Peregrine falcon returns from brink

By John D. Cox, Bee Staff Writer Copyright 1998 Sacramento Bee August 23, 1998

Restoration efforts have so successfully brought the peregrine falcon back from the brink of extinction that federal officials are expected to take the rare step Tuesday of removing it from the federal list of endangered species.

The raptor is the first to recover of several birds nearly wiped out 30 years ago by the effects of widespread use of the pesticide DDT. Still recovering are bald eagles, brown pelicans and condors.

What a difference three decades can make.

In 1970, researchers found only two nesting pairs of peregrine falcons in the entire state, and University of California biologist Brian Walton remembers his sense of foreboding.

"I was absolutely certain the bird was going to go extinct," said Walton, who was a 19-year-old undergraduate at the time. "It was pretty bleak."

All across the country, liberal application of DDT on lawns and forests and farms over the decades after World War II had brought the fastest bird in the sky to the brink of extinction.

Five years later, Walton helped organize the Predatory Bird Research Group at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and now the biologist, coordinator of the program, is celebrating a dramatic success story.

"We never dreamed that there was going to be as many as there are now," he said, spreading the credit for the recovery beyond his program and the federal and state governments to "all kinds of laymen and industry and everybody working together on this thing."

Removal from the federal list, which would be effective after a 60-day comment period, will still leave the peregrine falcon protected under state law.

Through the care of the Predatory Bird Research Group, more than 800 peregrine falcons have been released back into the wild from San Diego to the Columbia River Gorge. Most were released in California, where the count of nesting pairs is back up to 150. South of Canada, more than 875 nesting pairs are now re-established through the efforts of regional recovery programs across the country.

"It will probably increase for another five or 10 years and then it will level out," said Walton.

The story of the American peregrine falcon represents a turnaround in more than one respect.

Up through the 1960s, it was known as a "duck hawk" and regarded as a "bounty bird," a nuisance predator subject to indiscriminate shooting across the West.

The change in attitude about the role and value of raptors came almost too late for the falcons, because numbers were falling rapidly through the 1960s when scientists finally realized what the pesticide DDT was doing to birds.

The peregrine falcon, the bald eagle and the brown pelican were especially hard-hit by DDT's contamination of the wildlife food chain, which caused direct poisoning as well as the devastating secondary effect of thinning the eggshells, which led to widespread reproductive collapse.

The peregrine was put on the federal endangered list in 1970. DDT, because it was suspected of causing cancer in humans, was banned in the United States in 1972. Since the mid-'70s, Walton and other biologists have been rebuilding the population through a variety of strategies.

They have been incubating eggs from birds from other parts of the world.

They have been scaling cliffs to "steal" thin-shelled eggs from nests and incubating them out of harm's way.

They have been removing eggs from nests under bridges to prevent the drowning of fledglings in bays and rivers.

In some instances, the hatchlings are returned to "foster" nests where they have been readily adopted. In others, the falcons have been captively bred to the fledgling stage when they are introduced to the wild, provided with a food supply and carefully monitored until they fend for themselves.

Because of its singular lifestyle, the peregrine is a rare sight even when it is plentiful. Unlike other birds, even other raptors, the peregrine seldom comes near the ground. Nesting up in the nooks and crevices of coastal and mountain cliffs, the ledges of skyscrapers or the girders of big bridges, the crow-sized peregrine spends its day hundreds of feet in the sky, on the lookout for prey, including bats and other birds.

When it spies a hapless victim, the falcon folds its wings against its talons and dives like a falling hammer, reaching speeds of nearly 200 mph. It opens its wings and slams into the prey with its powerful talons. Most often the force of the impact kills the bird instantly in mid-flight in a shattering puff of feathers. The falcon then loops around and snatches the falling victim in mid-air.

The falcon was not directly poisoned by DDT but rather from the pesticide residue stored in the fatty tissue of the seed- and insect-eating birds that are its prey.

"The falcons eat hundreds of those over a year and thousands over their lifetimes," said Walton.

Because they hunt in the air, said Walton, "cities make perfectly good habitat" for peregrines, and several have been spotted in what might seem like unlikely places for endangered species.

"They live in an enormous gulf of air high above the city," said Glenn Stewart, program manager of the UC Santa Cruz group.

Nesting pairs have recently been seen high up in the Union Bank building in downtown Los Angeles and in the skyscrapers of New York City.

While no nesting pairs are known in Sacramento or in the Central Valley, peregrines occasionally spend time downtown, under the Capital City Freeway over the Sacramento River, or high up in the twin towers of the state Department of Health Services or Resources Building, outside the 12th-floor offices of the state Department of Fish and Game.

Ron Jurek, a wildlife biologist in the state endangered species program, has seen peregrines several times outside his office window in recent years.

"It's always a thrill to see something that's not only unusual, but also endangered and coming back," said Jurek. "We have something to contribute toward that bird being there, maybe -- it's a good thought."

Walton is reluctant to draw too many conclusions about other endangered species from the happy falcon experience. Most species become endangered because of habitat loss, a more difficult problem to solve.

Still, the optimism is hard to suppress.

"It showed me how resilient wildlife can be," he said.

"It's extremely inspirational to me," said Stewart, who has begun taking the message to groups of schoolchildren. "I like to tell the kids, here is an example of people who were faced with an enormous environmental problem. Just through diligence and human ingenuity, we managed to turn this thing around."

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