Innovation Anthology #143:
On March 20th 1992, oil scientist Peter Sherrington was out in the field when he looked up and caught sight of a golden eagle.
By the end of the day he’d counted over a hundred.
Seventeen years later, Peter Sherrington now spends over 200 days a year near Kananaskis observing thousands of golden eagles and other birds of prey. They are on migrations between the southern United States and Canada’s Arctic.
Peter’s dedication was recently recognized by the Emerald Foundation for Environmental Excellence.
PETER SHERRINGTON: The first three springs that we were out, we were counting 4200 to 4300 golden eagles. And ever since that time, the numbers have been decreasing quite significantly. We’ve been building mathematical models to try and explain this. And it looks as if the problem is with winter mortality. So we’re actually losing about over half of the young birds, that’s birds between one and five years old, and as many as 65 percent of the juvenile birds. And it has been six years now since we’ve counted a spring count of over 3000.
According to Peter Sherrington and his colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Eagle Research Foundation, urban sprawl and drought in the American southwest play a major role in the golden eagle’s decline.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY,
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Program Date: 2008-06-17