Research

In the late 1940s, Peregrine Falcon and other raptor populations started declining. By the early 1960s, it was clear that raptor populations—including Peregrine Falcon, Bald Eagle, and Osprey—were in free fall, and those species were headed for extinction. In the late 1960s, the culprit was conclusively identified as the pesticide DDT. In 1972, DDT was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency’s first administrator, the principled William Ruckelshaus.

Long-term nesting population studies have documented the recovery of many species from DDT. For example, Peregrine Falcons were extirpated from the San Juan Islands in Washington. In 1980, after a decades-long study, the Falcon Research Group located the first post-DDT nest in the San Juans and tracked the recovery of the Peregrine population, which peaked at 20 nests in 2002. This dedicated work established a baseline dataset against which to measure future change.

Population trends in raptors, as mid- and upper-level predators, are indicators of the health of ecosystems. In the face of future potential environmental threats and catastrophes, long-term population studies will help to detect problems earlier thanks to the hard lessons learned from the DDT era.

Urban Raptor Conservancy encompasses five projects to document and monitor the prevalence of raptors in the Seattle region. Three of these projects are long-term monitoring studies:

• Seattle Peregrine Project (1994-present)
• Seattle Cooper’s Hawk Project (2004-present)
• Seattle Merlin Project, directed by Kim McCormick and Ben Vang-Johnson (2008-present)

URC launched two new studies in 2018, in collaboration with PAWS Wildlife Center:

• Rodenticides in Raptors tests for the prevalence of anticoagulant rodenticides in western Washington raptors.
• Banding Rehabilitated Raptors does just that: We band rehabilitated raptors at PAWS to learn how they fare upon release.

For the monitoring projects, color-ID bands are used to track individual birds.