Not because her foot is mangled I'm going to tuck her away in the archives. No, she will stay on the front page to be a reminder what kind of people we have in charge. Many times we are the ones to blame for this for not taking the time to make sure the people who allow this to happen be removed from any position of importance. I was wrong about the NY Times not addressing this. I only found out on Sunday night that they did in much more detail than I did. I just never followed this story earlier this year. What I did find out when I read the story is that Barbara Loucks of the NYSDEC was involved in the decision to not allow the hawk to be rescued when there was a chance of saving her. Barbara Loucks is the woman who was involved in the design of Palemale & Lola's nest and back in 2006 told me that there is nothing wrong with the design of the nest and that Palemale was sterile. Now I found out at this late hour that this vile female human being was involved in another red-tail hawk disaster.
Washington Square female hawk with her completely crippled leg on Saturday.
After receiving a letter from someone who casually spoke of hearing a rumor that a Cornell Vet rescued and saved the female hawk from Washington Square I visited the area on Saturday to confirm that this was not true. And of course it was not!
This is one of the many responses I received from Bruce Peterjohn, Head of the Bird Banding Lab which is responsible for this horrible situation. From the first time I reported this situation on October 29, 2010 he was continually trying to discredit me for my amateur observations and non-expert assessment of the hawk's condition.
From the Bird Banding Lab last year:
To: lincoln_karim@msn.com
Subject: Re: Red Tail Hawk with bad band.
From: bpeterjohn@usgs.gov
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:00:00 -0500
Dear Mr. Karim:
With all due respect, your photographs do not support your claim that the Red-tailed Hawk's leg is impaired by the bird band. Your photos show that the bird is very capable of using that leg to capture prey (a squirrel), carry prey, and to dismember prey. In essence, it is behaving as a normal wild raptor. We see no need to take any action at this time, but are willing to reassess the situation should circumstances change.
Bruce Peterjohn
Chief
Bird Banding Lab
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
12100 Beech Forest Rd.
Laurel, MD 20708
phone: (301) 497-5646
From: Lincoln_Karim S Karim
To: Peter John
Date: 12/16/2010 11:25 PM
Subject: Red Tail Hawk with bad band.
Please help me to make sure this man Bruce Peterjohn and this Bird Banding Lab never put another band on any bird or other animal ever again.
This includes ALL rehabilitators!
Please use this link to inform Carter Strickland, Commissioner, Department of Environmental Protection
of what this band has done to this poor animals and perhaps thousands more like her that we never get to see.
I skimmed through the NY Times site about this story which they made a circus of but there is no mention of this terrible situation.
Please insist that ANDY NEWMAN and EMILY S. RUEB of the NY Times address this horrible story and demand that they do something about it.
They cannot expect to focus only of the fickle side of the story.
Also the people at NYU which from what I just read for the first time, again just focused on a shallow side of the story of the hawks. Please make sure that they do something about this also.
This is the only contact I can find right now: NYU
