Brown pelican may move off endangered list

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking public comment on a monitoring plan if the remaining brown pelican population is removed from the endangered species list.

The agency first recommended that the brown pelican, Louisiana’s state bird since 1966, be taken off the list of threatened and endangered species in February 2008.

If the brown pelican is removed from Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection, it will be monitored for a decade, from 2010 to 2020,

More than 620,000 brown pelicans found along the Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Coast, the Caribbean and Latin America remain safeguarded. The brown pelican was first declared endangered in 1970 under the Endangered Species Conservation Act, a predecessor to the current ESA. The service still has not made a final decision to delist the bird.

“We want to make sure when the decision is made that we have a monitoring plan in place and people know what the next step is,” said Tom MacKenzie, media relations chief for the service’s southeast region.

“We’re trying to obtain information from the public so we can have a good monitoring system in place,” he added.

The service will use various bird count information from organizations like the Audubon Society to track pelican colony occupancy and the number of nesting pairs over the 10-year period. If a substantial decline in the colonies is observed, the service will investigate possible causes and can immediately relist the brown pelican as threatened or endangered.

The brown pelican was thought to have completely disappeared from Louisiana by 1968 when not a single bird was spotted throughout the state

A successful restoration project began that year where 1,200 brown pelicans were captured in Florida and released in southeastern Louisiana over a 13-year period. Also, the banning of the pesticides DDT, DDE, dieldrin and endrin in 1972 contributed to the population’s recovery.

According to the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, in 2008 there were 11,785 nesting pairs of brown pelicans, which produced 24,620 young.

There are currently over 85,000 pelicans in the state, the most since before 1930.

Current threats to pelicans and their habitat include hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and El Niño weather patterns. However, brown pelicans have evolved in these environments and can recover from such naturally occurring events, according to the service.

Comments on the monitoring plan can be submitted until Oct. 29 via email to FW8pelicanmonitoring@fws.gov, by fax to (805) 644-3958 or mail to Michael McCrary, Listing and Recovery Coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ventura Fish and Wildlife Office, 2493 Portola Road, Suite B, Ventura, California, 93003.

A link to the monitoring draft plan is available online at www.fws.gov/ventura under “Recent News Events.” Printed copies of the plan will be available in four to six weeks, and requests should be submitted to the address above.