From: vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu (John S. Van Etten)
Subject: Re: Audubon Society's bird "rescues"
Organization: CIE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 17:44:55 GMT

Tara McDermott writes:

[stuff about Audubon Society poisoning gulls with DRC 1339 deleted]

>DRC 1339, the avicide used on the gulls on Jenny Island, was
>originally developed for use on blackbirds.  The poison works by
>interfering with kidney function, causing death by a build-up of
>bodily wastes.  Berle insists that gulls poisoned with DRC 1339 show
>no signs of pain and "usually die on their nests in resting postures"
>within 24 hours.  But other bird experts say the gulls take up to 72
>hours to die, only two-thirds of them at home on their nests.  The
>third that die elsewhere not only suffer themselves, but pose a threat
>to other animals who eat their poisoned corpses."

A friend of mine that worked for the DEC down on Long Island (NY) had
to poison some herring gulls that were destroying habitat of a very
rare type of plover (yellow-legged?) down there.  These birds were
eating at the huge Staten Island dump and there populations were
soaring and threatening the endangered plover.  He used a poison
similar to the one you described, because it would only kill the gulls
and not the plover (who weren't able to eat enough to die from it),
even though the method of death was not as quick as with other
poisons.  Could the situation be similar in this case?  No offense to
our friends that write the PETA brochures, but they have a habit of
leaving out such (nasty) little tidbits.  You might wish to take what
they say with a grain of salt until you have *more information*.  Most
members of the Audubon Society actually *like* birds.  (Yeah, I know,
I should have warned you to have somebody around that knows CPR before
I made that last statement.) :-)


>I read this last week.  This morning on NPR I heard a story about the
>Audubon Society poisoning gulls on another island where they were
>trying to get puffins to land there and start a population (by placing
>wooden puffins to fool them into thinking that there already WAS a
>thriving puffin population - the only way they would come to the
>island).  The gulls posed a threat to the future inhabitants.  Gulls
>snack on puffin eggs and younglings, and basically pose a threat to a
>puffin population.  The story ended with Japan showing interest, since
>they have an endangered albatross species somewhere...
>
>I can't help but feel outraged at their tactics.  On what basis does
>an organization have the right to choose what species of animal takes
>precedence over another?  The gull population has on at least these
>two instances been targeted for decimation, because they are thriving,
>and are in no danger of becoming extinct.  Endangered species then,
>according to Audubon, take precidence over non-endangered species, at
>expense of their lives.  

This is as it should be.  Come on, Tara.  Humans (you, me, and Russell
Lawrence :-) caused the problem with the gulls that eat our garbage.
It's not a matter of killing some species that was just hanging out
and happens to have safe numbers.  The gulls are terribly overcrowded
and their huge populations have been sustained because man provides a
huge artificial food supply for them.  While I don't blame the gulls
for eating the garbage if it's there, I can't really blame the
puffins, tern, and other birds for it either.  I can blame mankind,
but that won't get New York City to stop producing garbage.  An
endangered species *does* (I almost wrote "should") take precedence
over an unendangered one, if one of the two must die.  In typical AR
fashion, you seem to be too quick to look at the poor little gull
getting poisoned and *not* look at the puffin that will die if the
gull *doesn't* get poisoned.



>This seems to point to favoritism for a certain "race" of bird, much
>like the Nazi's extermination of Jews, to let the Arian race take its
>rightful place as dominant species (in a very general sense, of
>course).  I'd like to see some discussion on this.  I agree in
>principal that endangered species should be helped, but to do so at
>the expense of another species is a very disturbing idea to me.  I 
>could never condone this practice.  The gulls have just as much right to
>exist as the puffins.

Nazis???  That's pretty lame.  It seems to me the people that only
want the gulls around and don't give a damn about the puffins are a lot
closer to Nazis.  "Gulls, the one perfect race."  I'd say you're a bit
backwards in your "logic." :-)
     It's really nice that you'd like to see endangered species be
helped.  But closing your eyes and wishing that it will happen just
doesn't seem to work, now does it?  "At the expense of another
species"???  Even *you* said gulls were thriving.
     You also said "The gulls have just as much right to exist as the
puffins."  What makes you think the puffins don't have just as much
right to exist as the gulls?


John

--
******************************************************************************
               John S. Van Etten     vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu
       Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute  1000 MIPS GaAs F-RISC Project
       --"If sand didn't irritate oysters, there would be no pearls"--
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