Eagle Eye on the Plight of Birds of Prey : Survival of Raptors Theme of Conference

Twelve-year-old Morlan Nelson slipped the reins over his horse’s head and led the animal to a watering hole near his family’s ranch on the Cheyenne River in North Dakota. Spooked by the boy and horse, seven teal took off from the pond.

Then a bullet-shaped falcon came rocketing over the water and hit a duck squarely, scooping up the prey before it had time to fall to the earth. Ever since he had learned to hunt, Nelson had been shooting at those teal--and missing. Now the boy marveled at the skill of the feathered hunter as he thought: “I’ve got to get rid of my gun and get myself a hawk.”

Morlan Nelson can look back today and see how the watering hole episode of more than 50 years ago shaped his life. “The only thing I’ve accomplished is I’ve been a catalyst between humanity and the raptor,” Morlan said recently. Now 69, he was visiting Sacramento for the largest gathering in history of specialists on birds of prey.

A Personal Run-in

Many of the 1,000 wildlife biologists, conservation experts and others from 35 nations who attended were influenced by experiences similar to Nelson’s. Whether the revelation came during a childhood outing, or when meeting an eagle’s eye for the first time as an adult, most of these scientists were won over to their subject by a personal run-in with a big bird.

“The one prevailing thing about people who study birds of prey is they like them (the raptors),” said Lloyd Kiff, director of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in Los Angeles. “There’s an emotional attraction on the part of those who are supposed to be cold scientists.”

The emphasis of the gathering was on worldwide efforts to conserve threatened and endangered raptor species, which can serve as early-warning indicators of threats to the environment, and--potentially--to humans. For instance, the decline of the peregrine falcon population because of pesticides helped to bring about the ban of DDT in this country in 1972.

The scientists affirmed that birds of prey are valued for more than their environmental sensitivity, however. Cultures that have worshiped raptors include the Egyptians, who used to entomb falcons within elaborate cases in the pyramids, and American Indians who honored raptor-gods. Today’s society clings to a bit of that reverence--and that’s an encouraging sign, according to Kiff. “Human attitudes toward birds of prey are kind of a measure of our level of civilization,” he said.

Added Nelson, “Nations that worship the eagle have a forward thinking philosophy of life. They (eagles) represent nobility beyond anything you can imagine.”

Ever since the young Nelson shimmied up a tree and captured his first baby hawk for a hunting companion, he’s been a champion of hawks and eagles, osprey and owls. A hydrologist by profession (someone who measures and studies precipitation), Nelson is considered an authority on raptors. He keeps dozens of the animals at his home in Boise, Ida., and rarely travels anywhere without one of the granite-eyed birds on his arm.

A Personal Totem

With his low brow that bears the scars of eagles he has tried to tame, and sharp eyes that seem to miss nothing, Nelson even looked remarkably like a raptor as he roamed the Capitol Plaza Holiday Inn during the conference.

Nelson sometimes carries eagles and hawks along to meetings of sheepherders and ranchers who have been known to shoot such animals in the wild, believing they are a threat to young livestock. It has been Nelson’s experience that once he meets a raptor close up, a rancher is unlikely to kill one ever again.

For every man like Nelson who has taken the eagle as his personal totem, there is another man who will take any opportunity to slaughter a bird of prey.

Kiff said he grew up in the country in West Virginia where the prevailing attitude was: “You shoot all hawks and owls.” Representatives of several Latin American countries said at the conference that raptors are routinely killed by their people because the birds are thought to be bad luck. Some Native Americans believed that birds could be evil omens too, Kiff said. There were superstitions such as: “When the owl hoots, the Indian dies.”

‘Direct Persecution’

When someone shoots a bird of prey, or steals the eggs of an endangered raptor for their private egg collection, they become party to what Kiff calls “direct persecution.” It’s one of the three greatest threats to big bird species, and includes human-related accidents such as when birds crash into glass buildings or electrocute themselves on power lines. (Morlan Nelson is studying the flight patterns of eagles to determine how best to configure power lines so that they interfere as little as possible with the birds.)

