What the Hell is Happening to Our Pelicans?

Earlier this month a story came out of the West Coast that didn't get much attention: After crawling slowly off the Endangered Species List, brown pelicans are dying by the truckload.

According to Jay Holcomb, who has been rescuing seabirds for more than two decades as head of the International Bird Rescue Research Center, no one really knows what's causing the animals to die.

"It's a mystery," he said at a presentation to the Audubon Society on Thursday, "I've spent hundreds of hours this month washing pelicans. I was washing pelicans all morning before I came here."

The birds are coming in hypothermic, with a mix of oil and grease on their feathers probably washed from the nearby streets.

Holcomb says people tell him he is on the "front line" of wildlife conservation. But in truth, it's not much of a line. Although he is one of the best in the business, all he can really do is clean them up, try to feed them and hope for the best. It sounds like romantic work, but mostly it's smelling bird crap all day and wrestling with surly patients that would just as soon take off your finger as take a sardine.

About a 150 animals came through Holcomb's center in one week, but the total death toll is certainly magnitudes more. The cause of death for the emaciated birds appears to be starvation, a secondary effect from something else, like hypothermia. It could also be poisoning from the sudden torrential rains carrying toxins from our streets to the ocean. Or it could be migrating birds caught out in a cold snap.

As far as the science goes, no one is really sure what's going on and the government is going to wait and see. So this is where it gets interesting. Despite loosing a disconcerting number of healthy adult birds, pelican populations are relatively strong (unlike our poor frogs). In fact, they are one of America's great environmental success stories. By banning DDT and protecting habitat, we have brought their numbers souring back from a dismal brink in the 1970s.

So when do we stop worrying about them? Do we leave them on the endangered list, just in case?  Maybe pelicans naturally die off like this, but we didn't notice, because the population was smaller. Should we intervene?

In this case, probably not, though it's heartbreaking to watch the little fellas starve to death. However, this is a question that will come up ever more often as we come to understand the wide ranging impacts of human activities and get better at offsetting them.

Holcomb says the most important thing to do is remember these birds when you spray chemicals on your lawn or change your oil in your driveway. All of that pollution has to go somewhere. For his part, he's just going to get up tomorrow, put on some thick gloves, and wash a few more birds.

To learn more, donate, or find out about volunteering to get bitten by angry murrelets, seagulls, and penguins go to IBRRC's site.

Photo credit: Michael Oberman