A new home, new hope for scrub jay

[Donna]

PALM BAY — Cars, cats and ruined habitats drove the scrub jay to the brink, then to the clink in this city.

The few remaining jays face short stints behind bars, until zoo curators release them to new hopping grounds, away from a certain death sentence. Only about 15 scrub jay families remain in the city, down from 54 in the 1990s.

And under a blanket federal permit, they're all assumed doomed.

But rather than leave the few dozen stragglers to die, the Brevard Zoo is capturing and relocating the threatened species to better digs.

"They're already considered dead," said Michelle Smurl, the zoo's director of animal programs. "They have a hard time moving on."

Zoo staff relocated 12 scrub jays last week from two Palm Bay sites and along the Pineda Extension to the Buck Lake Conservation Area in Mims. The 60-mile trip is way farther than these close-knit, finicky birds would fly themselves.

The challenge to save Brevard County's and Florida's scrub jays has been on environmentalists' agenda for decades. The birds' inability to seek out their own new habitat and builders' forays into undeveloped lands during high-growth times helped turn the jay into a flash point -- a symbol of the clash between the two fronts.

For years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considered the bird at imminent risk. But two years ago, the service upgraded the species from facing a "high degree of threat" to having a "high recovery potential." The agency said new research showed scrub jays could bounce back as long as habitat was properly managed with fire.

Now, federal biologists assure the bird won't go extinct in the "foreseeable future." But if jays continue to decline, they say relocation could become one viable way for doomed birds to escape the "burbs."

"We don't see this as being a way for developers to go in and convert land for development," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Chuck Underwood. "It's going to take us a while to see if these birds establish a territory and whether they reproduce in that territory."

[Judi]

I have 2 pair of Western scrub jays that visit my feeders regularly.  They're kind of like "bulls in a china shop" when they swoop in and they sometimes can't figure out why all the LBB's get startled when they do that.  But they're fun to watch.  I hope these Eastern cousins do okay...