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BIRDS GO BACK TO NATURE: Once Nearly Extinct, Peregrine Falcons Have Made a Comeback Thanks to Nesting Platforms Built By Humans. Now They're Getting Back to the Bluffs.

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 June 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Craig Borck, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Jun. 21--Bob Anderson hangs from a rope 30 feet below the top of Wisconsin's Maiden Rock bluff and 400 feet above Lake Pepin. A peregrine falcon screeches angrily as it swoops back and forth in the air behind him.

Perched in front of the falcon's aerie, Anderson hoists its two female chicks to the top of the bluff, where 25 volunteers and friends of the Canton, Minn.-based Raptor Resource Project have gathered on June 12 to watch Anderson band the birds and take blood samples for testing. In the group is Dan Berger, 74, who documented the last peregrine falcon pair to nest on Maiden Rock, in 1962.

Decimated by effects of the now-banned pesticide DDT on their reproduction, peregrine falcons virtually disappeared from the United States east of the Mississippi River in the 1960s.

Now peregrines are back, progeny of a captive breeding program that included man-made nesting platforms placed on the ledges of skyscrapers and tall structures. Platforms have been installed on the 33 South Sixth building (formerly the Multifoods Tower) in downtown Minneapolis and the smokestack of Xcel Energy's Alan S. King power plant on the St. Croix River in Bayport. Anderson played a role in those efforts.

It's a story that rivals the population resurgence of the bald eagle in the upper Midwest.

"Dr. Tom Cade at Cornell University suggested breeding captive birds and releasing their offspring in 1971, and it's a success story," Anderson said. "Dedicated people can make last-ditch efforts to save a species through captive breeding and release programs. We owe the return of the peregrine falcon to that man."

Anderson's work with raptors began as a teenager with his interest in falconry, the sport of hunting with birds of prey. That led to a job designing a raptor exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. His work with captive breeding and peregrine nesting platforms led to a position as raptor naturalist at Xcel Energy, working with falcons, osprey and owls.

Now every power plant from Grand Rapids, Minn., to Illinois has a falcon-nesting box. Anderson estimates 600 young falcons have fledged from the man-made nests in the Midwest since 1988.

"It's an odd marriage of industry and nature," Anderson said.

In the mid-1990s, Anderson's nonprofit Raptor Research Project began to introduce falcon chicks to rock aeries. The effort started by releasing birds raised in a chamber made to resemble the Bluffton Palisades on the Upper Iowa River and then from an artificial rock aerie at Effigy Mounds National Monument near McGregor, Iowa. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources coordinated another successful cliff release near Dubuque, Iowa.

By 2005, falcons nested at 12 Mississippi River bluff sites, including Maiden Rock, Castle Rock and three other sites in Wisconsin, as well as the Great Spirit bluff in Dresbach, Minn. And the cliff-raised falcons have begun luring those from the man-made platforms to mate and nest in these rock aeries along the Mississippi.

As he finished banding the two peregrine chicks on top of Maiden Rock, Anderson said, "This is a real celebration for all of us."

Craig Borck is a photographer at the Pioneer Press. He can be reached at cborck@pioneerpress.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)

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