Bald eagles are hovering excessive above the Bay State.
The quantity nesting in Massachusetts has elevated “dramatically” over the past a number of many years whilst anticoagulant rodenticides — a extreme rat poison — proceed to pose a risk, in line with MassWildlife.
A bald eagle succumbing to what consultants suspect was rat poisoning has led a push from wildlife advocates for state lawmakers to do extra to guard the birds of prey and different creatures.
More than 100 folks gathered late Thursday at a vigil in Arlington to honor the bald eagle, named MK, who was discovered struggling in a city cemetery on Sunday earlier than finally dying at Cape Wildlife Center late Tuesday.
Initial lab work and a bodily examination performed Monday led consultants to consider that anticoagulant rodenticide poisoning brought about MK’s deteriorating situation, in line with the New England Wildlife Center.
In response to a Herald inquiry, MassWildlife mentioned the variety of bald eagle nesting pairs throughout Massachusetts has greater than doubled since 2010, a pattern mirroring what’s happening all through Atlantic coast states.
“The dramatic increase is a result of eagles having good nesting success and continuing to expand into suitable habitat following their reintroduction into the state in the 1980s,” MassWildlife mentioned Friday.
MassWildlife partnered with Mass Audobon in 1982 to launch a undertaking to revive the bald eagle as a breeding hen within the state. That got here after the feds in 1972 banned using DDT, a pesticide that “had a catastrophic effect on the eagle’s ability to produce the calcium needed to coat their eggs,” in line with Mass Audubon.
There are round 80 nesting pairs of bald eagles in Massachusetts, with rodenticides placing them in danger, in line with the Animal Legal Defense Fund. An grownup bald eagle died in her nest on the Charles River in March 2021, the primary bald eagle demise from second-generation anticoagulant poisoning within the state. Another died from SGAR poisoning in July 2021.
“While bald eagles primarily eat fish, they are opportunistic foragers and will scavenge or prey on a variety of animals,” MassWildlife mentioned. “Raptors, as well as other kinds of wildlife, can be victims of unintentional rodenticide poisoning.”
Municipalities can solely accomplish that a lot to manage using rodenticides, mentioned Laura Kiesel, an Arlington resident who organized the vigil. Arlington Town Manager Sandy Pooler signed a coverage in January that prohibits using second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides on all town-owned property, from buildings to parks.
Wildlife advocates are asking the state to permit municipalities to control pesticide use on non-public property, Kiesel mentioned.
“The thing I’m really frustrated with is Arlington, to its credit, is trying to get the state to do something about this and allow us to regulate these poisons since we have a disproportionate amount of wildlife deaths,” she mentioned. “The state has not stepped up.”
A pair of state lawmakers from Attleboro, Sen. Paul Feeney and Rep. Jim Hawkins, are proposing laws that may require industrial pest management firms to report electronically the place they’re making use of rodenticides.
The laws has acquired the help of greater than 30 animal advocacy teams, and it simply missed being absolutely enacted final session after the House and Senate authorized it final yr, Hawkins instructed the Herald.
“We have agreed that this is at a crisis level,” the consultant mentioned in a telephone interview.
Andrew Josslin, knowledgeable tree climber who attended Thursday’s vigil, was known as in by a wildlife rehabber to help in capturing MK Sunday afternoon.
When Josslin first noticed MK, he mentioned the eagle couldn’t perch in a tree however was capable of do 50- to 70-yard flights. She did exhibit indicators of rodenticide poisoning earlier than her situation went downhill in a single day, he mentioned.
Josslin’s recommendation: “People should request that their pest control services use what is called integrated pest management and use multiple methods to control rodents, and not use anticoagulants. That will go a long way in making this problem go away.”
A mom grey horned owl and two of her fledgling owlets died from rodenticide poisoning in an Arlington park final spring earlier than one other owl died in December within the suburban city.
“Arlington is strangely the epicenter of rodenticide deaths for wildlife,” Josslin mentioned.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”