By Miriam L. Austin
Water troughs kill innumerable birds and other wildlife on public lands
I breathe in sharply. The bird in the trough is large this time. The feathers are scarcely wet – the head lying face down in gentle repose – yet somehow as if at any moment it might spring awake and gracefully lift into the sky on those powerful wings tucked so neatly against the sides of the body.
No! I cry out. But there is no response. No head lifts, no eyes plead for assistance. I realize suddenly that life and hope have only been recently abandoned by this still form, and my imagination begins to race. If only – if only I had made it here just an hour before, perhaps even just minutes ago, before that last fateful breath was taken. If only I could have plucked this beautiful falcon from the alluring but deadly water and sent it winging back across the night sky, back to Echo Crater where the prairie falcons nest and scream from the rocky walls.
But this bird will never fly again. Nor will the hundreds and likely thousands of other birds that have drowned this summer alone in water developments on public and private rangelands in Idaho. The prairie falcon was only one of three found drowned this summer in Laidlaw Park, Idaho. The three falcons, along with approximately two dozen other birds, died recently in troughs and tanks in the Craters of the Moon National Monument Expansion, where a warning was issued upon establishment by Presidential Proclamation “not to appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature of this monument.” (more…)
