Forty years pass, but the state's pelican is back

[Donna]

In all of Louisiana's colorful conservation history, no bird has fallen faster or farther than the brown pelican, our long-esteemed state symbol.

In the 1950s, my parents took me from land-bound Lincoln Parish to Barataria Bay on the south Louisiana coast where we watched, in awe, our brown pelicans fly and fish. I never forgot it.

It was an awesome sight for me. The big brown and gray bird with the long bill and 8-foot wingspan looked ungainly and awkward to my young eyes — almost comical.

But then I saw the brown pelican perform a half-roll before making a gravity-defying dive that actually took it under water in a huge splash.

The pelican then scooped up its prey, a fish, in its great pouch — along with a lot of water, which it squeezed out of the corners of its mouth. The fish was finally swallowed in a single awkward gulp.

This was a spectacular sight for me to see in 1956. But by 1969 — only a brief interval — the tens of thousands of brown pelicans were entirely gone from coastal Louisiana — extirpated, extinct.

As it turned out, the brown pelican was the victim of the pesticide DDT, which fatally weakened the birds' eggshells and killed their young — same as with the bald eagles in Louisiana.

DDT was banned in 1971, while Louisiana's fish and wildlife agency re-introduced brown pelicans from Florida into Louisiana's coastal areas with eventual success. It was a long and arduous process.

Now, flash-forward 40 years from 1969 when the brown pelican suddenly disappeared from Louisiana to November of 2009 when the U.S. Department of Interior announced that the state bird had been taken off the endangered species list.

The pelican, which has returned to Florida, the Gulf and Pacific coasts in its tens of thousands, was first put on the endangered species list in 1970. DDT was banned in 1972.

"Today we can say the brown pelican is back," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a conference call with reporters, including the Associated Press.

"Once again, we see healthy flocks of these graceful birds flying over our shores. The brown pelican is endangered no longer," Salazar said.

It seemed that in the blink of an eye, Louisiana lost its great state symbol. Now, four decades after its demise, the Louisiana brown pelican is back, a wildlife legacy that generations of our children will enjoy.

[Dot_Forrester]

 

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