No twitchable news here, sorry.  A couple of weeks back folks in Hocking
County were upset to hear that Division of Wildlife staff had shot the
mute swans that had so prominently inhabited Lake Logan in Hocking County.
        DOW has been eradicating small populations of this invasive European
species for years in Ohio, always in a discreet way. Attractive they may
be, these swans pose significant challenges for native birds and their
food sources; they are aggressive and fully capable of killing other
waterfowl, and have been known to attack people. They eat large amounts
of native aquatic vegetation, and have no legal protections. Naive
visitors found it easy to relish the sight of these huge white creatures
that came to beg food, but were unaware of their impact on Lake Logan.
        Because mutes are conspicuous, it was just as obvious that they had
disappeared, and DOW's usually discreet removals were noticed. The Logan
Daily News was barraged with complaints, and the DOW offered some
justifications. Some observers asked why the swans were not relocated
and were told, quite logically, that it would have been only
transplanting a problem elsewhere.
        Complicating the DOW's case was their ballyhooed "reintroduction" of
trumpeter swans--a bona fide North American swan species--but in Ohio,
where no Ohio breeding history is established. Trumpeters can be just as
destructive as mutes here. DOW transplanted trumpeters in a number of
places in Ohio--not Lake Logan--and they have persisted in a couple of
spots, notably in a remote area in Federal property at Ottawa NWR. There
is no good evidence that they ever nested in Ohio, but weak reports were
accepted in the interest of transplanting a spectacular big white
species as "ambassadors of wetlands". Bud Simpson's weekly outdoors
column in the Daily News concluded thus: "How strange it seems to get
rid of Mute swans and "re-introduce" another swan species, the Trumpeter
swan, that history shows to be another "non-native" species that never
lived or bred here. How sad!"
Bill Whan
Columbus

______________________________________________________________________

Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society.
Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php.
Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list.


You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at:
listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS
Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]