
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 28, 1994                   TAG: 9403280057
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BIOLOGISTS OPTIMISTIC ABOUT DUCKS

Biologists are hopeful the sea duck population in the Chesapeake Bay will make a strong rebound from an outbreak of avian cholera that has killed an estimated 25,000 birds.

The projection is based on the last two baywide avian cholera outbreaks. About 65,000 ducks and other birds died in 1970, and about 100,000 were killed in 1978.

"Two or three years later, no one noticed a difference in the population," Gary Costanzo, a waterfowl biologist for the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said of the 1978 die-off.

Many biologists feel a worst-case scenario in the latest avian cholera outbreak is 50,000 dead birds in the bay, prompting concern that the estuary may be impacted at least in the short term.

"When you go ahead and whack 50,000 ducks out of the population, you're doing some damage," Costanzo said. "We just don't know how much."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates 400,000 sea ducks winter in the bay to escape the Arctic cold.

Some biologists have begun to wonder aloud whether that is too many - even in the 198-mile-long bay, the nation's largest estuary - and whether this avian cholera outbreak is nature's way of thinning out the population.

- Associated Press

by CNB