By Marilyn Porto Abbey
It is a story I revisit often in my mind. My interest in ospreys was renewed when my husband and I and our two small sons spotted one of these magnificent birds fishing along the Tioga River near our home in upstate New York. The sight transported me back to my childhood where I had watched these fishing experts living along the bays and inlets of my native Long Island. We were surprised to learn that, while rare our area, ospreys did migrate through in the spring and fall. But that wasn't enough. We had to find out more.

There was only one thing to do ... send a letter (no email at that time) to Long Island to Dennis Puleston, naturalist and father of my Bellport High School classmate, Dennis Edward (Puleston). Within three days, we had an answer. Mr. Puleston not only knew about the biology and behavior of ospreys, he had helped save them from extinction on Long Island. It was through this correspondence and subsequent visits with him in Brookhaven, that we learned what had happened to the ospreys, how they came back and how ospreys could teach us about the health of our environment.

A few years later, we had the privilege of working on the reintroduction of ospreys here at the Tioga/Hammond/Cowanesque Lakes, along the NY/PA border.

The birds had been wiped out completely 40 years earlier because of DDT spraying and hunting in our area. We worked with two biologists, helping to band, weigh/measure, feed, monitor, record progress and release young ospreys during the nesting seasons of 1991-1994. Throughout our involvement in the project, Dennis was a constant inspiration. He coached us and encouraged us to report to him either by letter or in person when we visited my family on Long Island. What I remember best about our visits with Dennis is that he was always such a warm, interesting, gracious host and teacher, giving us credit for knowing more about ospreys than we really did. That of course, gave us the desire to learn more, so that we would be more prepared for his questions and able to converse more intelligently the next time we met.

Today, there are seven active osprey nests at the T-H-C Lake area and we have our own nesting platform on our land along the Tioga River. Dennis is the reason that we have experienced the joy of helping save life and watching it respond and flourish with proper care. Hopefully the birds are on their way to recovery here and we are a little smarter about harmful pollutants and paying attention to the creatures who share this planet. Every spring, we delight in sharing with our family members and neighbors the sight of ospreys returning. We treasure all we learned from Dennis and believe the promise that life begins anew with a little help from friends.

By Art Cooley

After EPA Administrator Williams Ruckelshaus banned DDT in 1972, ambient levels of this persistent pesticide diminished and ospreys among other species began to restore their numbers. Now thirty years later, it is not clear whether the ospreys on Gardiner's Island, where the largest nesting colony of hawks in the world occurred, will fully recover.

During World War II, DDT was rediscovered and was widely used in the military where it effectively controlled insects. It was a godsend for the men in the trenches. After the war the extensive use of DDT especially over salt marshes contaminated the food chain. The top predators like ospreys suffered from lower hatching rates as the eggs they laid became thinner. Thinner shells caused lower productivity due to breakage and dehydration. But ospreys were not the only species affected. Brown pelicans suffered and peregrine falcons became an extinct breeder in the Northeast. Bald eagles, our national symbol, suffered precipitous declines.

By banning DDT in 1972 it was hoped that a major obstacle to recovery had been removed. The fledgling rate for ospreys in the 1960s was about one young per hundred nests. Today, the rate is just over one per nest for Long Island, a considerable improvement. Elsewhere, in the Chesapeake for example, the rates, however, are closer to two young raised per nest.

In the years since the ban, Mike Scheibel of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has flown over the nests on Long Island recording the fledglings from each nest. During the last five years the nests on average have produced about one young per nest. Encouragingly, the nests in the Town of Brookhaven and the rest of Long Island to the west produce about 1.5 young per nest. Disturbingly those nests east of the Town of Brookhaven including the once bastion of osprey nesting, Gardiner's Island, are producing only 0.8 young per nest. This latter rate is just equal to the replacement rate precluding any increases. So birds on the East End seem to have reached a threshold.

Two suggestions have been offered to explain the poor rates of the eastern population of ospreys. The first involve the recent nesting of cormorants on Gardiner's Island. Today, there are about 1,200 pairs nesting there while in the 1960s there were none. Competition for food, therefore, could be one explanation. The second suggestion is based on the disappearance of menhaden, locally called bunkers. Menhaden are fish that swim close to the surface in dense schools. They are easy prey for an osprey and a quick source of food when the nestlings are biggest. Unfortunately there has been a precipitous decline in landings of menhaden. Once a fish that provided more than 40,000 tons of fish a year in New York State now provides only two tons a year according to data kept by the National Marine Fishery Service.

While we all are encouraged by the spread of the osprey to the west and its good reproductive rate, the full recovery may depend upon the full restoration of another species that has been depressed for different reasons. So, as my grandmother used to say "if it isn't one thing it's another." The lesson may be that the osprey has returned to an ecosystem that has been altered in other ways while it was struggling to overcome the DDT challenge.