Some birds of prey in the West are fighting back. The
Salt Lake City-based group, HawkWatch International, recently
compiled up to 18 years’ of data on the birds collected from sites
in Nevada, Utah and New Mexico and found a fast rate of growth
among merlins, ospreys and peregrine falcons.
The
average annual population increase for the period from 1983 to 1996
was 12 percent for peregrines, 14 percent for merlins and 8 percent
for ospreys. The 1972 banning of the toxic pesticide DDT is at
least partially responsible for the increase, says HawkWatch
founder Steve Hoffman.
Turkey vultures, which
were included in the survey even though they are not birds of prey,
also experienced a population rise of 11 percent for the period.
New roads opened by logging appear to have helped the vultures,
which feed on carrion left by road
kills.
Increased logging may be hurting birds
like the northern goshawk, however. Hoffman says a drop in the
northern goshawk population in the Wellsville Mountain region west
of Logan, Utah, is likely due to an overall decline in forest
health during the past 15 to 20 years, particularly from the
clearcutting of mature and old-growth
forests.
The group also reports that golden eagle
numbers have fallen significantly over the past 25 years, probably
due to the deterioration of sage-bunchgrass habitats which support
the eagles’ number-one prey species, the jackrabbit. Declines of
10-to-30 percent in eagle populations were recorded at sites in
Utah, Idaho, Oregon and California.
For more
information, call 800/726-HAWK, write HawkWatch International, P.O.
Box 660, Salt Lake City, UT 84110 or e-mail
hawkwatch@charitiesusa.com. HawkWatch is on-line at
http://www.vpp.com/HawkWatch.
* Sarah
Dry
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Western raptors on the rise.
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