September 11, 2006

The San Diego National Wildlife Refuge Complex is working with several
outstanding cooperators on the development of a captive-breeding
protocol development program to benefit the recovery of one of southern
California's most endangered birds, the Light-footed Clapper Rail
(*Rallus longirostris levipes*). Refuge staff members meet regularly
with representatives of SeaWorld of San Diego, the Zoological Society of
San Diego Wild Animal Park, the Chula Vista Nature Center and private
ornithologists, in particular Dr. Richard Zembal, to review our work and
to plan for the future.

The history of the rail recovery program began in 1979 with some of the
first life-history studies of the species. Annual population surveys
began in 1980 with a focus on habitat use and resources available to
these endangered birds. The Light-footed Clapper Rail lives in
fragmented and historically reduced coastal salt marsh habitats in
southern California and northern Baja California, Mexico. The rail is
seen by many as a focal species for conservation and restoration efforts
aimed at coastal salt marsh habitat throughout southern California
wetlands. It is nearly entirely dependent on salt marsh habitats for its
survival and is largely non-migratory, so when southern California salt
marshes disappear (and about 90% of them have already been lost to
development), the rails disappear as well. So, the species is endangered
primarily because of habitat loss, but it has other problems as well.
These include; a vulnerability to predation, especially by non-native
introduced predators, environmental contaminants present in some marshes
because of urban runoff or past land uses, lack of appropriate upland
habitat surrounding coastal salt marshes, etc. The list of its problems
is a long one and the solution to its conservation needs will be complex
and require long-term creative management efforts.

Investigations into the bird's food habits, territoriality and movements
within and between wetlands, and its vulnerability to predation are
conducted using banding, radio telemetry and field observations.
Artificial nesting platforms have been employed at several wetlands for
many years and necessary predator control programs are implemented in
several key marshes. An important unanswered question we have is; does
the lack of genetic diversity in remaining isolated populations of the
rail limit its chances for long-term recovery? Existing genetic studies
of the species, while limited, indicated that the smaller populations
and even the largest remaining population in Newport Bay showed
extremely low heterozygosity, or genetic variation between birds. One
test result (possibly the result of a lab error) showed two genetically
identical individuals from samples taken from birds at Seal Beach, a
statistical near-impossibility. We have recently been working towards a
new effort to characterize the genome of remaining light-footed clapper
rail populations throughout its range in coordination with the San Diego
Zoological Society's research branch CRES (center for research for
endangered species). However, it should be noted that we are not seeing
any gross indications of inbreeding depression in wild or our captive
population, but this is a ripe subject for further scientific study.

Our current program was conceived to attempt several different tactics
to enhance demographic and genetic variability within remaining
sub-populations. One approach is to remove eggs from the largest and
presumably most genetically diverse population in Newport Bay in Orange
County and place them in receiver nests in other wetlands with smaller
populations. This idea has proved to be problematic in practice because
of the difficulty of finding nests in the same incubation stages in
different wetlands. In 2001, one egg-swapping event was attempted but
became infeasible because of the abandonment of the designated receiver
nest. These eggs were then taken and successfully incubated and hatched
at SeaWorld with several of the hatchlings release into the wild after
they reached their adult size and showed they knew how to capture and
eat live food. To date, we have released over 130 fledgling clapper
rails raised within our program to receiver wetlands in southern
California. Last year's census of the breeding population yielded the
highest population estimate for the species to date since the initiation
of population monitoring efforts. We look to expand and improve our
small program into a genuine bi-national captive breeding, conservation
program that will serve to conserve the best possible genetic baseline
for the species to repopulate wetlands that we conserve and restore into
the future throughout the southern California bight.

We currently hold three captive pairs at the Chula Vista Nature Center,
two pairs at SeaWorld and two pairs at the Wild Animal Park. SeaWorld
currently holds three adult LFCRs intended to supplement our breeding
stock. There are ongoing discussions on the desirability of enhancing
our captive flock with birds from marshes in Mexico, where we have until
recently believed that relatively large and intact populations of the
sub-species currently thrive. Recent mostly anecdotal reports from
colleagues in Mexico have cast that assumption into doubt with
observations of incompatible land use activities within some of the best
remaining marshes. The Fish and Wildlife Service will be interfacing
with the Mexican government and ornithological colleagues from Mexico to
look into this possible source for population enhancement of wetlands in
the United States through the Canada/Mexico/ United States Trilateral
Committee for Wildlife and Ecosystem Conservation, the Sonoran Joint
Venture and other avenues as they become available to us.

As with seemingly all wildlife conservation related efforts, funding is
a major limiting factor to the program. The program so far has
functioned on limited resources plus staffing contributions from our
partners. We're looking to increase our cooperator support, find other
sources of funding and bring in new key personnel to help oversee
potential research-related projects relating to the captive-breeding
program. We hope to continue our radio-telemetry tracking of some
released birds, genetic "fingerprinting" of captive and wild birds,
enhancements of our existing captive breeding facilities and training
for Mexican biologists to parallel our census work in the US.

As wetlands in southern California are restored over the coming decades,
we intend to help the Light-footed Clapper Rail continue to survive and
thrive in the wild into the future. Many species of rail have gone
extinct in the recent past. The Tahiti Rail, the Wake Island Rail, the
New Caledonia Rail, the Bar-winged Rail and several other rail species
have been lost to us forever. They were lost because of human
activities. We either over hunted them, altered their habitats to the
point where they could no longer survive, or we introduced predatory
animals like domestic cats, black rats and stoats that decimated their
populations. If we have any say about it, the Light-footed Clapper Rail
will not be added to that shameful list. We'll be working with the best
ecologists, geneticists, veterinarians, animal keepers and
ornithologists we can find to help this species survive.

I hope that this presentation is useful to you in creating an
understanding that although the Service is a lead agency in the
implementation of recovery efforts, our best efforts come through
partnerships within the larger society. This particular program is one
of the most rewarding ones I have had the privilege of being involved
with as a Service biologist. The people we work with are terrific and
we've done it mostly on a relative shoestring budget, with people coming
together voluntarily, who brought different talents and capacities to
the table. Somehow we have kept the program moving forward through a
good deal of relationship maintenance and networking, creative biology
work, and lots of hard work in the field and in the office, but mostly
the people involved really do love the animals we work with and are
committed to doing something meaningful to contribute to their
conservation. It's possible.

Please feel free to contact me about any technical or other questions
you may have about this ongoing program.

Brian Collins

Wildlife Biologist

USFWS

San Diego NWR Complex

619.691.1262