WBEZ | birds

New Orland Grasslands trail stirs environmental concerns

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 05:00:00 -0500

The Forest Preserve District of Cook County released plans Monday for a trail and bike path in Orland Grasslands, but some environmentalists say the project could jeopardize the recovery of a fragile ecosystem by fragmenting land used by migratory birds.

Though site volunteers said they felt their concerns were largely acknowledged by the District’s design team, they remain apprehensive about the trail’s southeast segment, which bows around the west side of a large pond that fronts onto La Grange Road.

“Every single inch matters,” said Pat Hayes, Orland Grasslands’ site steward. “What we’re dealing with is not just a pretty place. This is sustenance for ecosystems and species that have nowhere else to go.”

A letter from the Bird Conservation Network cited several bird species known to nest in the Grasslands — Henslow’s Sparrow, Dickcissel, Grasshopper Sparrow and Bobolink — that could be affected, as well as shorebird species known to stopover on the site during their migration. Though small, a path separating the pond from the Grasslands’ interior could deter birds and turtles from critical mud flats along the water’s edge.

“We understand their concerns and took this issue seriously,” said the Forest Preserve District’s Karen Vaughan. “In this instance, there was no ideal alignment of the trail that would fully satisfy all everyone, so our challenge was to find the best possible balance. We think we’ve done that with the current alignment.”

Originally the trail’s western leg along 104^th Avenue also jogged inward along the interior edge of a large wetland. Revised plans from the District moved the trail closer to the site’s perimeter at several points to minimize its impact on restored areas amid a tenuous recovery.

The District also agreed not to mow the trail after discussions with local environmentalists, who worried mowers would track in weeds and invasive species from other sites.

By tying in with bike path networks in the Southwest suburban communities of Orland Park and Tinley Park, the Orland Grasslands trail is meant to draw more visitors into the site. Pat Hayes said contrary to popular opinion, environmentalists are in full agreement with the District about that.

“Nature needs people,” she said.

Public engagement could garner some new site volunteers, Hayes said, and generally improve the community’s attitude toward natural areas. Signs and viewing points along the trail will direct visitors’ attention to the surrounding ecosystem.

The Orland Grasslands are a vast preserve spanning more than 1,000 acres, following an acquisition the District made last fall in the midst of an ongoing restoration project aimed at rehabilitating prairie, wetland, oak savanna and oak woodlands ecosystems. Besides a small gravel parking lot in the northeast corner of the site, the trail will be the only developed access to the Grasslands’ interior.

The trail still needs to pass engineering and permitting hurdles, but a letter from the District’s chief landscape architect indicates its design is unlikely to change significantly. The District expects to begin construction this fall.

Cats kill billions of birds each year, study says

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 08:00:00 -0600

Meme this: wild, outdoor cats could be killing far more birds and mammals than previously estimated — at least 1.4 billion birds and at least 6.9 billion mammals each year.

That’s according to a new study in Nature Communications that says cat predation is the single greatest cause of bird deaths linked to human settlement — more than building collisions, pesticides or wind turbines. Previous assessments have called cats the no. 1 killer of birds, but never by so wide a margin.

The study estimated that the median number of birds killed by cats annually is 2.4 billion and the median number of mammals killed is 12.3 billion. Most of that is from feral (stray) cats, so don’t scold Snowball just yet.

There are more than 50 million feral cats and some 86 million owned cats in the U.S., according to the Humane Society of the United States. Chicago might have as many as half a million stray cats — an animal welfare crisis in and of itself. But the study also calls into question so-called Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) policies for managing stray animals, which are supposed to rein in the population of feral cats without killing them.

The study's surprisingly high estimates of bird and mammal deaths, however, suggest cats could nonetheless represent an invasive presence in the U.S., with dire consequences for other animal populations. Proponents of TNR programs say they are successful in certain circumstances, and not yet widespread enough to have the impact they otherwise could.

By comparison, another study in Nature found each wind turbine kills an average of 4.27 birds per year, but other estimates have been higher — the American Bird Conservancy projects about 1 million total bird deaths due to wind turbines each year, if 20 percent of the country’s electricity comes from wind power by 2030. Other estimates have put that figure lower.

(Wind turbines can also disrupt mating patterns and habitat for some bird species, as well as kill birds of prey larger than most cats would have the mettle to take on. There has been, however, some regulatory progress on minimizing these effects. And fossil fuel-based energy production is no friend of the birds — by some estimates it is even worse.)

Another 1 billion birds die each year following collisions with buildings, by some estimates, which makes skyscrapers a major cause of bird deaths.

It is worth noting that pinning down the number of dead birds and small mammals is an historically tricky proposition. The new study is the most comprehensive yet, and was led by researchers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Suburban Chicago bird hoarder pleads not guilty

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:10:00 -0600

AURORA, Ill. — The defense attorney for an Aurora man who house was found filled with nearly 500 birds says that weeks later there are still birds in the residence.

Defense attorney Roderick Mallison said Tuesday that there are still birds inside the Aurora home that David Skeberdis "has not been able to capture yet." Skerberdis pleaded not guilty Tuesday to one count of misdemeanor animal hoarding. Authorities discovered in October that his home was filled with hundreds of birds. It also contained mounds of garbage, bird feces and bird seed.

