Rare Bird Threatened by San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge Population Control Proposal

Today the Center for Biological Diversity filed a scientific petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the western gull-billed tern as an endangered species under the federal Endangered Species Act. The western gull-billed tern has only two breeding sites in the United States. At one of them, San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge, it is immediately threatened by a Fish and Wildlife Service plan to reduce its population by destroying eggs. The control effort is intended to protect two other endangered seabirds: the western snowy plover and the California least tern. “The Center strongly supports the conservation of all three of these endangered birds,” said Tierra Curry, a conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The western gull-billed tern is endangered and needs the same protections afforded the plover and least tern.”...CBD