Hello Tweets,

The piece below from a friend in South Africa was circulated among members
of Birdlife South Africa and details a drastic change in behavior of the
great white pelican on the South African West Coast and it's effect on other
birdlife in the area. I found it fascinating and disturbing and thought it
might be of interest to others. It demonstrates so clearly how profound an
effect what we do can have on wildlife.

Marlene Lambert
Sequim, WA

THE PELICAN CHALLENGE ON THE WEST COAST
The near-threatened Great White Pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus) is arguably
the largest fish-eating seabird endemic to the South African West Coast. It
can be recognised in flight by its huge wingspan, S-shaped neck, long beak,
its penchant for soaring in thermals and for flying in formation. Some call
it the Jumbo Jet of the birds.
A number of years ago, a pig farm near Cape Town started feeding their pigs
chicken carcasses. These were gutted before feeding and the offal was thrown
into a hole in a remote corner of the farm. Before long, various scavenging
birds, amongst them the Great White Pelican, started eating this regularly
supplied and nutritious food. Unfortunately, as we all know, most chickens
battery-reared today are fed growth hormones, and it is suspected that this
has had an effect on these pelicans.

It is postulated that this plentiful supply of hormone-enriched feed caused
the pelicans to breed better than is usual, and their offspring went to eat
where their parents took them - to the pig farm. Furthermore, it was
believed that they never learned that their waterproof feathers, long beak
and gular pouch were so ideally suited to bulk fishing in the sea, for here
were easy pickings on land. Today, a whole generation of pelicans has grown
up with no knowledge of fishing techniques, or even what a fish is, or looks
like.
When the authorities finally realised what was happening on the pig farm,
they intervened and closed up the offal hole, effectively cutting off this
bountiful food supply. After some initial confusion during which some of
these birds died from starvation, the remaining pelicans started looking for
alternative food sources, by seeking in an ever-widening search pattern.

After some time, they found that some unpopulated, predator free islands in
the mouth of the Langebaan lagoon just outside Saldanha Bay had thousands of
defenceless gannet, cormorant, penguin, oystercatcher and gull nests, ripe
for easy pickings. These hungry pelicans waddled through the breeding
colonies, scared the resident parent birds away with their daunting size,
and swallowed every egg and chick they could find, in many cases, decimating
local populations of our endemic sea birds. The Jumbo Jet of the birds had
become the Jumbo Vacuum Cleaner. The 2006/7 breeding season yielded a
virtually zero production of hatchlings to complement the West Coast seabird
population.

These pelicans cannot be shot as the species is listed as "near-threatened"
in the Red Data Book, and besides, there is no way one can identify an
ex-pig farm bird from a normal one at a distance. They cannot be poisoned
without serious risk to other life forms. In the meantime, these birds are
breeding, and passing on their bad feeding habits in turn to their
fledglings, thereby exacerbating the problem. As the islands are part of the
proclaimed West Coast National Park, the SANParks Honorary Rangers (HRs)
have teamed up with Park permanent staff under the watchful eye of avian
scientists at the University of Cape Town. The idea was to create a rotating
presence on these exposed and wind-swept islands during this year's seabird
breeding season (October to January), in order to scare off pelicans
whenever they land. This is a lonely, risky and labour-intensive operation
entailing much scrambling over rocks and climbing to high ground to watch,
and down again to chase, followed by more climbing. The teams operate in
5-day shifts on the two bigger islands, Jutten and Malgas. Their day starts
at first light (05h00) when the pelicans arrive and ends at sunset (20h30)
when they leave to roost on the mainland.

The idea is that each island is divided in two, with one half being left to
the pelicans to carry on with their bad habits, while the other half is
considered as a "pelican-free" zone and the birds are actively chased from
these parts of the islands. This effectively provides comparative zones on
each island, where one is a control zone showing what happens if we do
nothing, while the other indicates the results of the chasing operation. A
weekly, and in some cases, daily breeding success count is maintained by the
HRs on the islands, as well as other possible sources of predation such as
Cape (Kelp) Gulls and Cape Fur Seals, so that the bird scientists can assess
the impact that chasing has had on the pelican predation and then use this
data to make a decision on the way forward for next year's breeding season.

Once again, man's thoughtless actions have initiated a complex web of change
that is not easily unravelled. We already know that an unthinking motorist
throwing an apple to a baboon at a lay-by to impress his child is signing
the death warrant of that animal, for the day will most certainly come when
that animal will be shot by other folk who are sick and tired of the
marauding baboons who have become used to free food as supplied by other
thoughtless humans. A life lesson for the reader is not to ever feed a wild
animal, no matter how "sorry" we feel for it or how cute it is. We don't
realise the longer-term implications of such acts, and in many cases, what
starts out as an innocent attempt to supply a perceived shortage of food,
results in an unforeseen catastrophe later.

So what is the long-term answer? Everyone is feverishly working on a
solution, and the island teams are chasing pelicans from the pelican-free
zones and gathering important field data during their shifts on the islands,
but in the meantime, our coastal bird populations are under serious threat.
Bird scientists are hoping that the pelicans will get the message to stay
off the islands, and scientists are happy to report that some pelicans
chased from the islands have been spotted catching fish in the sea.
However, it remains to be seen if they can all switch to this sole method of
sustenance and desist from pillaging the seabird populations on the islands
into the future.

Mike Lodge
Honorary Ranger: West Coast National Park