3 eagles released after recovery from pesticide poisoning

Click Here to Add Comment

            

Subject:    3 eagles released after recovery from pesticide poisoning
 Date:        Fri, 13 Apr 2001 18:20:35 -0400
From:        Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To:     Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
          Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation 

cc:    Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov

Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an article from 4/12/01 Richmond Times-Dispatch, entitled: 3 eagles released after recovery - BY LAWRENCE Latane' III TIMES-DISPATCH staff writer.

Montross - three bald eagles returned to the sky over Westmoreland County yesterday, a week after being found disabled from pesticide poisoning in a plowed field near Montross.

The Wildlife Center of Virginia and the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries released the recovered eagles one by one in a field near the Poto-mac River on Stratford Hall Plantation. The birds soared off without a hitch.

"All three flew magnificently,"' said Ed Clark, president of the wildlife center in Waynesboro, which rehabilitated the eagles after they were discovered paralyzed.

Blood tests on the injured eagles found traces of organo-phosphates and carbamates - two families of pesticides that short-circuit the nervous systems of birds and animals, Clark said.

More testing is needed to specify the exact poisons the birds encountered. The game department has sent the carcasses of a vulture and a skunk that were found dead near the disabled eagles to a federal wildlife forensics laboratory in Oregon.

The game department has been investigating the incident since the eagles were found last Friday, said department spokeswoman Julia Dixon Smith.

The Stratford release site is less than a mile from the suspected nest of one of the released birds - a female eagle that was banded in neighboring Northumberland County on May 5, 1985, Clark said.

The nest is also near the field where the eagles were stricken. For the past week, only one eagle has been seen tending the nest, which more than likely contains two nestlings.

"There's a lot of hope she'll go back to the nest," Clark said.

Westmoreland, with its abundance of open fields, deep woods and 250 miles of tidal shoreline, is an ideal place for eagles, which survive on fish, carrion and waterfowl and shy away from human disturbance. With 35 active nests found during aerial surveys in February, it contains more eagle nests than any other Virginia locality.

Eagles have prospered throughout the Chesapeake Bay region in recent years, with 533 active nests producing 813 eaglets last year. The numbers represent a 10 percent increase over 1999 production and are the highest recorded since surveys began in 1977, when only 72 active nests could be found.

The birds have benefited from a U.S. ban against the pesticide DDT and game department efforts to educate landowners to protect nesting eagles.

Eagles have a long history of problems with pesticides. In the late 1980s, four eagle deaths were blamed on the granular form of the pesticide carbofuran. That and other bird kills led Virginia to ban the farm pesticide in 1991. A federal ban soon followed. An investigation found that songbirds were eating the granules and passing the chemical through the food chain.

.Contact Lawrence Latane' III at (804) 333-3461 or llatane@timesdispatch.com

Well Mr. Helliker, I would like to note that we are also on the "top of the food chain", and your "registered" POISONS are "passing through us"! George Bernard Shaw once noted: "Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness." Mr. Helliker, If you would be great, please protect us and our world from your "registered" POISON contamination!

Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten

---

If you would like to be included in our mailing list for continuing information on pesticides, please email us at list@safe2use.com with "subscribe" in the subject line.