|
|
|
Fake gannet lured in tourists |
|
|
|
|
Monday, 28 August 2006 |
How a fake gannet lured the birds and tourists back to Lambert’s Bay
WHEN a gang of seabird-killing seals ate the main tourist draw of Lambert’s Bay, residents of the small South African town called in a surfer, an artist and a flock of fake gannets to save the day.Cape gannets had been breeding on a tiny island off Lambert’s Bay, on the Atlantic coast about 250km north of Cape Town, since the early 1900s, becoming a profitable — albeit raucous and smelly — part of the landscape.
Bird-watchers from around the world flocked to see the birds, spending generously in local shops, restaurants and hostelries.
“We thought the birds would always be there,” said Marriete Breytenbach, owner of the Lambert’s Bay Hotel, which overlooks the harbour. “No one imagined they would ever leave.”
But in the space of a few weeks in December last year the birds — all 20000 of them — did just that.
The problem was a handful of rogue bulls from a nearby fur seal colony. The mammals had previously attacked and eaten gannets at sea, but now some of the seals were waddling over the rocks into the bird colony to savage the gannets on their nests.
“It was terrible, a massacre,” Breytenbach said. “The gannets were killed or maimed — left, right and centre.”
Conservation officials called the seal behaviour unprecedented but could not save the birds. After about 200 gannets had been killed, the rest flew to a safer neighbourhood, leaving nothing but an empty stretch of muddy guano for disappointed tourists.
“We had a drop of 65% in the number of foreign visitors,” Breytenbach said, who estimated that the hospitality industry was worth between R1,5m and R2m for the town before the birds left. “When guests discovered there were no birds, they checked out.”
Breytenbach called a town meeting in January to discuss the crisis. She was chosen to head an action committee that explored ways to entice the birds back and keep them safe from the seals.
“The gannets were flying overhead, circling the island, but not landing,” she said. “Somebody suggested we try decoys.”
Duck hunters have long known that carved wooden ducks floating on the water will attract the real thing into the range of their shotguns.
The action committee gave the task of making gannet decoys to a local artist, Gerrit Burger, who normally creates mermaid-like sculptures in which human torsos emerge from twisted antelope horns.
Burger made a mould of a life-size gannet and used it to produce 50 decoys.
The fake birds were deployed on deserted nests early in July after the provincial nature conservation authority, CapeNature, had appointed an island manager, Yves Chesselet, who is working on plans to protect the gannets from the seals.
“Within an hour of putting out the decoys, the gannets started landing,” said Chesselet, whose passion is surfing. “The real gannets didn’t like the decoys taking over their nests. They pecked the decoys’ eyes out.”
Burger is proud of his decoys. “I was very chuffed that the gannets thought they were real,” he said.
Nearly 10000 gannets had returned to the island by midAugust. In a few weeks they should start to lay eggs and Chesselet will be a busy man — the lurking seals pose a threat but gannets also get spooked by kelp gulls and tourists.
The Lambert’s Bay gannet colony, linked to the mainland by a 50m causeway, is one of six breeding colonies used by the species and the only one easily accessible to bird-watchers.
A bird hide of fake rock has been built within an arm’s reach of the edge of the densely packed bird colony, with only a one-way mirror the size of a cinema screen separating humans from gannets.
The hide provides a panoramic view of thousands of wheeling, nesting, bickering gannets, all squeezed into an area the size of a football pitch.
The birds, with wingspans of 1,8m, observe rigid etiquette aimed at avoiding alarm and conflict in their cramped quarters.
Breytenbach said Lambert’s Bay would not take its birds for granted in future.
“There are about 2-million seals in southern Africa, but less than half-a-million gannets,” she said. “The gannets are a threatened species … why should the seals … take over the island?” |
|
|
Bird News 