Commentary

Silence of the Swans
by Steve Carr

Long ago, the British royal family made mute swans their own, and it became a capital offense to harm one of these noble birds.

Today — over a year after Gov. Paris Glendening’s Maryland Mute Swan Management Task Force recommended reductions in the population around the Bay and under new governor Robert Ehrlich — Maryland Department of Natural Resources will initiate a mute swan hunting program. Specially sanctioned DNR hunters will soon start shooting mute swans in the lower Bay, where grass beds have been especially hard hit.

Maybe we can just blame all of today’s swan troubles on the English.

As the story goes, the mute swan was introduced to the United States from England some 20 years ago by some rich Americans who wanted sophisticated elegance in their estates. Some of the birds eventually got loose, and mute swan numbers have been rising steadily around the Bay, doubling to over 4,000 birds in just the last few years.

The litany of crimes associated with mute swans is a long one.

Seaweed is a valuable and rapidly-diminishing resource in the Chesapeake Bay, and the mute swans eat something on the order of 4,500 tons of sea grasses a year.
• Mutes dislodge sediment when they pull up the seaweed by the roots, and they also contribute to an increase in coliform counts where flocks congregate. In other words, they are prolific poopers.
• Territorial mutes tend to take over an area, driving out tundra swans, ducks, geese and anything else that gets in their way.
• Mute swans are dangerous; they may attack dogs and small children walking along the shoreline near the birds’ nesting grounds.

In essence, mute swans are bad because they aren’t from around here, they eat like pigs, and they are bullies.

But it’s never so simple, is it?

Kathryn Burton, of Save Our Swans, asks “Why are all these people so adamant about demonizing the mute swans?”

By “they” she means the Audubon Society, state game officials, environmentalists and the hunting industry. Burton sees a conspiracy at work here “to create a trophy bird to help plummeting hunting licenses nationwide, not just in Maryland.”

I have a hard time imagining environmentalists and birders part of a grand scheme to promote more hunting, but I guess they could be unsuspecting dupes.

SOS next argues that ‘garbage’ mute swans and ‘good’ trumpeters are close cousins, existing in the North American fossil record for more than 12,500 years. They point to a famous Currier & Ives print named “The Haunts of the Wild Swan” that reads “Carroll Island-Chesapeake Bay-MD.” The 1872 painting depicts what certainly looks like mute swans cavorting happily in the waters of the Bay.

I guess it wouldn’t be the first time painters got their species mixed up.
About the mute swans eating Bay grasses, SOS argues that grass is weighed wet, meaning the tonnage the swans consume is grossly exaggerated. SOS further argues that diving ducks, snow geese, the good swans and lots of other winter migrants eat submerged grasses and poop in the water. On top of that, all of these birds have been eating Bay grasses for millennia without any appreciable negative effect.

Clearly the debate has two sides.

Still, the basic question remains: Why shouldn’t we hunt mute swans? I am not a hunter, but I accept the fact that we ‘manage’ almost every animal that runs, crawls, swims or flies. We allow their numbers to be controlled through hunting. Why did we ever draw the line at swans? Because they’re pretty?

Opponents of the swan point to the fact that they kill other birds and destroy the eggs of their enemies. But so do hawks, owls, blue jays, crows and cow birds. Why don’t we feel the same hostility toward these other predatory birds? Because they are native and a part of the natural balance?

Swans are glorious birds. But if they become pests, then it seems logical to cull their numbers through hunting — though I’m guessing the hunter who brings home a dead swan is going to find a very cold reception.

Then again, there are lots of things out there terrorizing the Bay. While we’re at it, how about a hunting season on jet skis, too?

Update: On May 13, The Fund for Animals and several Eastern Shore residents filed a complaint in federal court challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to authorize DNR agents to shoot 1,500 mute swans on Chesapeake Bay.

A release with the filing advanced a new argument against the shootings. “It may be psychologically soothing for state officials to shoot swans rather than address the real problems facing our Bay — such as the waste runoff from the billions of chickens raised in intensive confinement every year on the Eastern Shore — but it only turns these majestic birds into scapegoats for major industrial polluters,” said Michael Markarian, president of The Fund for Animals.