Illness claims loons

By JOHN PEPIN Journal Munising Bureau

St. IGNACE — Along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Mackinac County this week, passing motorists have reported seeing hundreds of dead loons and other diving, fish-eating birds.

Steve Sjogren, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Hiawatha National Forest, said the birds were seen between the Cut River Bridge and Point Aux Chenes over the past several days.

“We had some eastbound motorists they stopped and told us they had seen several dead birds,” Sjogren said.

On Wednesday, Sjogren found five dead loons washed up onshore just west of Point Aux Chenes. The following day, he went out again and found roughly 25 more dead birds visible from his vehicle, while traveling between Brevort and Point Aux Chenes.

“Most of them were loons,” Sjogren said.

Other fish-eating birds were also discovered including gulls, double-crested cormorants and grebes.

The cause behind the avian deaths is thought to be avian botulism, a naturally-occurring phenomenon blamed for the deaths of roughly 2,600 birds last autumn downstate at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Officials with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources define botulism as a “paralytic condition brought on by the consumption of a naturally-occurring toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum.”

Botulism has been a problem for fish and birds in lakes Ontario, Erie and Michigan.

In a Michigan Sea Grant Web site notice, biologist Ken Hyde from Sleeping Bear Dunes said the recent Type E Botulism outbreak in the state has hit primarily fish-eating birds.

Among the 2,600 dead birds found last autumn were horned grebes, mergansers, common loons, cormorants and gulls.

State DNR officials said that Type E toxin is found primarily in decaying fish.

“Poisonings in humans from type E botulinal toxins usually are associated with eating uncooked, imperfectly canned and improperly preserved fish and marine animal products,” DNR officials said in the Sea Grant notice. “Since fish-eating birds normally are not eaten by people and thorough cooking destroys the toxin, this wildlife source of type E toxin is not a serious public health problem.”

Sjogren said he thinks he would have found many more dead birds had he walked the 10-mile stretch of Lake Michigan beach just west of St. Ignace.

Biologists have wondered since last fall whether effects of the botulism would be seen in bird species farther north within Lake Michigan.

Sjogren said Upper Peninsula biologists have also been monitoring populations of the endangered piping plover, which nest along Lake Michigan, to see if any signs have been seen indicating those birds have been affected by the toxin.

So far, none have.