US PLOTS SONGBIRD SLAUGHTER

[Guest guest]

U.S. plots songbird slaughter to save sunflower crops, by Kate t.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering poisoning two million

red-winged blackbirds in an unprecedented cull of the birds beloved for their

trilling call in the springtime, but resented by sunflower farmers for

destroying fall crops.

" No one's taking killing birds lightly. But the problem is so difficult to

resolve, lethal control has to be analysed as an option, " said Phil

Mastrangelo, state director for North and South Dakota of the Agriculture

Department's Wildlife Service.

" We just have not found a non-lethal method that will solve this problem. "

But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- whose authorization is required if

the cull is to go ahead -- is skeptical. Officials say there is no evidence

that killing two million of the prolifically

breeding birds will actually put a dent in crop damage, and some evidence

suggests that most of the birds targeted for poisoning are not

crop-destroyers, but benign migrants on their way to Canada.

" If it truly benefited farmers, we'd be more inclined to go along with it. We

would be uncomfortable with giving a permit for something that doesn't

achieve its purpose, " said Larry Gamble, regional environmental contaminants

co-ordinator for the Fish and Wildlife

Service, mountain and prairie region.

The sleek, black birds with red wing patches are one of the most common birds

in North America. Their continent-wide population is estimated at 180 million

in the winter, exploding to 350 million after the chicks are born in the

summer.

In the prime sunflower-growing region of North and South Dakota, millions of

blackbirds nest in the marshes and millions more pass through on annual

spring and fall migrations, amounting to somewhere between 40 million and 60

million birds.

Autumn in the Dakotas is an ideal time for the red-winged blackbirds. Just

when they need to fatten up for their fall migration south -- and when other

food crops like wheat and barley have already been harvested -- the fields

full of ripe sunflowers offer them a banquet. The overall damage they do

amounts to only one or two per cent of the value of the crop --compared with

six per cent lost to disease and seven per cent lost to insects. But the huge

flocks of birds can hit individual farmers hard, devouring an entire field of

sunflower seeds in a blitz attack.

" It's sort of like 1,000 woodpeckers pecking your siding off your house,

stripping it of its roof, " said Larry Kleingartner, executive director of the

National Sunflower Association. " You might love woodpeckers, but if they're

damaging one's dwelling, you might get a little emotional about that. "

Frustrated farmers have tried almost everything to shoo away the blackbirds,

with limited success. Some use loud propane cannons and pop-up scarecrows to

frighten the creatures. Some resort to good old-fashioned shotguns.

The Department of Agriculture has been spraying wetlands with a herbicide to

weed out 70 per cent of the cattails, reducing the birds' nesting and

roosting habitat. The program has reduced, but not eliminated, damage to

farmers' fields.

Poison has been tried, but attempting to poison blackbirds in the fall is

futile, because they simply ignore the poison bait and eat the sunflowers

instead. So in 1993, the Department of Agriculture began experimenting with

spring baiting.

The concept is to kill the birds in the spring by baiting the fields near

specific marshes in South Dakota where hundreds of thousands of blackbirds

congregate during migration. Unlike in the fall, the poisoned rice is an

attractive food when the sunflowers and other crops have not yet ripened.

The department began by killing 230,000 birds in 1993 and worked up to

500,000 birds in 1999. Agriculture officials were proposing to kill two

million birds in 2000. But in December 1999, a court decision forced the

department to apply for a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to

continue poisoning the blackbirds. The service turned down the application,

saying there was no indication that spring baiting was working.

" Even though you were baiting birds, the population actually increased.

That's what the data showed. And the damage (to crops) stayed the same, " Mr.

Gamble said.

There is no undisputed proof that the birds passing through the Dakotas in

the spring are the same birds causing the damage in the fall. Scientific

studies by the Agriculture Department, among others, show that while some of

the birds remain to nest in the sunflower growing region of the Dakotas,

others migrate onward to Montana and the Canadian prairie provinces.

In Canada, blackbirds are not considered an agricultural pest, and perform

the beneficial service of eating insects.

The Fish and Wildlife Service believes that the local nesting birds in the

Dakotas cause the vast majority of the damage. Scientific studies indicate

that, at the most, the birds nesting in the core

sunflower-growing areas amount to a little less than half of the birds

targeted in the spring poisoning.

" Local nesting birds are the ones that cause the problem, " said Mr. Gamble.

" But the spring roosting birds are the ones that go up into Canada. They

probably aren't the problem birds. "

But Linz, the project leader for blackbird research on the Great

Plains for the Agriculture Department, said that blackbirds fly long

distances in search of food, and even birds that nest as far north as Regina

can eat the Dakotas' sunflowers.

" We're having an argument over what is (the) definition of 'local?' " he

said. " Two days away, to us, is 'local' for birds. They can travel a lot of

distance in a hurry. "

Using that definition of local, research shows that about 80 per cent of the

birds targeted in the spring poisoning reside in the broad area where they

could cause damage to sunflowers, an area that extends to southern Manitoba

and southeastern Saskatchewan.

But even if the right birds are being killed, Mr. Gamble said, another

problem with spring poisoning is that it may not reduce the total number of

blackbirds at all by the time autumn comes.

" There's a really good chance a lot more baby birds would survive than you

have normally because you've eliminated the competition, " he said.

Besides failing to solve the blackbird problem, the Fish and Wildlife Service

is concerned that the poisoned rice can kill other songbirds that live in the

grasslands, like meadowlarks and sparrows, whose populations are declining.

Environment Canada's Canadian Wildlife

Service has expressed concern to U.S. authorities over the accidental killing

of other bird species by poison bait.

The Department of Agriculture expects to have a draft environmental impact

statement available for public comment by May 1 and make a final decision by

Nov. 1. If the department decides it wants to go ahead with the spring

poisoning, it will have to convince the Fish and Wildlife Service to grant a

permit.

In making its decision, the Agriculture Department is trying to consider the

diverging interests of the wildlife authorities, including those in Canada,

the sunflower farmers, and nature groups

such as the Audubon Society who oppose the poisoning.

" We're still doing our in-depth analysis of the options, " Mr. Mastrangelo

said. " We're still not even sure if we are going to do this baiting. "

© Copyright 2002 The Ottawa Citizen

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