Toxin Kills Endangered Birds

  • A poisoned seagull on a Lake Erie Beach. Type-E botulism is spreading up the food chain and killing birds on the endangered species list. (Photo by Lester Graham)

A toxin that has killed tens of thousands of shorebirds throughout
the Great Lakes is back. Type-E botulism is spread up the food
chain by invasive species. And as Bob Allen reports, the toxin
recently killed four birds on the endangered species list:

Transcript

A toxin that has killed tens of thousands of shorebirds throughout
the Great Lakes is back. Type E botulism is spread up the food
chain by invasive species. And as Bob Allen reports, the toxin
recently killed four birds on the endangered species list:


There are just 60 pairs of piping plovers known in the Great
Lakes. Many of them breed along the shores of Lake Michigan.


Wildlife officials protect nesting plovers by putting up fences to
keep predators away, but they can’t keep the tiny shorebirds from
eating insects as they skitter up and down the beach. The insects
can pass on Type E botulism to the endangered birds.


Biologist Ken Hyde says the toxin gets into the food chain
through fish – primarily round gobies – that feed on algae and the
invasive zebra and quagga mussels.


“Yeah, we’ve got some pretty good evidence that it’s this cycle of
the algae and then the mussels and the gobies feeding on them
and then primarily gobies coming to the surface that our native
water birds are feeding on.”


Wildlife officials expect to see a lot more dead shorebirds as
the summer progresses.


Type E botulism is not a threat to humans.


For the Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

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