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US takes brown pelican off endangered species list
The brown pelican, pushed to the edge of extinction in the 1970s by pesticide use, habitat loss and hunting, was Wednesday taken off the endangered species list, US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said.
"We can celebrate an extraordinary accomplishment: the brown pelican is endangered no more," Salazar said.
"It has taken 36 years, the banning of DDT and a lot of work by the US government, the states, conservation organizations, dedicated citizens and partners, but today we can say that the brown pelican is back," Salazar told a telephone news conference held simultaneously in Washington and Louisiana.
The brown pelican was listed as endangered in 1970 after its numbers had been slashed by the use of the pesticide DDT, by hunters who sought it for its feathers, and by widespread loss of its coastal habitat.
The birds' recovery and removal from the list of endangered species was due largely to a US federal ban on the use of DDT in 1972, Salazar said.
The bird's population was now back up to more than 650,000 across Florida, in the coastal regions of the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean, and in the Caribbean and Latin America, Salazar said.
At its lowest point, the number of brown pelicans had fallen to around 10,000, said Tom Strickland, Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
