This Week in Green – Nov. 12, 2010
Beak deformities may indicate larger environmental problem
When wild animals are affected by epidemics, it’s often the first sign of a larger and much more serious environmental problem. And what we’re seeing from some wild birds in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska bodes ill.
Several species of wild birds there are growing deformed beaks — some curved, crossed or elongated, all of which affect the birds’ ability to eat and clean itself — and those deformities are growing at unprecedented rates.
While scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey have not identified what’s causing this avian keratin disorder among the black-capped Chickadees and the Northwestern Crows of Alaska and the Northwest, they are searching for changes in the environment as a root issue.
“The prevalence of these strange deformities is more than 10 times what is normally expected in a wild bird population,” said research biologist Colleen Handel with the USGS. “We have seen effects not only on the birds’ survival rates, but also on their ability to reproduce and raise young. We are particularly concerned because we have not yet been able to determine the cause, despite testing for the most likely culprits.”
Beak abnormalties are extremely rare in adult birds and epizootic deformities are often indicators of environmental breakdowns. Exposure to high levels of PCBs in the Great Lakes and birds in California being exposed to selenium in agricultural runoff are two examples in the past few decades where damage to the environment first manifested itself in deformities to birds.