Madison Peregrine Conference

MADISON PEREGRINE CONFERENCE Saturday, November 7, 2015, 8:15 am - 9:40 am, Plenary Panel Sponsored by: “Celebrating the Semicentennial of the Madison Peregrine Conference”

“During the years 1950 to 1965, a population crash of nesting Peregrine Falcons occurred in parts of Europe and North America on a scale that made it one of the most remarkable recent events in environmental biology.” — Professor Joseph Hickey

In August 1965, Professor Joseph J. Hickey Although today we take it for granted that of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, conservation and biology should be tightly linked, assembled nearly 60 biologists and other fifty years ago, the lines between activist and scientists from seven countries to compare scientist were drawn and tightly guarded. How did data and discuss reasons for the sudden participants in the Madison Conference negotiate disappearance of the Peregrine Falcon and these boundaries? How did they resolve to dissect other birds of prey from parts of the world. the cause of the Peregrine crash? We’ve invited five The Madison Conference is one of the distinguished biologists from the 1965 conference first moments in history where a group of to Sacramento to ask them such questions, and to scientists set an agenda toward resolving an honor their immense contributions toward rescuing urgent conservation problem, two decades a magnificent species from wide-ranging extirpation before conservation biology was founded as a if not complete extinction. scientific field. Professor Joseph Hickey, organizer of the Madison Peregrine Conference (University of Wisconsin)

Panelists Madison Peregrine Conference Panelist Bios Dan Anderson, Dan Berger, Steve Herman Grainger Hunt, Dan Anderson Clayton White Dan Anderson did his Master’s and PhD under Hickey’s supervision at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, from 1964 Moderator through 1970. He’s been at UC Davis since 1970, most recently Joel “Jeep” Pagel Professor Emeritus in the Department of Wildlife Fish and Conservation Biology since 2009. Although his research scope has Madison Conference Panel Organizers ranged from raptors through seabirds with a strong emphasis on ecotoxicology, Dan has contributed extensively to the knowledge Jeep Pagel & Allen Fish base of Brown Pelican ecology on the Pacific Coast.

Madison Panel Advisors Dan Berger Jimmie Parrish, Roland Clement, Robert Risebrough, Dan Dan Berger became interested in raptors while in his teens. After Anderson, Steve Herman, Hans Peeters meeting a local falconer, he learned the basics of trapping, which led to the founding of the Cedar Grove Ornithological Station Other Members of the Madison Peregrine with Helmut Mueller in 1950. In the early fifties, they began Conference searching the Mississippi River cliffs for Peregrines. That led to We regret that some of the living members of the 1965 Madison Joe Hickey, who, in turn, asked Dan to repeat Hickey’s Peregrine Peregrine Conference were not able to join us this week. In their Survey from the mid thirties. In 1964 during three months of absence we honor Sergej Postupalsky, Helmet Mueller, Richard surveying known sites, Charles Sindelar and Berger found not a Fyfe, Richard Banks, Charles Sindelar, Jean-François Terrasse, single bird. Michel Terrasse, Jim Enderson, David Hancock, and Tom Cade. Steve Herman Steve Herman’s doctorate in zoology is from the University of California, Davis. Now an Emeritus Member of the Faculty, he has taught at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington since 1971. His research and teaching interests include raptors, shorebirds, pesticide-wildlife relationships, and abusive livestock grazing. He has taught in wild and semi-wild landscapes in western North America and several Latin American countries.

