Feathers fly in legislature over hawk habitats
Concern after artificial nests removed
In 1975, zoology graduate student Josef Schmutz and colleagues made a deal for several truckloads of old wooden poles from the Alberta Government Telephones Commission. The poles provided the elevation he needed to build dozens of artificial nesting platforms for ferruginous hawks just south of Hanna.
Almost every year since, Schmutz — now a conservation biologist and adjunct professor at the University of Saskatchewan — has visited Alberta ranching country to check on the threatened hawks that are celebrated by farmers for their ability to hunt gophers.
In June, he was surprised to find more than a dozen empty nesting platforms torn from the tops of the remaining poles.
“I didn’t know any of this was happening,” Schmutz said Tuesday.
In the past two decades, Alberta’s ferruginous hawk population has dropped and the province estimates there are fewer than 700 pairs left.
At first, the biologist thought the nest platforms had collapsed after decades of use, but soon realized ATCO Electric had taken down the platforms in February, before nesting season began. It was a temporary measure to prepare for the construction of Older ferruginous hawk nestlings in an artificial nest similar to the ones removed by ATCO Electric to facilitate the construction of its Hanna power line. its Hanna power line project in the southeastern portion of the province.
To avoid doing construction near the platforms during nesting season, ATCO Electric said they received government permission to tear down 13 artificial nest platforms with the expectation they would be rebuilt after the transmission project was complete.
However, Alberta Environment spokesman Andy Weiler said late Tuesday that the government gave approval only to remove the nesting material
I didn’t know any of this was happening CONSERVATION BIOLOGIST JOSEF SCHMUTZ
from the platforms, not the platforms themselves.
Replacement nesting platforms will be installed beginning next week, said Paul Goguen, ATCO Electric’s senior vice-president in charge of the transmission project. The company is also replacing four older nest structures and will be reinforcing the new platforms with galvanized steel.
“We certainly felt that it is very positive. I think we’re going to end up with a better design down the road,” Goguen said.
Even with a solution on the horizon, it appears some were caught off guard.
Schmutz says he believes there was a simple miscommunication, but he still wrote a letter to the Alberta government and ATCO in July saying the move “compromises the recovery objectives” for the hawk — birds already facing a shrinking habitat and tough competition from Canada geese for nesting sites.
“It looks like they moved onto other nests, but this year stuck out as one where the birds were less successful than they have been traditionally,” he said. “Whether we can attribute that exactly to what happened, this is kind of difficult. We can’t ask the birds, but logic would have it.”
On Tuesday, DrumhellerStettler Wildrose MLA Rick Strankman raised the issue in the legislature, asking “when will the minister take the appropriate action to ensure that these threatened and endangered species will not suffer from this again?”
Environment Minister Diana McQueen said her department, ATCO Electric and the Special Area Board are working together to have the nest platforms back up before the end of the year.
“The platforms were removed ... before the nesting season began to prevent the disruption of the birds during construction, and are scheduled to be re-erected this fall,” she said.
Schmutz said the bigger problem is governments are putting less resources into local fish and wildlife offices. He said there are no biologists nearby to monitor threatened species such at the ferruginous hawks on a regular basis, even as development and resource extraction ramps up in the province.