Brown Pelicans - Conservation Success

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Brown Pelicans – A Conservation Success

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote.

[Brown Pelican sounds at nest, ML 45485, 0:44-0:46]

Brown Pelicans are a regular sight today along the Gulf of Mexico and our southern coastlines. But these birds have not always been so plentiful — they’ve faced near-destruction twice in the past century. 

Brown Pelicans were hunted for their feathers and as pests by fishermen. The Migratory Bird Act of 1918 helped protect their recovery in years to follow. But by 1970, the birds were in serious trouble again. The chemical poisons endrin and DDT had killed pelicans outright and thinned their eggshells so they couldn’t breed successfully. 

Fortunately, conservation efforts and the advent of the Endangered Species Act in 1972 led to the banning of DDT and reduced use of endrin.  And in the years since, Brown Pelicans have made a gradual comeback. The U.S. population was removed from the Endangered List in 2009. But conservation requires constant vigilance. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 killed an estimated 12% of the breeding population in the Gulf of Mexico.

[Brown Pelican sounds at nest, ML 45485, 0:44-0:46]

Still, each splashing dive of a Brown Pelican today marks one of the country’s outstanding conservation successes and reminds us of the precarious balance of our ecosystems. 

[splash sound]

For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

                                                                     ###

Senior Producer: John Kessler
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Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Brown Pelican ML 45485 Recorded by T Parker. Wave sounds recorded by J. Kessler.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2021 BirdNote   December 2021    Narrator: Michael Stein

ID#  BRPE-04-2021-12-30          BRPE-04

References:
https://abcbirds.org/bird/brown-pelican/
https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/brnpel/cur/conservation
Haney, J.C., Geiger, H.J. and Short, J.W., 2014. Bird mortality from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. II. Carcass sampling and exposure probability in the coastal Gulf of Mexico. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 513, pp.239-252.