Swan Song Or Environmental Swindle?

Living in Northwest Washington State in the United States, I get an annual chance to observe a quintessential example of the pop environmental movement’s approach to manipulating public perceptions of an environmental issue.

The opportunity comes because three of the state’s northwestern counties as well as portions of the lower British Columbia mainland near Vancouver provide the wintering grounds for several thousand Trumpeter Swans; North America’s largest waterfowl.  Each year, in my area of Washington, the birds can be seen stalking through the fields of the area, gobbling up goodies they find in the mud.

 Swans glean a Whatcom County seed potato field 

Grounds for the opportunity to create hysteria in the public mind are provided by the fact that each year 250 or so of the birds die while visiting the southern climes north of Seattle and south of Vancouver, B.C..

Trumpeters are pretty birds and we would all miss them were they to disappear, as they nearly did in the 1940s when only 69 birds were counted south of the Canada/U.S. border.  Today, nearly 4,000 come down to visit northwest Washington alone each year and the number grows.  A website run under the auspices of Washington State University’s Island County Extension office describes the birds, their annual migration and, in angst ridden verbiage, the threat to the swans lead pellets once fired from hunter’s shotguns represents.

First, the plight of the swans in the ‘40s is noted as well as the recovery, “Hunted to near extinction, by 1940 there were only 69 swans south of the US-Canada border, with a small population discovered in Alaska.  Over the past half-century, through many conservation efforts these splendid swans are slowly recovering and re-occupying areas they have not been found in for decades.  Today, the Alaska population is approximately 13,000 swans.”

The recovery of the swans over the years, both in northwest Washington and in other areas of the nation is impressive, a recovery everyone should be proud of; but then we get to the overstatement necessary to garner continuing financial and other support for the various activist groups, bureaucracies and others making a living off the swans.

Notice how large Trumpeter Swans are compared to the Canada Geese in the background, large birds in their own right

A Swan Lead Poisoning Information Sheet is cited to demonstrate that “Since 1999, Trumpeter and Tundra Swans wintering in northwestern Washington and southwestern British Columbia have experienced high rates of mortality. Most of the mortalities have been due to the ingestion of lead shot pellets.”

The analysis contained in the document claims, in fact, that 77% of swan deaths each year are “lead related.”

So now we get to the crux of the issue.  We have a population of good looking wild animals once driven into near extinction and, according to the material put forward each year by means of websites like the Washington State University Extension Service, the Trumpeter Swan Society and others is now threatened by a man made problem, lead shot in the soil the animals pick through as they find food through the winter season: a perfect situation demanding fund raising efforts, grants, involvement by state and federal bureaucracies and an annual public information campaign regarding the implied crisis.

Here’s the problem.  Trumpeter swans can live to the ripe old age of 20 – 30 years.  Assume for purposes of calculation a 25 year lifespan on average.  That would mean that under any circumstance, if every bird lived to be 20 – 30 years old, about 4% of the animals would have to die every year of plain old age.

But, of course, in the world of wild animals, or tame ones for that matter, predation, disease and other factors lead to premature death.

Based on the studies cited it is difficult to tell how many of the birds out of which populations actually die each year as the figures put forward mix populations but, based on the Washington State website the number of birds dying each year would not seem to be outlandishly outside the number of deaths to be expected as the result of simple old age and the stresses of having to live through the sometimes harsh conditions seen in even northwest Washington winters.

So, if the annual number of swan deaths is within an expected range when old age and natural factors are considered, how can 77% of the deaths be lead pellet related, especially since hunting with lead pellet loaded shells has been banned in most of the swan’s range for more than 20 years?

An associated question revolves around the fact that between 1940 and 1990 trumpeter swans made an extraordinary comeback in the lower 48 states in terms of winter populations.  Those were years when nearly all shotgun shells used by hunters contained lead shot.  If lead shot is threatening the swan population then how did the swans make such a comeback during those years?

The answer is found in the very study used by swan advocates to demonstrate a threat.  According to the Swan Lead Poisoning Information Sheet cited to incite concern, “The Pacific Trumpeter Swan population as a whole is not at risk because of the lead shot mortalities. Although an average of 285 swans have died annually in the Sumas-Whatcom County area since 1999, both the local winter population and the larger Pacific Coast Trumpeter Swan breeding population have continued to increase.”

Depressing news for those who need a crisis to raise money, justify jobs and create concern and so, news to be mostly ignored.  After all, jobs, fund raising and grants are more important to the pop environmental industry than stupid old facts are.