Islanders Cry Foul as Officials Destroy 6 Mute Swans

HOOPER ISLAND, Md. — Handel Hutchinson’s voice cracks with anger.

“This is one of the most gruesome things I’ve ever seen,” he said, pointing to a videotape of six dead swans he made recently. “One mother swan was shot laying on the nest with her eggs.”

Hutchinson, 81, and many other residents of this remote island in Maryland’s Dorchester County are outraged by the recent killing of half a dozen mute swans on nearby, uninhabited Barren Island by state and federal wildlife officials. But state and federal biologists defend the shooting, saying it is unpleasant but necessary to control a burgeoning mute swan population that poses a serious threat to several threatened smaller species of water birds.

The dispute has spread quickly along the island, bringing into sharp focus the thicket of emotional and scientific issues that surround wildlife management. When choices have to be made, scientists say, sometimes they’re painful and gory--such as the shooting of the six swans on Barren Island--but necessary to protect the fragile network of wildlife at the Chesapeake Bay’s edge.

“It’s all wrapped up in the issue of wildlife management,” said Keith Weaver, refuge biologist at the nearby Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, which is working with the state to control mute swans. “The term ‘management’ implies making choices.”

For island residents, killing swans is an unacceptable choice. They can’t fathom how anyone charged with protecting the environment can kill part of it.

“It is a disgrace,” said island resident Joyce Hill. Like Hutchinson, she feeds the swans regularly in her backyard and is distraught about the shootings.

“These are beautiful creatures,” said resident Richard Coleman, who has seen as many as 67 swans in his yard at one time. “It doesn’t make any sense for some bureaucrat to decide ‘zero tolerance’ for them.

“They’ve been here 30 years. How long do they have to be here to be considered native?”

State and federal biologists acknowledge they are uncomfortable about killing the swans. But, they said, in the Tar Bay area between Barren and Hooper islands, shooting adults and shaking the eggs to kill the embryos--a practice called “addling”--were necessary evils. The swans were nesting there and disturbing native wildlife and had to be removed, officials said.

“The situation at Barren Island is, they’re causing harm to native wildlife,” said Larry Hindman, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources. “They have caused problems for threatened species of water birds: least terns and black skimmers.”

No acceptable number for the swans has been chosen, Hindman said. Instead, the state is controlling their numbers as needed in places such as Barren Island.

Glenn Therres, an endangered-species biologist with the Department of Natural Resources, concurs.

“They’re a pretty white bird, but they come with their costs to the environment,” he said of the swans.

In the case of black skimmers, a threatened species that once nested on Barren Island but was driven out by the swans, the costs are too high, he said.

“A colony of 150 birds is no longer, because of the swans,” he added.

Maryland can’t afford those costs, he said. There’s only one place left where black skimmers nest in the wild, a small island near Ocean City.

The swans, properly known as Cygnus olor, weigh about 25 pounds each and have a wingspan of 5 to 6 feet. Adults are white with an orange bill.

They are not native to North America. The swans were brought to this country from Europe and Asia by the owners of large estates in New York and Rhode Island who wanted ornamental wildlife. In the 1930s, they escaped the carefully manicured lawns and ponds into the wild and, over time, spread up and down the Atlantic Coast.

A book on breeding birds of Maryland by St. Michaels resident Jan Reese traces the origins of the birds in this state to 1962, when three males and two females escaped into Eastern Bay from waterfront estates in Talbot County.

“Reese found 18 birds in the flock in 1968,” Therres said. “In 1974, there were 151. In 1980, there were 400.”

Hindman, the state biologist charged with controlling the birds, said there are now 2,700 swans in Maryland, and most of them--2,300--live on the Eastern Shore.

“They have no natural predator,” Hindman said. “We don’t know at what level they’ll level off--they’ve been increasing at 15% a year.”

The swans’ effects on smaller water birds can be disastrous, Hindman and Therres said. Black skimmers and three species of terns are particularly affected because they lay their eggs on the ground, usually in sand. Mute swans trample the eggs and drive out the smaller birds by eating too much and taking up too much room, they said.

But the Hooper Island residents, who feed and enjoy the swans along their waterfront, want the scientists to stop shooting the birds.

“There are other ways to solve the problem,” said Hutchinson, who gained local celebrity in his native Massachusetts for his devotion to swans before he moved to Hooper Island a year ago. In Massachusetts, he said, small fences built around the eggs of smaller birds deterred the swans from walking on them.

“They are wild animals, and they have the right to live free.”