French Region Saves Iconic White Storks From Brink

In the 1970s and '80s, vast numbers of them died on the annual migration to Africa. They smashed into power lines. African droughts depleted their winter food supplies. And in warring African nations, starving residents ate them. By the early '80s, 10 percent of the migratory storks were returning to Alsace each spring.

In 1983, France launched its stork reintroduction program, keeping young storks in enormous enclosed aviaries for at least three years to rid them of the instinct to migrate. They also persuaded the birds to linger by offering them a diet of fluffy, yellow, day-old chicks. In the wild, the birds eat field mice, snakes, frogs and smaller birds such as sparrows.

Today, about half of the Alsatian white stork population migrates. Only about half of those make it to the traditional wintering grounds in Africa. The rest stop in Spain, where open dumpsters provide easy meals.

"They realized it was easier to stay in Spain," Wey said. "And the weather was nice."

Protection measures were also taken. The national electric company developed special screens to keep the birds from nesting on poles where they could be electrocuted. Schoolchildren helped shore up deteriorating nests between breeding seasons. And residents were strictly forbidden to remove nests from their chimneys and rooftops.

"Stork correspondents" are appointed in every town in the region, tasked with reporting the movements of their local birds, the conditions of their nests, and problems between the birds and the local populace.

Wey makes the rounds of the entire region.

This is his busy season, when he bands 4- or 5-week-old birds with details about their birth and parentage. On a single day last week, he banded 34 young storks. The birds can live more than 30 years.

Wey's uniform includes a faded green apron to protect his khaki shirts and pants from the splatters of poop from scared young storks and a black beret for covering the birds' heads to keep them calm. His tools are a bamboo cherry picker and a pair of pliers for tightening the bands on the birds' upper legs.

He gets to the nests any way he can. On one stop, he clambered up a century-old, wooden fireman's ladder.

But he reaches many nests with the help of the electric company, which donates the time and equipment of its line repair teams. On his rounds last week, he climbed into a repair truck's mechanical bucket and ascended 20 feet to the edge of a huge mass of branches and twigs splattered with stork droppings and regurgitated meals.

The anxious mother stork flew to a nearby treetop and sounded the alarm system of the stork community: Within seconds, a loud clacking of beaks echoed from nest to nest, sounding like an army of castanet players.

The young birds did not try to attack or snap at Wey. They did as their mother had taught: They lay on the bottom of the nest and played dead. The only sign of life was the rapid blinking of their terrified brown eyes.

Wey, who possesses a seemingly endless store of stork lore and facts, was stunned to find five young storks in one nest -- "the highest number I've seen in a single nest in 25 years," he said.

He has a stork nest on the roof of his own house and said he's certain his stork couple, which has returned to the same nest for several years, recognizes the sound of his car when he returns home from work each day.

Wey fears that local residents could become complacent about stork preservation, given the presence of so many of the huge birds in dozens of Alsatian villages.

"Some people think because the stork is no longer endangered, we don't have to be so careful," he said. "But we hope it will convince people that if it worked for storks, it will work for other species."