Trumpeter Swans Need Your Help

Martha Jordan is a member of The Trumpeter Swan Society.

Over the past five winters more than 1,400 trumpeter swans have died from lead poisoning after inadvertently swallowing lead shot while feeding in Whatcom County, Washington, and the adjacent Sumas Prairie area in British Columbia, Canada. Swan mortalities from lead poisoning have increased in this area in recent years, despite a longstanding ban on the use of lead shot for waterfowl hunting in the United States and Canada. Lead shot is still legal for upland birds, target practice and dog training in most areas.

Over 400 dead swans were picked up last winter. The mortality has grown to such a magnitude that it is threatening the recovery of the Pacific Coast population, the continent’s largest population of trumpeter swans. An international work group was formed in 2001 to investigate the sources of lead shot and stop the swan mortalities. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Canadian Wildlife Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service jointly coordinate the initiative. There are an additional 12 stakeholders from various government and non-government agencies involved in the process, including The Trumpeter Swan Society, North Cascades Audubon Society and the Washington Waterfowl Association’s Whatcom County Chapter.

The wildlife agencies are using a systematic, science-based approach to identify sources of lead shot, including capturing swans and tracking their movements. Since 2001, 147 swans have been fitted with radio transmitters. Biologists track and log the locations of the birds each day and night to locate forage areas and roost sites. Forage areas that have been used by birds that succumbed to poisoning are then examined for lead contamination. During the 2003-04 winter, 20 of the radio tagged birds died—most of the mortalities are suspected or confirmed as lead poisoning.

How can you help? Adopt a swan! While the wildlife agencies on both sides of the border are working on the problem, they cannot do it all. Funding is a major problem. The Trumpeter Swan Society is raising funds by asking everyone to sponsor a swan at some level. All of the funds will go toward the project for such things as spotting scopes for volunteers who monitor the swans movements during the winter, to help pay for radio transmitters and data collection, and to fund the effort to necropsy all lead poisoned swans to glean clues from the characteristics of the ingested lead and other digestive tract contents and to also help pay volunteer mileage expenses.

Trumpeter swans are captured by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife with special nets as the swans feed on baited fields. The swans are fitted with a red plastic neckband that has a unique number/letter code in white and carries a VHF radio or satellite transmitter. They also get a coded aluminum leg band. The radio signals from these marked birds allows biologists to track their location in the fields or wetlands by day and at the roost sites at night. This work is critical to finding where the birds are getting the lead shot that is killing them.

Volunteers also track the swans looking for banded birds and reading the codes. Look for your adopted swan in Bellingham/Whatcom County area. The red collars are easy to locate in the flocks and you can read the letter/number code with a spotting scope.

For more information on this issue or to Adopt a Swan please contact us at: swaninfo@swansociety.org or call (425) 787-0258.

Visit our Web site at: http://www.swansociety.org. §