Experts worry that this bounty of water could ultimately poison tens of thousands of birds as temperatures rise and newly formed lakes and ponds begin to evaporate. The concern: botulism.
Though fears of catastrophic flooding in the Tulare Lake Basin have largely diminished, state officials say we’re “not out of the woods” yet.That grim prognosis has added to the emotional whiplash bird lovers and wildlife officials have experienced in recent years as extreme climate variability has gripped the West Coast, alternately parching and starving waterfowl and providing them with a surfeit of habitat.
It’s an insidious and gruesome death for the poisoned birds, who become unable to move their muscles as the bacteria bind to nerve endings, impeding their ability to walk or fly. Eventually, they are unable to hold up even their heads — often drowning in the dank puddles they stopped at to quench their thirst.
Cleanup is crucial, Carlson said, because botulism can be further spread by the fly maggots that infest dead birds. “Live birds see those maggots and say ‘that’s a good meal’ and they start eating those maggots. Those maggots have botulism in them.” As recently as December, wildlife biologists and birders were fretting about the drought’s impact on the well-being of birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway.
He said they’ve also seen endangered tricolored blackbirds, which appeared to be tracking the invertebrates feeding in flooded wetlands, as well as “a bunch of broods of ducks swimming around — always cute and fluffy. ... The birds are definitely utilizing the flooded landscape on the refuge.”
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