Loon Magic/Loon Magic - Wayzata Technology (8011) (1993).iso/mac/mac text/15 Recovery - Adaptable

Text File | 1993-07-20 | 4KB | 62 lines

   The Adaptable Loon

   Patience is something loons probably know a lot about. Over
hundreds of thousands of years, loons have adjusted to a broad range
of environmental change. Unlike people, loons and all other wildlife
species don't worry about change; they simply adapt to it or perish.
Succeeding in a variety of habitats and adjusting nesting habits to
minimize human interference, loon behavior is quite elastic. Most
likely, loons will not replay the sad story of the ivory-billed
woodpecker. This large woodpecker was widely distributed in the
virgin forests of southern North America until the logging of mature
forests destroyed its preferred habitat. Today the existence of the
ivory-billed is limited to rumors and hoaxes.

   The loon's path will probably be closer to the one followed by the
pileated woodpecker, which shared the ivory-billed's habitat and
food supply. For reasons not well understood, the pileated
woodpecker could adapt to changing environmental conditions; it
survived and thrived in younger growth woodlands. While not as
common as crows, pileated woodpeckers are turning up all over.
Their flexible feeding habits gave pileated woodpeckers a second
chance; the rigid patterns of the ivory-billed gave that bird a one-
way ticket to oblivion.

   Loons seem to be anything but rigid: they nest on a wide variety of
lakes from one acre to thousands of acres in size; they construct their
nests out of any available material; they eat almost anything aquatic;
and in winter they disperse over an enormous coastal range. It
seems like an open-ended ticket. Even if acid rain were to wipe out
the trout or smallmouth bass of a given region, loons would simply
feed more heavily on perch or suckers, more resistant prey species.
Loons have more time than many other members of the lake
community to ride out the acid rain threat.

   It also seems that loons can live with people. The stability of the
loon population in the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area, despite
twenty years of rapidly increasing recreational use, is strong
evidence for believing loons and people can co-exist.

   While there still are serious problems in the current reproductive
success of loons, especially in the Northeast, these problems can
probably be solved through protection and management efforts.
Dominated by enormous numbers of loons breeding in Canada, the
total North American population appears adequate to feed a recovery
effort as suitable loon habitat becomes available. In Wisconsin, after
generations of inching northward, the range of breeding loons is
starting to reverse directions and move to the south. Improved water
quality, resulting from a decade of tough enforcement of the Clean
Water Act, and a reduction of harassment are part of that change.

   There is hope that loons in Wisconsin and elsewhere can reoccupy
parts of their traditional breeding range. To some, that may seem
unrealistic, even miraculous. But look at some other modern
environmental miracles: Lake Erie, returned from the "dead,"
producing some of the best walleye fishing in the world; the
Connecticut River again producing Atlantic salmon; peregrine falcons
now expanding their endangered population; and the whooping
crane, once a lonely group of eighteen birds and written off by many
biologists, slowly moving back from the brink of extinction as a band
of eighty-four wild and sixty-five captive birds. We're not about to
write off the common loon.