The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the finest legislative accomplishments in the history of this frail planet. Bipartisan, science-based, it's helped revive the Bald Eagle and dozens of other species plundered by pollution and overdevelopment. Naturally GQP candidates want to slash it. Remember what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his Four Freedoms Speech? "We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests."
Revival of the Florida grasshopper sparrow shows hope for future of endangered species
Resurgence is also a rebuke to our Legislature, which wants to make hunting a priority for wildlife management
A Florida grasshopper sparrow carries some food. (Photo courtesy of FWC)
Bird bird bird, bird is the word. … Everybody knows that bird is the word!
When I was in college at Troy State University, home of the Fighting Prophylactics, my buddies and I would spend aimless Sunday nights cruising around solving all the world’s problems while listening to the oldies show from 50,000-watt WLAC out of Nashville. When “Surfin’ Bird” by the Trashmen played, we’d sing along with its silly lyrics.
I found myself crooning those lyrics again last week when I read about the remarkable revival of the endangered Florida grasshopper sparrow. Biologists have been working for a decade to save them from extinction.
“Ten young sparrows born and raised in captivity north of Jacksonville were released,” the Orlando Sentinel reported. “Among them was the 1,000th sparrow born and reared under the care of what amounts to an enormous team of state, federal, and private wildlife caretakers. About 30 of them on hand for the milestone stood off in the distance, whooping and cheering.”
Florida grasshopper sparrows are tiny little things, no more than 5 inches long. But their comeback is huuuuuge. Not so long ago, they were considered the most endangered bird species in the continental United States. Now they’re doing a lot better.
“The project has been a great success,” said Anders Gyllenhaal, co-author of “A Wing and a Prayer: The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds.” “But there’s a long way to go before we can say they’re fully recovered.”
Where there were once just 22 breeding birds in the wild, there are now just under 200, according to Adrienne Fitzwilliam, the lead grasshopper sparrow research scientist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The release of the 1,000th sparrow happened to be more dramatic than expected. Fitzwilliam said. Most captive birds simply walk out of their cage into the underbrush, she said, “but one of them FLEW out.”
“These little birds represent a big beacon of hope that our commitment, partnership, and holistic approach can save vulnerable wildlife from the brink of extinction,” said Andrew Walker, president and CEO of the Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida. The foundation put up $2.5 million for the effort, part of it from the sale of “Conserve Wildlife” specialty license plates.
Why were so many people willing to work so hard to bring back such a nondescript little creature? They were driven by a tragedy involving a similar species.
Disappearing duskies
The Florida grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum floridanus if you’re a scientist) was first described in 1902 by a U.S. Army surgeon, Major Edgar A. Mearns. They have short tails and black and gray feathers that camouflage their nests, which they build in the low shrubs and saw palmetto of grassy prairies.
I don’t know how Major Means found one to describe. These birds tend to be heard more than seen. Their call consists of two or three weak notes followed by an insect-like buzz — hence the name.
Back then, their population was widespread across Central and South Florida. By the 1970s, though, most of their habitat had been ditched and drained and converted to pastures, sod production, and development. By 1986, the sparrow population had plummeted so low they were added to the federal endangered list.
Something similar happened in the 1970s with a relative of the Florida grasshopper sparrow, a bird called the dusky seaside sparrow.
Duskies made their nests in the marshes of Merritt Island and along the St. John’s River. Like the Florida grasshopper sparrow, there used to be plenty of them.
“The bird’s sole habitat was 10 square miles of Atlantic marsh near Titusville, directly in the path of advancing development from the Cape Canaveral space complex,” the Washington Post reported in 1987. “By the 1960s, however, road construction and pesticide spraying had reduced the population to 2,000, and a mid-1970s wildfire wiped out many of those.”
By 1979, only five dusky seaside sparrows were left. They were captured and brought to the Discover Island nature reserve at Walt Disney World. But there was no hope of captive breeding them, because every single one was male.
Disney curators tried crossbreeding them with females from a similar species. But before the experiment could get far, the male duskies started dying off. The last one, known as Orange Band for a metal tag on its leg, was found dead in its food dish in June 1987.
“As far as we know, there are not any more,” said a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman. “This marks the extinction of the species.”
As one Florida writer summed it up: “We put a man on the moon and killed a species on Earth.”
In a classic Florida irony, the Brevard County mosquito control director whose pesticide spraying and landscape alterations helped wipe out the duskies won an award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for his “care and perseverance in protecting wildlife.”
Dusky seaside sparrows were the last bird species in America to vanish like Amelia Earhart. When the Florida grasshopper sparrow got in trouble, everyone involved was determined this would not be a rerun.
Leap into the unknown
In the early 2000s, the population of Florida grasshopper sparrows suddenly nose-dived. By 2013, fewer than 200 of the little songbirds remained.
“The birds just disappeared,” Gyllenhaal said. “They still don’t really know why.”
Mindful of what they’d done wrong with the duskies, federal officials swooped in like hawks. They collected every breeding age sparrow they could find to immediately start a captive breeding program.
“We know it’s going to be hard,” one federal official told me at the start of the program. “They’re small birds living in dense vegetation and they’re secretive by nature.”
Eggs went into incubators at a trio of breeding facilities. Much of the production was done at the nonprofit White Oak Conservation Center in northeastern Florida, near Jacksonville.
It was a leap into the unknown. Picture Simone Biles vaulting from the balance beam without being able to see where she’d land.
