Don Baccus recently posted a message about the risks that
several raptors face as migrants. He had considerable
excellent information to offer on this subject.

In that message, he stated, in reference to peregrine
falcons, "They face a lot of risks beyond exposure to DDT:
shooting and unregulated (in practice, though not by law)
falconry."

Although I am not a falconer, I have had several years of
experience in monitoring their activities in the state of
Washington. In that time, I have not been able to get
even a hint of falconers taking any peregrines for their
use.
I don't believe they are foolish enough to do that because
of all the checks that have been set up in both federal
and state regulations. Probably most importantly, is that
they have access to captive-bred peregrines, so they don't
need to take a chance on getting caught at taking one from
the wild.
Since they put in several years in preparing for falconry,
they would throw
all that effort away with only one conviction of that
nature.

I have heard these sort of anecdotal reports before, but
we have never been able to find any of substance.

Don, if you have some information that would be useful to
law enforcement agents, I certainly would appreciate it.
If what you say is going on under our noses, we need to
know who and where.

Tom Juelson Office telephone # (360) 902-2510
Olympia
RANIDAE at DELPHI.COM