Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Monday, September 3, 2007

FORT SMITH - Surveys of the white pelican colony on the Slave River have found that a puzzling decline in the number of chicks surviving the summer is continuing.

Despite a low survival rate of chicks, the pelican colony on the Slave River remains strong. - NNSL file photo

In May, an aerial survey found 675 nests on islands in Mountain Rapids, about 7-kilometres south of Fort Smith.

Prior to 2000, the number of chicks surviving the summer was roughly one from each nest with some yearly variations.

However, a survey on July 11 spotted 305 chicks and another survey on Aug. 17 found just 133 chicks.

"It's pitiful," said Jacques van Pelt, a monitor with the Fort Smith Pelican Advisory Circle.

Van Pelt said the survival rate started to collapse in 2000. However, no one knows exactly why.

Van Pelt said there could be a number of reasons, including predation, disturbance of the nesting sites, inadequate food supply, poor water quality and/or the quality of the egg shells.

"It's a mystery because it has many sources of decline," he said.

Despite the decline in the survival rate of chicks, van Pelt said the overall health of the colony - the northernmost in the world - remains strong.

The number of nests this year is about the third highest since monitoring began in 1974.

Plus, van Pelt said, pelicans from other areas, such as Saskatchewan, are sometimes "sucked into" the migration to the Slave River.

"We have an influx from outside," he said.

This year, 1,350 pelicans returned to the Slave River to nest, while 600-700 sub-adults returned to feed in the Rapids of the Drowned at Fort Smith.