Biologists didn’t know if they COULD raise these birds in captivity. They didn’t know the right light-and-dark cycle for them. They didn’t know how much or what they needed to be fed. They didn’t know if captive-bred birds, once released back into the Florida prairies, would know how to deal with predators such as skunks, fire ants, and snakes.
When I asked Fitzwilliam why this little bird was worth such a huge effort, she said, “Grasslands and grassland birds are in steep decline due to habitat loss, fragmentation, and fire suppression. The Florida grasshopper sparrow’s decline and recovery effort do not exist in a vacuum. Research, conservation, and land management for the Florida grasshopper sparrow benefit an array of species that rely on open grasslands.”
Plus, she said, “the Florida grasshopper sparrow is worth saving simply because it exists.”
Finally, in May 2019, they made the first release of some of the birds. Five years on, roughly 30% of the released birds have survived in the wild, Fitzwilliam said. That’s how many wild-bred birds survive too, she said.
One of the things I found remarkable about the most recent release is where it happened — a place where you’re likely to hear more booms than buzzes.
It’s the bomb
While they do have wings, Florida grasshopper sparrows tend to spend most of their time on the ground. After all, that’s where they find the insects that they eat.
They live in Central Florida’s flat, occasionally soggy “dry” prairies. Lots of prairies have been destroyed by development, pushing the sparrows out.
In fact, there was a proposal to turn a big chunk near Yeehaw Junction into a new town named “Destiny.”
Fortunately, the developer — the type of character who wore alligator shoes with alligator eyeballs — was hip-deep in some chicanery and got caught. As a result, 27,000 acres is now the DeLuca Preserve, so the sparrows could stick around.
One of the places where the captive sparrows have been released is the 54,000-acre Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, which is part of the Everglades headwaters and protects the largest remaining tract of Florida dry prairie.
Another is a former cattle ranch that’s now the 63,000-acre Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area, which is part of the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail.
But the spot where the biologists released the 1,000th sparrow was someplace a little different.
The Avon Park Air Force Range is a 101,000-acre bombing and gunnery range that straddles Polk, Osceola, Okeechobee, and Highlands Counties. It was ranchland until World War II, when the military took over and used it as a training base for B-17 crews for air-to-ground bombing.
When they aren’t blowing stuff up real good, the Air Force is working on being an excellent environmental steward. Avon Park is home to more than a dozen endangered and threatened animals and a similar number of imperiled plants.
When it comes to endangered species like the Florida grasshopper sparrow, Avon Park is the bomb. That’s because they take such good care of the natural landscape. Turns out the occasional explosion tends to help with the prescribed burns.
“They mimic the disturbance from lightning strikes,” Fitzwilliam told me. “Of course, the high explosive areas are a challenge to survey [for sparrows]. But we’ve always found birds there.”
I picture the tiny sparrows dodging big bombs the way the Road Runner dodged every explosive device that Wile E. Coyote threw his way. Beep beep!
Speaking of weaponry reminds me: The sparrow’s comeback is more than just a feel-good environmental story. It’s also a shot across the bow of our duplicitous Florida Legislature.
Blowing holes in the argument
During the legislative session that took place this past spring, our lawmakers did some colossally silly and destructive things.
For instance, they claimed “bears on crack” were attacking people in their homes so they made it okay to shoot one (and didn’t require any drug tests on the dead bear).
One of the more insidious bills, sponsored by Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-FoolTheVoters, was a resolution calling for amending the Florida Constitution to enshrine hunting and fishing as fundamental rights for citizens of the state.
After winning near-unanimous support in the House and Senate, the amendment will be on the November ballot vying for the approval of 60% of the voters.
As I have noted before, Brodeur is such a friend to the environment that he won a 2021 award from the Florida Home Builders Association. If the Sanford senator’s name sounds familiar, you may recall he was a beneficiary of one of Florida’s unseemly “ghost” candidate scandals, but not one who faced criminal charges.
The supposed reason for Brodeur’s hunting and fishing bill was that Oregon was considering a ban on hunting, fishing, trapping, and ranching. One problem: The anti-hunting and fishing measure fell far short of the number of signatures needed to make the 2022 ballot.
As is often the case with our fine Legislature, they were solving a problem that didn’t exist. But their solution, if the voters approve it, would make things worse for endangered critters like panthers, manatees, and Florida grasshopper sparrows.
The proposed constitutional amendment sounds fairly vanilla when you first read it. But like Wile E. Coyote, Brodeur slipped a stick of TNT in one small phrase: It says that hunting and fishing will be “the preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife.”
In an email he sent to environmentalists who objected to his bill, Brodeur wrote, “Hunting and fishing are the preferred methods of population control because, during the last 50 years, game animals are the only ones that seem to be thriving.”
I grew up hunting and fishing in the Florida Panhandle, so I’ve handled a few shotguns in my day. But I don’t need my old Remington to blow holes in Brodeur’s specious argument.
Hunting would not have brought the Florida grasshopper sparrow back from the brink of extinction. It took a lot of determined biologists and plenty of people buying those “Conserve Wildlife” license plates. Forcing scientists to turn to hunting and fishing when it’s not appropriate is foolish and, I fear, destructive.
If this measure passes, some environmental group should announce they’re going to give Brodeur the first ever Dusky Seaside Sparrow Award. And if he asks why, just tell him he’s being given the bird because bird is the word!
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.
RELATED NEWS
No comments:
Post a Comment