Tyrone Walker
The Post and Courier
As shifting sands threaten traditional rookeries at Charleston’s Crab Bank, majestic brown pelicans search for new spots to nest.
Crab Bank keeps shrinking, even as more threatened shorebird nests crowd the remaining slivers of sand. Two years after noticing that the vital rookery was sliding into Charleston Harbor, the state is talking about fixes. But so far, it’s wait and see.
Keeping the bank intact could be crucial to a comeback of the brown pelican, whose soaring dives and pterodactyl beak make it a darling of beachgoers and an emblem of the Lowcountry. The birds, whose nest numbers have been declining here, are on the verge of a modest comeback because of two recent conservation moves, wildlife biologists say.
Renourishing the bank could be done as part of the ongoing shipping channel dredging but could cost from a few hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 million, Bob Perry, state Department of Natural Resources special projects manager, told the department board earlier this year. Bulkheading the island could make it a habitat for predators that feed on the eggs.
“Anything we do would be tenuous,” given the island’s shifting sands, he said. The department will continue to monitor it.
“The island continues to erode. It’s going to disappear entirely if we don’t renourish,” said Chris Crolley of Coastal Expeditions in Mount Pleasant, who regularly runs kayak trips out around the island. Crolley didn’t attend the meeting. “They can wait and see it disappear.”
That’s where it stands for the island that holds pelican, skimmer, royal tern, oystercatcher, snowy egret and least tern nests in the summer, according to state counts. The bank, a slit of sand at the mouth of Shem Creek, has lost about half its nesting grounds in the past three or four years.
It’s one of five protected shorebird rookeries along the state’s coast and is one of the three most vulnerable, where the number of the birds’ nests has declined over the years, partly because of humans and dogs trampling across the isolated nesting banks.
Those rookeries — Crab Bank, Bird Key Stono and Deveaux Bank — were made off-limits to boaters in 2006, after wildlife officers found an alarming drop in nest numbers and a profusion of foot and paw prints. Counts last summer suggested the birds are returning to nest.
Meanwhile, a 5-acre spoils island was deposited by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the mouth of the Savannah River in 2005 and quickly became the shorebirds’ first new refuge in years. In 2006, 76 pairs of pelicans nested there. In 2007, 348 did.
“With more nesting habitat protected, and the chances for us to make new islands, I feel optimistic for the pelican in South Carolina,” said Felicia Sanders, DNR wildlife biologist.
“We really consider those (nesting) areas around here gold. They are the only places these species can go,” said Jennifer Koches of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Charleston.
Pelicans and the other birds nest on tiny islands where eggs are safe from predators like raccoons. Each summer, Crab Bank becomes a wildlife spectacular, a winging melee of thousands of birds. It’s considered a pivotal mid-state link for nesting because the flocks tend to move from island to island, and any of the five islands can be wiped out by a tropical storm.
“It’s wonderful. You can be right out there in a kayak, look at the Holy City skyline bordered by the port, and here you are in this mini-Galapagos,” Crolley said.
Shot for feathers and as a nuisance, its eggs lost to DDT, the brown pelican was put on the federal Endangered Species list in 1970. By 1985, the species had recovered enough in the Southeast that it was removed from the list in the region. Then the population began to wane again.
The numbers of nests can vary by hundreds year to year, so it’s difficult to tell in the short term how well the birds are doing. But by the early 2000s, counts in South Carolina were only about one-third of 1989 reports.
After a low of 2,564 nests in 2003, the birds seem to be holding their own at about 3,000 nests per year. In 2006, the nest count was 3,878, the most since 1997. But overall, in South Carolina and the rest of the Southeast coast, the pelicans are considered in decline, said Tom Murphy, Natural Resources wildlife biologist.
Source: The Post and Courier
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