From: Deon Long, The Miami Herald
Published May 19, 2009 10:30 AM
In Chile, the birds are dying, and no one knows why
Millions of dead sardines washed up on a beach in southern
Chile. The cause of their death is under investigation.
PATRICIO OLIVARES/FOR THE MIAMI HERALD
SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chilean scientists are
investigating three mysterious ecological disasters that have caused the
deaths of hundreds of penguins, millions of sardines and about 2,000 baby
flamingos in the past few months.
The events started to unfold in March, when the remains of about 1,200
penguins were found on a remote beach in southern Chile. Then came the
sardines -- tons of them -- dead and washed up on a nearby stretch of
coastline. The stench forced nearby schools to close, and the army was
called in to shovel piles of rotting fish off the sand.
Farther north, thousands of rare Andean flamingos abandoned their nests
on a salt lake in the Atacama Desert. The eggs failed to hatch and, over a
period of three months, all 2,000 chicks died. The extent of the damage was
discovered in April, during an inspection.
No one knows for sure what caused these three apparently unrelated
ecological tragedies, although there are many theories. Global warming has
been blamed, as have overfishing, pollution and bacterial disease. In the
north, ecologists have accused mining companies of fatally altering the
flamingos' habitat by draining the area of subterranean water.
Whatever the explanations, the events have caused unease. A suspicion that
mankind is to blame has created the feeling that maybe Chile should be doing
more to protect its spectacularly rich wildlife.
''Chile has very primitive legislation governing the management of its
fisheries,'' said Alex Muñoz, executive director of Oceana, an international
marine conservation group with offices in Santiago. ``Our marine resources
are facing big problems such as overfishing, and the destruction of
vulnerable marine ecosystems by industrial trawling.
``We are still waiting for an official report from the government, but we
should consider the lack of sound management of fisheries if we want to work
out what caused the death of the penguins and the sardines.''
Muñoz said the penguins might have starved to death due to depletion of fish
stocks. While a preliminary report from a local university supports this
theory, another suggests they were killed by a bacterial infection. It's
unclear whether the deaths were related to those of the sardines just days
later.
NO EVIDENCE YET
The universities are due to publish their findings soon but a broader
government investigation is not likely to report for several more weeks or
even months.
''A lot of people are giving their opinions, but no one has much supporting
evidence,'' said Julio Lamilla of the Zoology Institute at the Austral
University in southern Chile. He said Chile should be doing more to police
its extraordinarily long coastline and protect its marine species.
''Instead of simply reacting to environmental emergencies, we should be
trying to prevent them,'' he said. ``We need to monitor the coastline more
closely, and we need to change the behavior of our fishermen.''
Fishing authorities have said a sudden rise in water temperature might have
killed the sardines, but local fishermen say that is impossible.
''If that's the case, why is it only sardines that have died and why only
here?'' asked Jorge Pereira, an advisor to local fishermans' groups.
He suspects that trawlermen hauled a huge quantity of sardines from the
ocean but could only carry a fraction of them back to shore and therefore
dumped the rest -- dead or dying -- back into the sea.
The case of the unhatched chicks is perhaps the most disturbing of the three
events. Of the six species of flamingo in the world, the Andean is the
rarest. There are just 40,000 of them, and about half are in Chile, where
they nest on the barren salt flats of the Atacama desert.
They share this harsh habitat with some of the world's biggest mining
companies, which are scouring the desert for its copper. Some ecologists say
mining is destroying the area's fragile ecosystem and threatening its
wildlife.
But a more likely explanation for the death of the chicks is that, even by
the standards of the Atacama, the summer that has just ended here in the
southern hemisphere was unusually dry and hot. That has caused the lakes to
shrink, becoming more saline than usual.
Eduardo Rodríguez, the regional head of the government's environmental
protection agency CONAF, said that might have killed the algae the flamingos
feed on, forcing the birds to abandon their eggs and migrate in search of
food. The micro-algae contain carotene, a brightly colored pigment that
gives flamingos their distinctive pink plumage. Other species of flamingo,
like those in the United States, eat shrimp, which are also rich in
carotene.
GLOBAL WARMING
CONAF is due to publish its report on the incident by mid-June, but the
suspicion is that global warming has caused the dry weather, forcing the
flamingos to flee to higher, cooler and damper nesting grounds. That theory
was supported by an unprecedented discovery in the northern Chilean Andes
this summer -- a flamingo nest at more than 13,000 feet above sea level.
Usually, the birds nest at about 6,500 feet and seldom settle in the very
highest mountains.
''This is the first time we've seen anything like that,'' said Rodríguez,
who fears this could be the start of a pattern.
''In the next 10 years, we were hoping for the birth of around 20,000 chicks
to replenish the population,'' he said. ``But if the breeding season is a
failure again next year, and if we don't have chicks in the third, fourth or
fifth years, then I think we'll have to sound the alarm bells.''
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