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Falcons fledge from AECI's power plants
Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. is among several utilities helping to restore the peregrine falcon - nature's fastest flier -- in the Midwest. Partnering with the Missouri Department of Conservation, AECI has banded and released four sets of chicks at its New Madrid and Thomas Hill power plants. AECI employees began their program in June 2004 when the first set of four chicks arrived at the New Madrid Power Plant at 32 days old. The chicks were banded with U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Migratory Bird bands and placed in a hacking box built by employees and located on the 10th floor of the plant's emissions reduction equipment. For the next 11 days, the birds were allowed to retreat behind a "hide board" inside the hack box while AECI employees brought their food, limiting exposure to humans and allowing the chicks to imprint on the river area around the power plant. Once the chicks reached about 42 days of age, the front of the hack box was opened. The birds had the freedom to leave the box and test their wings. They took maiden flights and eventually learned to soar in the airspace over the New Madrid plant and Mississippi River. Since that first release, AECI employees have expanded the program to include the Thomas Hill Energy Center in north-central Missouri, where the first set of falcon chicks were released in spring 2007. At both plants, employees hope the birds, once mature, will return to the plants and nest.
AECI employees have driven the effort to be part of the bird's continuing recovery from the federal endangered species list. New Madrid Power Plant employees researched the falcon and its successful nesting at electric utility structures, demonstrated the benefits of the project and built the hacking and nesting boxes. Employees trained to care for the peregrine chicks, learning from Bob Anderson, who works with Xcel Energy and the Raptor Resource Project, and staff of other utilities with successful peregrine nests. Power-plant peregrines now account for more than one-third of the population in the Midwest, and utilities have played a key role in helping the bird recover from near extinction. AECI employees also have worked with students at New Madrid County R-1 Technical Skills Center to build and mount boxes for kestrels, the smallest falcon found in North America, throughout the St. Jude Industrial Park where nesting kestrels have been spotted using the boxes. Peregrine Utility ProgramBegun by the Raptor Resource Project in 1990 at Xcel Energy's Alan King plant in Bayport, Minn., peregrine-utility programs have since expanded throughout the country and worldwide. In 1999, 50 percent of the peregrines that produced young in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa were nesting at power plants. Participating utilities today include Xcel Energy, Dairyland Power Cooperative and Wisconsin Electric Power Co. Many of these utilities have "birdcams" accessible through the Internet, and peregrine adults and their chicks can be watched by interested employees and the public.
Falcons fledged at power plants along the Upper Mississippi River have returned to historic natural habitat on bluffs in that area, adding to the success of the program. The Raptor Resource Project's mission with its Mississippi Recovery Project is to develop a self-sustaining population of peregrines nesting, with no human interference, along the banks of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Power plant nesting falcons are the most successful in terms of the number of young fledged. More utility falcon chicks successfully leave the nest than do falcons hatched on buildings, cliffs and bridges. Power plants provide features key to the peregrine's success, including stacks that provide a cliff-like dwelling, nearby water and plenty of birds, chiefly pigeons, starlings and sparrows, to eat. Peregrine falcons also have been successful in urban areas. They've found homes in cities like Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City, where tall buildings have substituted for cliffs. Peregrine falcons run no additional health risks by living and rearing their young in nest boxes attached to power plant exhaust stacks, according to a three-year study completed in 2001 by the Electric Power Research Institute. EPRI tested the level of metals in five groups of falcons, including power plant birds at 15 plants, and found no significant elevation in the birds when compared with captive birds living on site at the Iowa-based Raptor Resource Project. The study was done to address concerns about emissions, which pass through a series of pollution control devices to remove much of the toxic materials before they are released into the atmosphere. |
One of the birds released from the New Madrid plant in 2005 has mated and taken over an existing nest site on an office building in a suburb of St. Louis. That bird, named Bessie after a bend in the Mississippi River, laid three eggs and succeeded in hatching one of them, even though she was considered too young. 
Power plant peregrines now account for more than one-third of the population in the Midwest and more than half the total population in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As of spring 2004, 300 young falcons had fledged from power plants along the Mississippi River, according to Bob Anderson of the Resource Raptor Project.
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