Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-Md.) slipped a rider into the 3,600-page omnibus spending bill that guts the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. For decades this act protected migratory birds regardless of their origin, but the rider would allow government officials to kill those birds that they consider inconvenient.
Mr. Gilchrest's particular target is the mute swan, one of 113 "nonnative" species that lose protection under his bill. He blames the swans for the destruction of aquatic vegetation in the Chesapeake Bay. But according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the two leading threats to the bay are agricultural waste runoff (much of it from corporate poultry farms in Mr. Gilchrest's district) and sewage treatment plants. Mute swans probably wouldn't make a list of the top 50 threats. But the industrial chicken producers pull out all the lobbying stops to defeat any meaningful attempt to control agricultural waste, and no one wants to appropriate the money to upgrade sewage treatment capacity. It's easier to make scapegoats of the swans.
Federal law has always allowed the killing of birds, "native" or otherwise, in specific locations when they damage agriculture or the environment. But in 2003, when Maryland officials began killing mute swans in the Chesapeake Bay area, a federal court ordered them to stop because they could not demonstrate that the swans were harming the bay.
In an attempt to circumvent the ruling, Mr. Gilchrest's rider relieves wildlife agencies of the obligation to base their decisions on provable science and instead allows them to exterminate mute swans and other "nonnative" species.
The rider's ill-defined standard of "native" further will force the courts to sort out complicated historical arguments about which bird species were here first and which species deserve to live.
Congress should be encouraged to repeal this dangerous rider.
MICHAEL MARKARIAN
Executive Vice President, External Affairs
Humane Society of the United States
Washington