On a global level, however, power lines and trigger-happy ranchers are less of a threat to birds of prey than destruction of habitat due to human intervention. Pesticide use also continues to pose problems for raptors. Because big birds tend to range over large tracts of the world in their seasonal migrations, habitat and pesticide dilemmas cannot be solved by individual nations, Kiff said, but must be attacked cooperatively by wildlife biologists around the world.

John Ledger, director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust in South Africa, said that there is increasing pesticide use in his country, with little attempt to monitor the effects on their five species of vultures and other raptors. Delegates from South Africa and other countries made pleas at the meeting that those countries that have technical expertise help to monitor pesticide levels in less technologically sophisticated parts of the world.

The DDT threat is being battled in another way by men like Tom Cade, who said that when he began working with raptors in the ‘40s, no one was much interested in them. As a boy growing up in Los Angeles, he used to carry falcons around on his arm while he went about his errands. Strangers would routinely stop and ask him about his “parrot.”

Symbols of Environment

These days, most people can tell a peregrine from a parrot, Cade said, and the birds are more popular now that they are seen as symbols of environmental problems.

Cade has developed a successful peregrine reintroduction program, wherein birds bred in captivity are introduced to the wild in areas where they were partially or entirely destroyed by pesticides. In some cases, baby birds are tucked into existing nests. In areas where there are no nests to supplement, young birds are fed and cared for by an attendant as they gradually become accustomed to life in the wild. This method is called “hacking.”

The bulletin board at the conference was full of unusual job descriptions for bird of prey reintroduction programs: Eagle rearing and hacking technician wanted in Eastern Oklahoma, $900 a month.

Another employment bulletin--seeking assistants to study the effect of industrial construction activities on breeding prairie falcons for the Idaho Power Co. and BLM-- specified that applicants must be able to withstand intense cold and heat, as well as being able to operate a motorcycle in rugged desert terrain.

Still another job listing required rock climbing experience for raptor work in Alaska.

Raptors don’t make it easy for those who wish to study them. There seems to be no way around the climbing and scuffling it takes to infiltrate the remote aeries, but modern wildlife technology--represented at the conference by AVM industries of Livermore--is making it a little easier to track the swift creatures.

A Magical Partnership

AVM president Barbara Keerman was surrounded at her booth by beeping monitors and transmitters--tracking devices for wild animals. One entire package, designed for keeping tabs on a mouse or snake, weighed less than a gram, including battery.

The Fish and Wildlife service in Sheridan, Wyo., has adapted this model for tracking eagles (it sells for about $100). Keerman said that when tied and glued to the bird’s tail feathers, the device does not interfere with the eagle’s flight.

While guests like British exotic animal veterinarian John Cooper and Jemina Parry-Jones, a third generation falconer from Gloucester, England, extolled the magical partnership of people and birds, other speakers reported that that ages-old mutual respect has eroded in recent times.

Raptors have been endangered by coal, oil, gas and wind turbine energy development in the United States. Their well-being is an issue debated by those who manage cattle and sheep, and those who develop wild lands for agriculture. Even high-tech industries such as the space shuttle have intruded on the raptors’ terrain with noise and habitat disturbances.

A Dramatic Change

Kiff said that while “20 years ago, no one could imagine the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) giving a damn about birds of prey,” that situation has changed so that today any agency even peripherally involved in wild lands or wildlife must consider the fate of the raptor. This is particularly true in California, of which Kiff said “This is a good place to be a bird of prey.”

Diverse organizations such as the BLM, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Raptor Research Foundation, the San Francisco Zoological Society, the Peregrine Fund, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., California Energy Commission, the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Assn. and the Southern California Edison Co. helped sponsor the 11-day conference, which was expected to establish priorities for raptor management and research into the next century.

“In our little area of the world (big bird lovers), this is an historic week,” Kiff said.