Idiocy With Guns
OK, I’m just about speechless. Look at this.
Bird experts and enthusiasts reacted with surprise and anger Thursday when they learned that two nesting hawks at an exclusive golf resort in Orange County were shot down by federal agents.
The red-shouldered hawks were killed Wednesday morning near the clubhouse of the Villas of Grand Cypress Golf Resort near Interstate 4 and south of the Dr. Phillips community. About a dozen guests had complained of being attacked.
[…]
The resort asked U.S. Department of Agriculture officials to remove the birds, which can have wing spans of nearly 4 feet and prey on snakes, frogs and insects. Although relatively common in Florida, red-shouldered hawks are federally protected.
After an agency biologist determined the birds were a threat to people, an agency technician killed them with a shotgun. Both hawks were perched in trees in an area cleared of employees and guests, Channell said.
Bernice Constantin, state director of wildlife services in Gainesville for the Agriculture Department, said the shooting of raptors is a rare event.
I’ll bet it is. Especially for the USDA, which is not the relevant authority. The US Fish and Wildlife Service in the Department of the Interior is the government agency charged with issuing permits under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. They are the ones that the USDA gets permits from, and they should have been handed the problem immediately.
They might have had a few synapses more to put on the problem than did the USDA agents (“On *whose* side?”) who were obviously way beyond their cognitive capabililties on this one.
Addition: Hat tip to grrlscientist, who had this advice:
Okay, peeps, EVERYONE who cares about how wildlife-human conflicts are handled in this country should write STRONG complaints about this incident.
Huh. It may be that my friend and colleague from when I was at the University of Florida, Dr. Barbara Kohn, will end up fielding some of your complaints, as she works for USDA’s APHIS.
Update:
You know, I got to thinking about what good would come of writing to USDA to ask them to police themselves. What we have here is a pretty clear case of exceedingly poor judgement (at best) or a possible violation of the permit.
Write, email, or telephone US Fish and Wildlife Service and suggest that they rescind the USDA permit to deal with native bird species. As a poor second, ask that the USDA’s permit be revised to explicitly bar them from taking lethal measures in dealing with native bird species, or that lethal measures may only be applied with written approval of F&WS. At the very minimum, the two USDA idiot field agents responsible for this fiasco absolutely must be removed from the current permit. I think that complaints to the permitting agency are more likely to produce results than complaints to the perpetrating agency.
Here is US F&WS contact information for the relevant region:
REGION 4
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Migratory Bird Permit Office
P.O. Box 49208
Atlanta, GA 30359Tel. (404) 679-7070
Fax (404) 679-4180
Email permitsR4MB@fws.gov
(Please include your telephone number in the text of your message so we may better serve you).
If you would be so kind, please enter a copy of what you send to either the USDA or US F&WS in a comment here, too.
Update: A comment on “Scientist Interrupted” site relates that the nest was left for two days. When the nest was finally examined, the chicks were dead. It also reports that the golf course management consulted with Florida Audubon, who told them about a successful relocation of hawks and their nest. The golf course management apparently decided that would take too long. So my previous willingness to give the golf course management the benefit of doubt (perhaps they just called a trigger-happy agency by chance) is fast fading. It isn’t just the idiots in the USDA who need taking down a notch or two. Word is that the birding community intersects and overlaps with the golf community, and a boycott of the course is being urged.
Here’s my email to the Fish and Wildlife Service:
I am writing to you because of the news report at
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-deadhawk3106mar31,0,2243389.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-orange
[Quote]
The resort asked U.S. Department of Agriculture officials to remove the birds, which can have wing spans of nearly 4 feet and prey on snakes, frogs and insects. Although relatively common in Florida, red-shouldered hawks are federally protected.
After an agency biologist determined the birds were a threat to people, an agency technician killed them with a shotgun. Both hawks were perched in trees in an area cleared of employees and guests, Channel ll said.
[End quote]
I believe that you are the agency that issues permits under the Migratory Bird Act of 1918.