The Daily Herald reports that the 57-year-old Skeberdis' town house has been condemned. The house held finches, canaries, parakeets along with 120 dead birds.

Skerberdis has acknowledges his bird collecting got out of control.

Worldview 5.15.12

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:44:00 -0500

Tuesday on Worldview:

A road at the center of a "human safari" scandal in the Andaman Islands is still open, 10 years after India’s Supreme Court ordered it closed. The road is used by "human safaris," which promise tourists the chance to "spot" members of the rarely seen Jarawa tribe, as if they were zoo animals. The indigenous peoples advocacy group, Survival International, tells us the Jarawa’s story.

Then, navigating Chicago's buildings is far more dangerous for birds than flying through dense woodlands. Kate Sackman of EcoMyths joins Jerome McDonnell for Worldview's monthly myth-busting Eco segment along with Field Museum Ornithologist and Ecologist Doug Stotz and Annette Prince of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors.

EcoMyths: Can birds navigate around buildings?

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:15:00 -0500

It’s the middle of May, and that means we are in the teeth of bird migration season. In fact, International Bird Migration Day just took place over the weekend, celebrated by bird watchers the world over. But there’s a challenge that looms large for migratory birds, and not surprisingly perhaps, it’s put there by us humans.

According to experts we talked to, between 100 million and 1 billion birds die in North America every year due to building collisions, mostly in the fall and spring. (This number doesn’t even include collisions with wind turbines or communication towers.)

You’d think birds could just fly around buildings; you’d be wrong. As its name suggests, the website EcoMyths busts environmental untruths, like the one that suggests migratory birds know how to navigate their way through a city. For numerous reasons, navigating flight through a place like Chicago is far more dangerous for birds than flying through dense woodlands.

The Misconception:
Migrating birds know to fly around city buildings.

The Reality:
Navigating city buildings is far more challenging for birds than flying through dense woodlands, because:

A) Birds can't see glass and see it as an opening

B) Nocturnal migrants get confused by lights

C) Migrant birds aren't used to urban landscape, having spent the previous season in open areas and rainforests in South and Central America

EcoMyths founder Kate Sackman joins us Tuesday for Worldview's monthly myth-busting segment. They talk about saving and studying birds in harm's way with Field Museum Ornithologist and Ecologist Doug Stotz and Annette Prince of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors.

Postcard: Scientists climb into bald eagle nests to measure health of the Great Lakes

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:00:00 -0500

Biologists with the National Park Service are in their sixth year of visiting eagle nests on Lake Superior for blood and feather samples that help them monitor the level of toxic pollutants in the lake

Feisty is good from WBEZ on Vimeo.

Jim Spickler is wearing an orange hardhat and hanging on a climbing rope 100 feet up in a white pine tree on Basswood Island in Lake Superior.

SLIDESHOW

J.W. Westcott,
Detroit's floating
post office

“Good morning, Mr. Eagle,” he says to a fuzzy brown bird sitting on the six-foot-wide jumble of sticks that serves as the eaglet’s nest. Spickler is a wildlife biologist and an expert climber from northern California where he works in giant redwood trees. It’s his job to gently stuff the eaglet into a sack and bring it to the ground for a quick checkup. The eaglet is only seven weeks old, but it’s already the size of a small goose, and it has formidable talons attached to its bright yellow feet.Waiting for Spickler on the ground is Bill Route, an ecologist with the National Park Service’s Inventory and Monitoring Program, which keeps tabs on the wellbeing of plants and animals on Park Service land. Route heads up this survey of eagle nests.“Eagles are a success story,” Route says. “Their numbers are increasing.”

Route says there were no eagles at all nesting on the Great Lakes in the late 1960s, thanks in part to the insecticide DDT, which left the eagle’s eggs perilously thin and nearly wiped the birds out. But DDT was banned in 1972, and eagles started to bounce back. They were removed from the Endangered Species List in 2007.

“We still find traces of DDT in eagles,” Route says. “It’s very persistent. And that’s what we’re worried about: persistent, toxic chemicals that accumulate up the food chain.”

Like some flame-retardant and stain resistant chemicals. The scientists will screen the eaglet’s blood for those, too.

“Eagles are a sentinel species,” Route says. “They get this magnification. Since bald eagles sit on top of the food chain, they get a lot of the contaminant because they eat other organisms that are also contaminated.”

As Route is talking, Jim Spickler descends the climbing rope with the eaglet. They draw a blood sample from the bird and make some measurements. The eaglet hisses at them and makes some klutzy attempts at biting their hands. In minutes, Spickler is on his way back up the rope to put the eaglet back on its nest.

Two adult eagles circle above the trees letting out a steady stream of cries. The sound is surprisingly thin and high-pitched for a bird with a seven-foot wingspan. The biologists say adult eagles can be noisy, but they rarely attack humans. The adults will be back on the nest soon after the humans leave.

A few minutes later, the eaglet is in its nest and Jim Spickler is on the ground.

“It’s a little bit of a feisty chick,” he says as he starts packing his climbing gear. “But that means that it’s well fed and it’s likely to survive. So, mission accomplished.”