RARE LOON MAY BE HARDEST HIT BY SPILL

By CHARLES WOHLFORTH
Daily News Reporter

ANCHORAGE- The rare yellow billed loon, which lives long, reproduces slowly, and breeds in nests that are widely scattered across remote territory, may be the species hardest hit by the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Yet despite the blow to the species, the government studies examining the damage of the oil spill are ignoring the yellow billed loon, according to state and federal officials.

Only 87 of the loons were found dead in the spill, but so few exist that the deaths were a serious blow to the total yellow billed loon population.

According to a study by former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Cal Lensink, the number of dead birds actually found represent only 10 to 30 percent of total killed. That ratio probably holds true for loons, he said, which would mean between 290 and 870 died.

Only 1,000 to 5,000 yellow billed loons live in Alaska, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 in the entire arctic. They reproduce slowly each pair produces only one chick a year and they live 20 to 30 years, biologists said.

Prince William Sound, where 72 of the birds were found dead, is a major wintering area for yellowbilled loons who spend the summer in the Arctic. The species is so rare because it nests only around large lakes in the far north that have low banks, good surrounding visibility, and a relatively early thaw, said Michael North, an expert on the species with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"There were probably a substantial number in the Sound that were killed, their total population is low, and their reproduction rate is very low, so the mortality could be a substantial blow," Lensink said.

"That was probably the bird species hardest hit by the spill, just because of their number worldwide," said Nancy Tankersley, a loon expert with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The species would be in danger of extinction if there were a series of similar blows to its numbers, Tankersley said.

But the yellowbilled loon is nowhere to be found among about $35 million a year in oil spill studies being conducted by the state and federal governments. The closest thing to a study of loons 326 dead ones were found altogether is a general count of all waterfowl, said Robert Leedy, a supervising biologist for migratory waterfowl for Fish and Wildlife.

Tankersley said she tried to instigate a damage assessment study of yellowbilled loons after she learned of the damage they had sustained, but was told it was too late. Leedy said the species didn't rate study because not enough died and because study of such widely ranging birds is difficult.

"Eightyseven birds, in the over all scheme of things, just didn't pass muster," Leedy said.

More than 30,000 dead birds were found after the spill, which probably killed a total of from 90,000 to 270,000, according to the biologists' estimates. More than 20 other species died in greater numbers than the yellowbilled loon, Leedy said.

While that number count alone may not be as biologically significant as the size of the total population and its reproduction rate, biological considerations alone did not determine which studies would be funded, Leedy said.

"The process was controlled to a large extent more by legal concerns than biological ones, and the yellow billed loon may have suffered because of that," he said.

Assistant Attorney General Barbara Herman, who heads the state's oil spill legal team, said she didn't know anything about the yellowbilled loon, or why it might have been left out of the studies.

Scientists know little about the yellowbilled loon because its habitat is remote and widely spread out. Finding out how the spill affected the species would be difficult, the biologists agreed.

Lensink said even the number found dead is not certain. The bill of the birds was difficult to tell apart from the common loon under the conditions, he said.

North and New York bird expert Judith McIntyre studied the yellowbilled loon's summer nesting habitat last year to learn how many were left after the spill. McIntyre could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon. Her work was funded by Exxon and the National Geographic Society, Tankersley said.

McIntyre and North found no drop in the number of nesting yellowbilled loon pairs in the northern Alaska areas surveyed, which represent about 10 percent of the birds' range, Tankersley said. But North suspects Prince William Sound's loons migrate to northern Canada rather than Alaska. Tankersley said they may go to Siberia.

"While we know yellowbilled loons are quite widely distributed in the Arctic with just a few loons over a wide area we don't know where the loons from Prince William Sound go," Lensink said. "So they may not have been looking in the right place."

Two other bird species also have biologists worried. Murres suffered the most deaths. They are a common species, but a nesting colony of 50,000 to 60,000 at the Barren Islands may have been wiped out, Lensink said. At last report, the murres had not returned to the Barrens this spring, he said.

The marbled murrelet worries biologists because it is in trouble due to logging in the Pacific Northwest. The birds spend most of their time in the water, but nest in the trees. Before the spill the species was doing well in the Sound, where logging has not been widespread.

"We're sort of the last bastion, and we don't want to see them go down," Tankersley said.

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