Quote:
Originally Posted by targa911S
I can’t say. However the raptor rescue center I took this bird to recognized him as poisoned and said it was common in agricultural areas.
My guy pulled through once they flushed his system.
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Rats. I would hope we had moved past this by now.
As a kid in the '60's and '70's here in Washington, it was pretty uncommon to see raptors of any kind. Once DDT and other insecticides that were killing them were banned, we started seeing them again. The Red Tailed Hawks were the first that were back in big numbers.
The Bald Eagles have since made a tremendous comeback as well. It is not uncommon to see them circling my neighborhood, in what has grown into a real "suburbia" in the 30 years I've lived here. Just this last winter, when all the leaves were off of their preferred nesting trees, my wife and I counted something like 17 nests in about a 30 mile drive up the Snoqualmie River valley. And those were just the ones we could see.
Granted, we don't have the problems with invasive rodent species here on the wet side of Washington that even our dry side, east of the Cascade range, suffers. I have, however, kind of (maybe mistakenly) taken our awesome raptor recovery as a sign that the poisons in use in our farmlands might not harm them anymore. I realize they must be different poisons for insects vs. rodents, so maybe my glee and optimism are just based on my observations in an area that only needs to use the former.
So, no, if the poisons used on rodents still kill raptors and other predators, that's a real no-go in my book.