat Conservation Act of 2009. The House of Representatives had unanimously passed the bill last summer. The legislation provides for the establishment of public/private partnerships to protect and conserve important bird habitats. The legislation now authorizes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to provide financial and technical assistance to support regional conservation partnerships and their efforts to protect and enhance migratory bird populations.
The legislation was authored by Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., a Democrat representing the First Congressional District in Maryland. Kratovil was elected in 2008. He is the first Democrat to win election in the district in 18 years. The district encompasses the conservative Eastern Shore of Maryland and parts of three other counties. Kratovil states that his first priority is protecting the health of the Chesapeake Bay, which is visited by millions of migratory birds each year.
Kratovil won the 2008 election with only 49.1 percent of the vote. The GOP and Libertarian Party candidate outpolled Kratovil in the district. As a result, Kratovil is one of the top GOP targets in 2010. The 2008 GOP candidate, Andy Harris, who received 48.3 percent of the vote in 2008, is expected to oppose Kratovil again this year.
Motorists Are the Biggest Threat to Rare Flightless Bird in Australia
The cassowary is a rare flightless bird found in New Guinea and northeastern Australia. One of the main threats to the birds is motor traffic. In a 2006 study, Australian scientists found that 55 percent of all cassowary mortalities were the result of collisions with motor vehicles.
Conservation officials in Australia are urging the government to take more substantial measures to reduce traffic and to enforce lower speed limits in the forest habitat of the cassowary.
Bird Conservation Successes in Wisconsin
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has removed the trumpeter swan and the osprey from the state’s list of endangered and threatened species.
The trumpeter swan, once plentiful in the state, had all but disappeared by the 1880s. In 1986 a program to reintroduce the bird to the state using eggs from Alaska was launched. The birds were hatched at the Milwaukee Zoo and released into the wild. In 2009, wildlife officials counted 183 trumpeter swan nests in the state.
The osprey population in the state was dramatically reduced due to the chemical pesticides in the bird’s food chain. But now there are nearly 500 nesting pairs of the bird in Wisconsin.
Study Finds That Windfarms Act as Giant Scarecrows
There are 259 onshore windfarms in the United Kingdom. Permission has been granted for the construction of 222 additional windfarms. And hundreds more of these alternative energy facilities are in the planning stages.
Many environmentalists fear that thousands of migratory birds will die due to collisions with the turbines of the windfarms. But a new study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology has found that the windfarms are acting as giant scarecrows, frightening away birds that previously had lived near the location of the energy facilities. The study, focusing on 12 different bird species, found that seven species of birds tended to stop nesting within one half mile of any turbine. Since the exclusion zone extends in each direction from the turbine, bird nesting was reduced in three quarters of a square mile around each structure.
As windfarms become more prevalent throughout the countryside in Britain, it is feared that the turbines will serve to reduce the overall number of breeding birds.
Obama Administration Will Protect Migratory Birds When Pursuing Offshore Energy Development Projects
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced the signing of an agreement between the Minerals Management Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service to strengthen protection of migratory birds during offshore renewable energy development projects on the continental shelf. This memorandum of understanding will ensure that the protection of migratory birds will be an essential element in the planning of all offshore energy development projects.
While in many instances the Bush administration gave a green light to mining operations, loggers, oil and gas drillers, and other developers without providing protections for the environment, this new agreement demonstrates that the Obama administration will not sacrifice the nation’s birds in its efforts to decrease the nation’s dependency on foreign oil.
Drugs Given to Livestock Are Devastating Vulture Populations in India
The Bombay Natural History Society estimates that over the past two decades the populations of oriental white-backed vultures, slender-billed vultures, and long-billed vultures have declined by as much as 97 percent. The major culprit has been a drug given to sick livestock. The vultures feed on the carcasses of dead animals and the residue of the drug has proven to be toxic to vultures. India has banned the drug.
But now a drug that has been used to replace the banned substance has also been found to have entered the vulture’s food chain and is suspected of also being toxic to the birds.
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