Calif. rescue group to release recovering brown pelicans to make room for more ailing birds

Recovering pelicans to be released in Calif.

LOS ANGELES — California brown pelicans have recently been dying in large numbers for reasons wildlife officials don’t yet fully understand.

Organizations like the International Bird Rescue Research Center are maxed out, with no more room and little money left to help, spokesman Paul Kelway said.

There are usually about 400 pelicans among the more than 2,000 birds the San Pedro center takes in every year, but it has received 300 pelicans in the last three weeks. About a third of those have died, leaving the center with 200 recovering birds.

“Many of them were severely emaciated and hypothermic, and we couldn’t get to them in time,” Kelway said.

The center will release as many birds as possible Wednesday afternoon to make room for new pelicans.

The Coast Guard reported a group of sick birds in the Los Angeles Harbor on Tuesday. Rescue workers found around 30 dead birds and rounded up 30 more that were sick and wet.

Biologists point to several factors.

“This is an El Nino year. The weather is topsy turvy. Storms are forcing the fish deeper into the ocean, or the fish are in different places than they normally would be. The pelicans are not finding food and they are starving,” Kelway explained.

“Something is also contaminating their feathers and stopping them from being weatherproof,” he said. “The storms have been the final nail in the coffin.”

Some parts of Los Angeles County have received close to 12 inches of rain in the last few weeks. The birds, already weak from lack of food, have gotten soaked, and in the ocean they’ve found themselves bathed in a murky runoff goo that has coated their already faltering feathers with a layer of grease.

When there is no food in the water, the birds will look on land, Kelway said, and they’re ailing in very public places — on piers, at restaurants, hotels, harbors and beaches.

“People are upset,” he said. “They expect us to rescue these birds.”

About 1,000 California brown pelicans stayed in Oregon this year instead of migrating south to breeding grounds.

It could be a natural pelican die-off, Kelway said, but biologists don’t know yet.

The brown pelican nearly became extinct in the early 1970s because of the pesticide DDT — the birds ate tainted fish and laid such thin-shelled eggs that they broke during incubation. But when DDT was banned in 1972, the birds bounced back, and today the brown pelican is prevalent along the coasts of Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, California, Washington and Oregon.

The brown pelican was taken off the federal endangered species list in November, and its global population, including the Caribbean and Latin America, is estimated at 650,000.

On the Net:

International Bird Rescue Research Center: www.ibrrc.org