I think it’s clear that I love conservation comeback stories. It’s maybe more accurate to say coming-back stories. There’s not many better than the Osprey’s.
They were big time victims of the 1950-70s pesticide onslaught that took down many of our bird species, especially large raptors. DDT being the primary villain. Many local Osprey populations along the Eastern and Gulf seaboards plummeted 90%. In Georgia in the early 1970s there were less than 50 breeding pairs. In some coastal and inland waterways, populations went straight to zero.
Then in September 1962 Rachel Carlson published her remarkable book Silent Spring. The conservation movement was born. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPS) was created in 1970. DDT banned in 1972. Eagles, Brown Pelicans, Ospreys, and many others started their comebacks.
Ospreys got an extra boost from the building of nest platforms on a variety of structures such as utility poles & channel markers. They readily took to them and can be seen all up & down our coasts and around inland waterway habitats that attract the fish eating Osprey.
The impact? An annual growth of 2.5% since the 1960s. A very nice coming-back story.
