Crater Lake Peregrines Story in NPS Courier
Park Science, Vol. 2, No. 2
Winter 1982, pp. 14
National Park Service
Dept. of the Interior
The story of the daring and successful transplant of two fledgling peregrine falcons at a Crater Lake NP nest site in 1981, complete with details about the removal of three eggs and subsequent hatching of two, (one embryo was already dead) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Predatory Bard Research Group laboratory, is came in the February issue of the NPS Courier Supt.
Jim Rouse and his resource management specialist, Mark Forbes, made the decision to carry out the operation after it was discovered that the only known nesting pair of peregrines in Oregon had failed to hatch any young in 1980.
The rescue effort, which eventually involved 14 persons, Including two pilots, plus one small private plane, one helicopter, snowmobiles, motorcycles, skis and mountaineering gear and expertise, was a joint operation of the NPS, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Predatory Bird Group at Santa Cruz.
Supt. Rouse has indicated his intention to continue this resource management operation this year if the pair returns to the site and produces eggs.
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| Female falcon, photographed at the USFWS Wildlife Research Center, Patuxent, Maryland, displays the aerodynamically perfect physique for the lightning mid-air captures. and the formidable talons that close into a “fist” for striking her prey on the wing. |
