Nanticoke workers take falcons under their wings

[Donna]

Once criticized for emitting greenhouse gases, the Nanticoke coal-fired generating station is now at the forefront of helping to restore nature.

About a month ago, it became home to three baby peregrine falcons -- named Kay, Volt and Coalton - that are nesting in the knuckle where two giant I-beams meet on the outside of the building.

Employees are monitoring the fledglings. They pick up the birds when they fall from the nest and bring them to the plant's rooftop, where their mother continues to feed them until they learn to fly.

The plant is now part of a worldwide effort to help the peregrine, which was considered all but extinct 30 years ago, reach a healthy population.

The birds were devastated by the use of the pesticide DDT and, by 1984, their numbers were down to zero in Ontario, said Mark Nash, director of the Canadian Peregrine Foundation, which is instructing Nanticoke employees on what to do.

Today, there are more than 100 peregrines in the province, thanks to restoration efforts that have had to beat some long odds, he said.

A naturalist in Wainwright, Alta., has bred 4,000 baby falcons over the past 36 years and sold them to be re-introduced to the wild.

Some of the babies are placed in existing nests where adult birds adopt and raise them. In other cases, fledglings are put into special boxes attached to their natural habitats on the side of cliffs or high-rise buildings and are fed by humans through a tube. When they get big enough, they are released from the box and fly off to their new lives.

Mortality rates, however, are high for peregrines. In the wild, 90% of babies never make it to breeding age, Nash said.

The foundation buys baby birds, places them, and then gets volunteers to monitor the nests. Young peregrines almost always fail on their first attempts at flight and fall to earth. There, they are vulnerable to predators such as larger birds or carnivores such as foxes and coyotes.

This is where volunteers, and Nanticoke employees, come in. They can rescue the fledglings and keep their survival rates up.

The birds at Nanticoke - whose coal-fired units are being shut down gradually while the government looks into switching the plant to combination of natural gas and biomass - were not placed there. They arrived on their own, another sign the bird is making a comeback.

The peregrines probably chose the generating station because it is close to their favourite food source, waterfowl, and because that area was their natural habitat decades ago, Nash said.

"Having peregrines come to OPG is exciting to us," he said.

OPG has embraced the project.

"We want to take care to make sure we don't disturb them," said OPG spokesperson Bob Osborne. "It's something different and unusual and you get the chance to see it up close."

Employees are definitely on board as well, said Nash.

"They're taking personal stewardship with the birds," he said.

"They couldn't have ended up with better foster parents."

(Jacob Clemens, right, of Ontario Power Generation (OPG) Ñ Nanticoke Generating Station, and Stephanie Chan, Ministry of Natural Resources, hold one of the three peregrine falcons)