Published: December 27, 2017
Get ready to say goodbye to
Florida’s rarest bird, the grasshopper sparrow. Federal officials say 2018 is
the year we’ll learn whether the species will disappear from the wild. The odds
are not looking good.
"There’s a significant chance
that the birds might go extinct," said Larry Williams, who supervises the
South Florida office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The grasshopper sparrow is
generally regarded as the most endangered bird in the continental United
States. If it goes extinct in spite of the $1 million spent to save it in
recent years, it would be the first American bird in three decades to
disappear.
The number living in the wild has
dropped dramatically in recent years, due in part to a disease that has zoomed
through their dwindling population. Last year biologists found 74 males and 40
females remaining in the Central Florida prairies where the birds nest. This
year they found just 53 males and 22 females.
"This is probably the last
year that we’ll have the birds in the landscape," said Paul Reillo,
founding director of the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation at Florida
International University.
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