Posted on: Saturday, January 8, 2005
Navy to break eggs, move adult albatrosses
| • | Map (opens in a new window): Broken eggs |
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau
MANA, Kaua'i — Federal officials this year once again plan to break the eggs of Laysan albatrosses nesting near the runway at the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, and to move adult birds to another location.
The action is designed to prevent crashes between the large sea birds and aircraft, and to prod adult albatrosses to select different nesting places. Officials try to prevent eggs from hatching at the site, because albatrosses return to their hatching sites as adults to nest.
Former Hawai'i Audubon Society president Wendy Johnson said it's a bad move at a time when other agencies are trying to encourage sea birds to repopulate ancient nesting locales in the main Hawaiian Islands.
"It sounds horrible to me. I'm flabbergasted that they're doing it," Johnson said.
While many adult albatrosses appear to repeatedly return to Barking Sands, there appears to have been some success in breaking the hatch-site fidelity for others.
"In fact, several pairs have been observed nesting at Kilauea and Princeville in years after
being moved or the eggs being destroyed. In that way, this protects the species," said Jayme Patrick, assistant Kaua'i district supervisor for the wildlife services branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS.
Ultimately, if the birds move to new nesting sites, the program is a benefit to the overall population of the species, she said.
The program has been used previously at Barking Sands as well as at other Hawai'i airports, including Dillingham Field, said Jim Murphy, a program biologist in Honolulu with APHIS.
In the past, as an alternative to breaking albatross eggs, APHIS officials donated the eggs to University of Hawai'i researchers. But in recent years there has been no demand and eggs are destroyed instead, Murphy said.
"We consider it colony relocation through attrition," Patrick said. The techniques have been employed at Barking Sands for at least five years, and relocation of birds has been under way since 1988, she said.
Similar techniques at Dillingham Field have prevented a colony from being established there. Instead, albatross have established breeding colonies at other locations on O'ahu, including Ka'ena Point, she said.
Navy spokeswoman Lt. Barbara Mertz said no eggs have yet been broken this year, and she did not know how many albatross nests at the Pacific Missile Range Facility have eggs. Range spokesman Tom Clements confirmed that egg destruction is planned, but he said he had no details on when.
Clement said he is not certain how many nests there are, but said he believes there are fewer than 50 albatrosses at the missile range this season.
Patrick said her office is awaiting word that the Navy has authorized money for the colony relocation. She said she has not yet been to the missile range site to count the birds and nests.
Nesting albatrosses glide low across open airfields on their landing and departures. They seem to be attracted to coastal airfields, perhaps because of the wide spaces without obstructions for low flight.
An immediate benefit of the destruction or removal of eggs is that adults quickly leave, removing the threat for aircraft. "Adults, when they don't have an egg to sit on, they leave the area," Mertz said.
At the Pacific Missile Range Facility, the threat is real, Murphy said.
"We've had strikes before. By removing the eggs, you get rid of them six months earlier. By keeping those adult birds out of there, we've probably extended their lives," he said.
Audubon's Johnson said that moving eggs and adults at the same time would seem to have the same effect, without the destruction.
"It's just a waste," she said.
The control of birds at all U.S. airports, including military fields, is approved by permit, said Barbara Maxfield, representative of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Honolulu.
"They can take an unlimited number of birds" of any species to protect air transportation, she said.
Albatrosses are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but the airfield permit supercedes those protections, she said.
Navy officials have tried moving nesting birds from Barking Sands to the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge on the north side of the island, but each nesting season, the birds have returned.
At Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the Fish and Wildlife Service copes with the problem of aircraft-albatross interactions by limiting scheduled flights to the hours of darkness. The birds normally settle to the ground during night.
But that doesn't work for the Pacific Missile Range Facility. "We have mainly daylight operations," said base spokesman Tom Clements.
Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.
