The State - News from Jan. 18, 1987

A campus flap has erupted in Berkeley because a University of California biologist wants to shoot 60 chickadees in the wild in order to inspect the contents of their stomachs. Michael Morrison said he wants to establish the songbird’s value in controlling insects that damage commercial forests. But Berkeley animal rights activists oppose the proposal of the biologist, who maintains bagging the birds by shotgun in the El Dorado National Forest 150 miles east of San Francisco where he has been studying them is the most merciful way of killing them for study. The proposal is under confidential consideration by the university’s Committee for the Protection of Animal Subjects.