I suggest that a full review of the USDA permit be conducted in light of this incident. If the new report is accurate, it would seem that there is good reason to question whether the USDA permittees should continue to hold their permit. If a permit of some form must be extended to USDA, I suggest that it bar them from using lethal methods, or require specific Fish and Wildlife Service approval of lethal methods on a case-by-case basis. At the very least, the two USDA agents mentioned in the article above should be specifically removed from the current permit and all future permits issued to USDA under the Migratory Bird Act. If there is some mechanism for tracking names, they should be barred from any such permit, even if they leave the employ of USDA.
Wesley R. Elsberry, Ph.D.
Class of 2003, Texas A&M University, Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences
Hawks are a nuisance and they also hunt endangered songbirds which is reason enough to shoot them. I prefer to kill them with a rifle though. It’s more sporting that way. But I suppose if all I had was a shotgun with me I’d use it rather than miss an opportunity.
Hey, it’s a troll. Don’t feed it.
But, if you do see someone shooting a hawk, whether with rifle or shotgun, contact the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They do take action. Heck, if you see someone harassing a native bird, they are there to stop the problem and often do pursue criminal charges. Here’s some bits from their 2003 Annual Report:
And here is the contact information for US F&WS law enforcement regional offices. Pick the one nearest you.
I’ve put this information on a static page here so that it will be easy to find for anyone in the future.
Below is a copy of the email I sent to the US Fish and Wildlife Service as well as cc’ed to the USDA. I don’t know if public pressure will help, but I thought it was worth a try. Feel free to borrow from it if you want to send something and aren’t feeling articulate (not that I am!). :-)
“I was shocked to learn that the USDA improperly made the decision to issue permits to kill two redshouldered hawks in Orange County, at the Villas of Grand Cypress Golf Resort, and that a USDA technician followed through with that task, shooting the mating pair. These were two actively nesting hawks, which have federal protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the USDA was not the proper authority to make such a decision. It is my understanding that the US Fish and Wildlife Service is the proper authority to evaluate a problem involving birds such as these birds.
Certainly, a proper analysis by the relevent authority could have yielded a better decision. The birds could have been moved from the site, or the area could have been cordoned off for the duration of the nesting season, the only time when the birds would pose any possible hazard to passers-by. It was not only offensive to kill these birds, but showed gross mismanagement by the USDA and was in violation of their regulatory authority.
Please address this issue. If the USDA does not understand the boundaries of their authority, then perhaps they should no longer be allowed to issue permits to use lethal methods to address similar situations. At the very least, they should have to receive a consultation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and it should be your decision how to best proceed. Finally, lethal methods of removing a problem bird or other wildlife should only be used as a last resort when there is no other viable option. That was clearly not the case here.”
Thank you, Mahina. That’s exactly the sort of letter they should be getting: an expression of reasoned concern and a call to correct an untenable situation.
Boycott Golf.
Except miniature golf!
Are you people real? These birds almost blinded two people and attacked others…..what would you do? You know about this because the USDA reported it. You haven’t heard about other cases like this because it was a rare case. A trained biologist made the call. I really wan’t to take a cheap shot at your lack of common sense and disconnectedness to socety.
Clifton,
Where are you getting “almost blinded” from? The original newspaper report didn’t say any such thing. The proximal cause of the incident was somebody complaining who was cut on their arm, IIRC.
No, the USDA didn’t “report” as in “publicize” this. I know about it because of the newspaper report, which discusses what the USDA did. It doesn’t say the USDA did anything at all to make public the action taken in the case.
As for common sense… red-shouldered hawk, maybe 1 pound of bird, versus humans. On a golf course, so likely not malnourished humans at that. Common sense says… walk around the *other side* of the clubhouse, idiot. It does not say, “I think the 12 gauge is about right for this, Jeeves.”
I think it is precisely the lack of connectedness to nature that makes this story so compelling. Instead of closing down a safety zone around the nesting birds, the golf course management went down the path of eradicating living hawks who were simply protecting their young in order to make things marginally more convenient for their customers. (“What? Walk around? How gauche.”) Thank goodness I’ve stepped away from connection to that part of society that finds it “common sense” to reach for a shotgun first, foremost, and only in response to any disturbance from nature.