Subject: Re: introducing species?
Date: Sep 14 08:45:43 1994
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


>Hello. Anna Coles here (_here_ being Seattle M-F and Kitsap Co. on
>weekends).
>My husband, Steven, and I were discussing bluebirds with the owner of
>Wild Bird Nature Company at the Olympic Village (?) shopping center in
>Gig Harbor (just off highway 16) (yes, it's a plug--very nice,
>enthusiastic people; also not a chain.)
>
>Someone had called in a sighting of a bluebird to the store--the sighting
>was in a meadowy area near Gig Harbor--we were all skeptical, but it got
>us to thinking: We assume that if bluebirds were in the area, they would
>be Western, not Mountain. The area seems to be the right kind of
>habitat, grassy, open pasture-like areas, right? What if we wanted to
>transfer some bluebirds to the area? Do the laws that protect birds
>extend to not allowing them to be introduced to new, suitable habitat?
>If it is legal, how would we go about introducing the birds to a new habitat?
>Thank you in advance to any thoughts on this subject. --Anna Coles
>acoles at u.washington.edu

Anna, you'd have to have federal and state permits to capture bluebirds to
introduce them, and I suspect it would be difficult to acquire them. I'm
glad that's the case, as one person's idea of an appropriate introduction
might not be another's, and far too much trouble has been caused to the
world by introductions, well meant or not (although of course this one
seems benign). Why not just put up bluebird boxes? That's what they did on
Ft. Lewis, where there were almost none, and there are many many pairs now.
Birds are amazingly vagile (wandering), and I'll bet bluebird houses would
become occupied eventually if the habitat were such that it attracted these
dispersing birds. Or maybe you'd just support a population of tree
swallows....

Just one more comment--mountain bluebirds are scarce migrants and winter
visitors throughout western WA, so a report shouldn't automatically be
assigned to western b. And a female mountain was found mated to a male
western at Ft. Lewis a few years ago (not even suspected until she was
found dead in the box and turned in as a specimen to the Slater Museum).

Dennis Paulson