University Daily Kansan / Friday, May 4, 1990
5B
N.Y. park rangers protect ocean bird
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - Ponder the plight of the bining plover.
This unassuming, sand-colored bird, already considered an endangered species, is struggling to make its bore in the urban jungle.
Most humans who visit Gateway National Recreation Area in the borough of Queens don't even spot the plover, which nests, well-camouflaged, just an inlet away from Beach and Coney Island in Brooklyn.
But Meryl Golden, a researcher and National Park Service ranger who is considered the pro among plover-watchers, perseveres. For more than two years, she has stripped to prevent the plover's extinction.
On April 24, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service presented a Northeast Region Conservation Award to Gateway for its efforts to protect the plover and other endangered birds: the least tern, the common tern, and the black skimmer, which recently returned Gateway after a seven year absence.
The average piping plover is 7 inches long, with a black ring around its neck and a black mark above its ear. It can be called *peepel*, that ornithologists call "peepel, lull."
"They're precious and comical to watch," Golden said. "They know who I am because I make eye contact with them. They're not scared of
Thirty pairs nest on 2½ miles of beach, owned partly by the National Park Service and partly by a private apartment complex.
"We believe it is the largest concentration of piping plover anywhere," Golden said. "Most beaches large would have one or two pairs."
Perhaps 145 more pairs live on
Long Island, although no one has counted, Golden said. It's believed 875 pairs live on the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to Newfoundland, with a few more in the Great Lakes and Great Plains regions.
The birds enjoy flat, shell-coated, sparsely vegetated beaches. When a plover lays its four eggs in a small depression in the sand, the Park is fringed, flaps and signs warning that an endangered species is nesting.
The young walk around a few hours after hatching and can fly in about 25 days.
Instead of placing food in the chicks' mouths, parents lead them to a feast of insects and marine worms.
But all is not good for the plovers.
"One of their feeding areas is the water line, where most of the human recreation is concentrated," Golden said.
A mother plover, if disturbed, tries to convince the predator that her wing is broken.
"She'll make a lot of noise and lead the intruder away from where the young are. It's quite a convincing display," said Paul Nickerson, chief manager of the Fish and Wildlife Service's north-east division in Boston.
Last year, Gateway began banning most recreation on the plovers' beach during nesting season, March 15 through August. In 1988, six chicks that grow to enough size to grow plumage and fly. In 1988, there were 20, Golden said.
But the plovers also face other dangers. Rangers and volunteers have removed 3,000 pounds of oil from the surface spills during the past few months.
Scientists to track sea turtles
Study may prevent extinction of ridley species
The Associated Press
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — A baby loggerhead turtles, small as a silver dollar and swimming in tanks in Virginia and Ohio, may hold the key to the survival of one of the world's most endangered species.
The Virginia Marine Science Museum, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Columbus Zoo in Ohio are raising turtles for the next three years and will release them into the Atlantic Ocean with satellite tracking devices attached to their shells.
Loggerheads are a threatened species, but their numbers are nowhere near as diminished as the Kemp's ridley sea turtle, one of 12 species worldwide facing imminent extinction, according to environmentalists.
The hatching and raising of the turtles, called headstarting, is not new, but the animals had never been tracked once they were released.
of what happen after headstarting" said Tony Leger, manager of the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which provided the turtle eggs.
John Keinah, a researcher at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has three loggerheads in the Atlantic with satellite tracking devices.
"This is really the first evaluation
One came from the Columbus Zoo, which raised two loggerheads that were abandoned on its doorstep three years ago. Last year, the zoo contacted the institute about releasing the turtles. The size of the turtles, and the fact that Keithnain because it was just right for mounting a satellite tracker.
The three institutions joined forces this year to raise the turtles from eggs recovered at the Back Bay refuge.
Rather than facing the ravages of seagulls and cold water, the babies are raised in warm water and vegetables. They are mixed with vegetables and four kinds
of fish, said Mark Swingle of the Virginia museum.
Keinath said the only time a turtle would set foot on land after it hatched was when the female laid her eggs in the sand.
Scientists have pieced together part of the sea turtle mystery. The newly hatched turtles hit the water in a three-day swimming freeney. Ketuhn believes that push gets the tiny shell and into the warmer Gulf Stream.
