Close to Home: A poisonous plan to protect birds

We are blessed to have our coast and our fishing industry here protected by a national marine sanctuary, three state marine protected areas and even a United Nations international biosphere reserve, making our world-class waters one of the most carefully managed ocean habitats on the planet.

Amid these science-based protections, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to rush through a misguided proposal to use helicopters to spread a deadly anticoagulant poison that is currently under a moratorium precluding its use within California because it slowly kills every living thing except insects. The proposal’s stated objective is to try to kill mice unwittingly introduced on the Farallones in the mid-1800s by Russian seal hunters.

These misplaced mice attract about eight small burrowing owls from Marin County each fall. The owls come to eat the mice and sometimes stay to snack on a small seabird called the ashy storm petrel. The Fish and Wildlife Service claims that the only way they can stop these owls from coming to the island would be to use toxic chemicals to kill each and every mouse, but the same poison has failed to fully eradicate mice 38% of the time when tried elsewhere.

The White House does not yet even have a confirmed director of the Fish and Wildlife Service in place in Washington. Meanwhile, each California Coastal Commissioner is sworn to protect environmentally sensitive habitat like the Farallones.

At a virtual hearing on Thursday, the Coastal Commission will vote on whether it should allow the dumping of 1.5 tons of a deadly cereal bait laced with a powerful poison on the Farallon Islands. You can preregister to speak by phone or computer by visiting http://tinyurl.com/islandspeaker and clicking on Item 11b.

When the same project was attempted at Wake Island in the mid-Pacific, Air Force scientists recommended a 942-day fishing ban, and after failing to kill all of the targeted rats, the poison was discovered to still be in fish three years after its use.

This situation presents an unnecessary confrontation between federal agencies, particularly the Interior Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the protective mandate of the Coastal Commission and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who just this year signed legislation establishing a state moratorium precluding the use of this same chemical. And all of these levels of government are presently touting “nature-based solutions” to meet environmental challenges.

It’s important to remember that all current ocean protections, as well as the Coastal Commission itself, are products of ordinary citizens who care about the coast stepping forward and leading elected officials. That’s exactly what is needed again right now.

There are safer ways to deal with a few small burrowing owls and some ordinary house mice that have been there for at least a hundred years. Globally, research laboratories throughout the rodenticide industry have come up with successful fertility control baits and have managed to get these safer baits into wide use for rats. Those labs are now in the process of reformulating these same contraceptive products to target mice. The eight burrowing owls who visit the Farallones in the fall could be humanely trapped with mist nets and safely relocated to available habitat in the South Bay or elsewhere.

Richard Charter is a senior fellow at the Ocean Foundation. He lives in Bodega Bay.

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