The Peregrine Fund Annual Newsletters
Featured Newsletter article:
Early Warning Systems
From falcons to condors, raptors have often warned us of harm to our environment and ourselves
You only have to look at a falcon or an eagle to understand the human fascination for these birds. They are stunningly beautiful, powerful, charismatic, and truly one of nature’s greatest works of art. For most, that is reason enough to invest time, money, and effort in conserving them for the enjoyment of future generations. But they also serve an important role in maintaining ecosystem structure and function, and evolutionary processes; and because of their top place in most ecosystems, they have proven time and again to be valuable indicators of change, often catastrophic, in the environment that we all share.
Early warning systems—we all have them, we all depend on them. From guard dogs who bark at strangers, to smoke alarms in the home, to global systems that warn entire nations of approaching hurricanes, humans rely on early warning systems to save lives, property, and their quality of life. In the environment, there are few other animals that so universally respond to change as birds of prey. Because of their position high in the food chain and because of their tenuous, predatory lifestyle, birds of prey turn out to be sensitive indicators of environmental change. In many cases, they have been the bellwether of change that will affect human health and welfare.
The decline of the Peregrine Falcon in the 1950s and ’60s warned us that all was not well with the wonder pesticide DDT. Subsequent research showed that DDT and its derivatives broke down very slowly in the environment, accumulated in the food chain, becoming more concentrated with each link, and reached such high levels in top predators that it interfered with their calcium metabolism and caused eggshell thinning in birds. For more than two decades in the United States, many falcons failed to hatch eggs and raise young because of DDT, and their populations dwindled to almost nothing.
Read the rest of this article in the 2008 newsletter
Combined Federal Campaign # 10639
