| About Us Predatory Birds Education Program ... Predatory Birds Peregrine Falcons For more than three decades, SCPBRG and our associates have been privileged to witness, and to participate in, the remarkable resurgence of peregrine falcons ( Falco peregrinus ) in California and other parts of the West Coast. This striking recovery in our area and throughout most of the world is due in large measure to the ban on the use of DDT in many places. In the words of Tom Cade, who some would credit with the return of the peregrine to many parts of North America... "We can thank this remarkable recovery of the Peregrine to the courage and determination of the first Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, William Ruckelshaus, who, against the ruling of his own hearing examiner and the intense lobbying of many pro-pesticide advocates, banned the use of DDT for nearly all purposes in 1972. This action, more than any other human intervention, made it possible for the surviving remnant populations in the wild to increase their numbers and reclaim vacated eyries throughout much of the former range. It also made possible the successful reintroduction of captive-produced falcons in southern Canada and the coterminous United States" (Cade et al., 1996)*. The peregrine has recovered in North America to the point that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the species entirely from the Endangered Species List on | |
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