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Grainger Hunt Quotes Grainger Hunt wrote his master’s thesis on Peregrines at Sul At the end of August 1963, a group of falcon folks were Ross University in 1966, and earned his doctorate from the summoned to the University of Wisconsin in Madison to talk to University of Texas in 1970 in evolutionary genetics. He studied each other about Peregrines. Joe Hickey drew up the guest list. My Golden Eagle ecology in central California from 1994-2001, and invitation was in his precise and graceful handwriting. Hickey’s conducted four long-term comprehensive studies of both eagle purpose was to know what was wrong with Peregrines. He had species in the West together spanning 20 years. He has researched been in touch with Derek Ratcliffe, an Englishman who had just Peregrine nesting ecology in Texas, Mexico, and the Channel learned of widespread eyries abandonment throughout England Islands. After retiring from UC Santa Cruz’s Predatory Bird and Scotland. Research Group, he joined The Peregrine Fund as Senior Scientist. About sixty people were guests at the Madison meeting. It was a Clayton White strange and unlikely mix. There were falconers and anti-falconers, Clayton White is an emeritus professor of zoology in the bird-watchers and gun hunters, professors and museum-people, Department of Integrative Biology and the Curator of Ornithology, and there were business folks and students. There were Canadians, Brigham Young University. In addition to his affiliation with Finns, Frenchmen, Englishmen, a Swiss, and a West German. various universities and government agencies, he was a former two- term director of The Peregrine Fund and has been on the board or — James Enderson a scientific advisor for five other organizations. He served a five- Peregrine Falcon, Stories of the Blue Meanie year term on the advisory panel of the Division of Polar Programs University of Texas Press, 2005 for the National Science Foundation. He was editor of the journal Raptor Research for ten years. But at the Peregrine Conference, egg breakage was mentioned as one of many factors that needed to be considered in evaluating Tom Cade (in absentia) worldwide Peregrine population declines. Derek Ratcliffe went Tom Cade earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at UCLA away from this conference with this on his mind and then had a between 1955 and 1957. He served as a professor of zoology at talk with an English egg-collector, D. Nedersole-Thomson, who Syracuse University, Cornell University, and Boise State University, suggested that Ratcliffe take a look at eggs in collections. That’s Idaho, retiring in 1993. Tom’s lifelong interest has been the birds when it was first known that the eggshells themselves were affected. of prey—falcons in particular. He is probably best known for Ratcliffe devised an eggshell “thickness index” because he couldn’t founding The Peregrine Fund in 1970. In addition to field studies directly measure it; and he reported his astounding results to carried out in Alaska, Africa, Central America, Mauritius, and Hickey even before he went to press. Ratcliffe and Hickey were the southwestern United States, for more than 50 years he has friends and were on the phone often. been involved in solving the problems of breeding large falcons in captivity, with the aim of helping to preserve certain rare or I was just a graduate student at the time, and Hickey literally endangered species. grabbed my hand one day and dragged me over to the UW Engineering Department where we talked to a technician. Several weeks later, our engineer had a perfect little device ready for us to take and use; and it could measure eggshell thickness through those tiny holes that our peculiar egg-collectors made. Just one more piece of beauty in the interdisciplinary exchange of academia.

— Dan Anderson Joe Hickey, the Scientist, Unpubl. Essay, 2005

The main discussion room was populated with perhaps ten tables, each sitting about six people. I was at one of those, and Roger Tory was nearby. Frustrated by the foot dragging that preceded the pesticide discussion, Peterson stabbed his table with a yellow pencil. Nearby, Jim Rice, a falconer from Massachusetts shouted, “We’re tired of this governmental flim-flam; let’s talk about pesticides!”

— Steve Herman, in an email September 5, 2015 © George Eade

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My world view abruptly changed at the 1965 Peregrine Conference…. The scientific case against pesticides had dropped on the table like a stone, and all who returned home from the meeting knew they had things to do.

— Grainger Hunt Return of the Peregrine, The Peregrine Fund, 2003

The falconers of the world owe a great debt to Dr. Joe Hickey and all the participants in the Madison Peregrine Conference. Seldom in the history of conservation has any group assembled to consider the plight of an endangered, non-economic species before it has definitely reached the threshold of extinction. Seldom also has it happened that those persons assembled have demonstrated such an extraordinary interest in their subject.”

At the end of that conference [Madison] a group of attending Never before had so many people worked so well together to see a biologists and falconers got together to discuss what could be done species return. They were heroes all. Some were superheroes. to save the Peregrine from possible extinction in North America. Obviously, as Rachel Carson (1962) had already made clear in — James Enderson Silent Spring, elimination or reduction in the use of harmful Peregrine Falcon, Stories of the Blue Meanie pesticides was essential, but in 1965 such action seemed politically University of Texas Press, 2005 unrealistic in the face of strong agro-chemical interests touting the virtues synthetic pesticides. One of President Lyndon Johnson’s Unfortunately, I cannot join you [in Sacramento] despite the great scientific advisers at the Madison Conference said categorically interest for me. At this time I am still working in the Pyrenees, that restriction on the use of DDT would never happen. That where I am living, on Gyps fulvus and Gypaetus barbatus. Peregrines declaration became a challenge for many of us. are for the moment in good condition in France (and Europe). They have recovered all the good habitats and are colonizing the — Tom Cade & William Burnham towns. Their only serious enemy is the Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) Return of the Peregrine, The Peregrine Fund, 2003 which is also growing again.

— Jean-François Terrasse, in a letter, October 1, 2015

It is my experience that most people working with Peregrines develop some form of ethic or stewardship philosophy, if not about falcons themselves, then about the birds within some larger ecosystem context. A few even become rabidly passionate and elevate Peregrines to godhood status after the fashion of ancient animists in Greek or Egyptian mythology. Despite my attraction to Peregrines, I do not afford them that status and when asked why I study falcons, I can only answer helplessly, “Why not? I enjoy them!”

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