Once in the Gulf Stream, the turtles ride the current around the Atlantic two or three times, feeding on sargassum weed.
During the swimming frenzy, the turtles use only their front flippers. Once in the floating seaweed, the turtles use only their back flippers. Scientists believe the switch is a way to hide from predators, because the back flippers make less discernable motion.
the Atlantic, the turtles head for the Chesapeake Bay and other tidal estuaries where they forage on horseshoe crabs, then migrate south as the water cools. Aerial surveys of the beach help researchers heads visiting the hay each summer.
Scientists believe that when the turtles mature, now weighing in the 300-pound range, they take up residence on the East Coast's continental
"The question is, will a head-started turtle know enough to头 south when winter comes?" Keinah said. "If they navigate properly, I don't have any reason to suspect that headstarted ridlets won't."
The Kemp's ridley turtle nests primarily on one beach in Mexico that is protected year-round by soldiers.
The ridges all seem to lay their eggs the same day. Film in 1947 showed as many as 40,000 turtles lying on the ground. Researchers believe there may be fewer than 400 adult females in the world today.
Farmers blamed for polluted Everglades
The Associated Press
BELLE GLADE, Fla. — The heightening drama about saving Florida's dying Everglades has cast new villains, the farmers and dairymen who work the land around giant Lake Okeechobee.
'I don't think it's fair. It's our land. We're interested in our home as much as anybody else. But I think we're an easy target.'
Environmentalists say agriculture causes too much pollution in the precious Okeechobee, which provides water for the vast wetlands of the Everglades and the cities of the crowded coast. Some argue that it's time to return the land to the wilderness it was before the ranchers and farmers came about a century ago.
David Beardsley Florida farmer
"The first thing we have to do is get rid of the sugar cane south of Lake Okeechobee. Then we have to get rid of the dairy cattle on the north side," said Marjory Stone-Activist who has fought for much of her 100 years to preserve the Everglades system.
U. Attorney Dexter Lehitman,
who has filed suit seeking to force
the state to increase protection of
the Everglades, has said that if
farmers can reduce pollution,
the choice was easy: "Save
the 'Glades and let agriculture move to Wisconsin."
Farmers say they are politically expedient scapegoats. They say they are threatened by environmental experimentation that has only one sure result, a big bill for expanded programs to cut pollution.
"I don't think it's fair," said David Beardsley, a fourth-generation farmer near Clewiston.
"It's our land," he said. "We're interested in our home as much as anybody else. But I think we're an easy target."
The nutrient-laden pollutants that run off the farms and dairies feed unnatural growth of some plants in the Everglades, choke waterways and disrupt the system's food chain.
At the same time, the heavy
development of south Florida has disrupted rain patterns and the flow of water into the Everglades, driving up parts of the system.
Residents of the region are affected by the environmental damage. Most are under some form of water rationing and soon may face stricter limits. Smoke from wildfires in the Everglades last year closed highways and caused respiratory problems.
Gov. Bob Martinez said the environment ranked with crime and drugs as Florida's top issues.
The environmental concerns of Floridians coalesced in the adoption of a "Save Our Everglades" plan in 1983. Its aim is to make the look and function more as it did at the beginning of the century.
In 1900, there were no big farms
to disrupt natural water flow, use water and discharge pollutants back into the Everglades system. Nor did 4.5 million people live on the condominium-dotted "Gold Coast" from Palm Beach to Miami, sucking huge quantities of water from the system.
Sugar growers fare worse than the dairies in their public image as government-subsidized millionaires who exploit foreign cane cutters and the environment. Two-thirds of sugar cane land is owned by S. Ursula companies owned by the Cuban-born 'Fanil family.'
More than 100 other farmers work land in the 700,000-acre Everglades Agricultural Area south of the lake. Some 413,000 acres are in sugar cane, and the rest is in winter vegetables like lettuce, celery, cabbage and carrots.
Beardsley's family started farming when his great-grandfather came to Ikeechobee before World War I and saw the newly drained land rich in decomposed vegetation.
"They just went wild when they saw the dark, rich muck," he said.