A month ago I wrote about the fate of the Eagle nest in UBC’s south campus on the north edge of the UBC Farm. At the time UBC Community and Campus Planning had promised a summary report from the contractor monitoring the eagle nest. The report didn’t arrive by publication date, but a month later (after internal UBC review) a copy of the report was emailed to me. What follows is an overview of the report with an analysis of the conclusions and recommendations.
One thing to note is the nest, according to the report (July 8, 2022), has at least one live eaglet in it as of June 2022.
Contents
The report is divided into five fairly standard parts: Background Info, overview of regulatory framework and conservation plan, summary of construction in the area, and then the guts of the report - monitoring observations since 2017, then a very brief closing discussion.
Background
Those familiar with corporate consulting reports can recognize the sparse style of writing that seems to imply things happen totally by accident.
Background opens with the simple statement “University of British Columbia Properties Trust (UBCPT) has constructed two multi‐residential developments along Ross Drive on the UBC South Campus” (p. 5). More development is planned (and tossed in for good measure, a mention of the fabled future elementary school).
Then my favourite line: “In 2017, UBCPT was made aware of an active bald eagles’ nest at the corner of Ross Drive and Birney Avenue, immediately adjacent to their development lots” (p. 5). Later in the repot it is apparent that someone did know about the nest and published its existence in a 2014 report by the Stanley Park Ecology Society (p.6). One might have thought that prior to planning any development a proper and thorough study would have been made by UBCPT. But that is, as one says, water under the bridge. Once they become aware (and the following was unstated: as a result of provincial regulation) UBCPT adjusted development plans to retain the eagle nest.
Conservation Plan & Regulatory Framework
This section opens with a reminder that eagles are a protected species and that they can’t be disturbed. The consultants then state they developed a management plan for UBCPT in 2017. The balance of the section summarizes that plan.
The nest is described as being built sometime before 2014. There may in fact be local knowledge holders who know how old the nest actually is, but neither the consultants nor UBCPT documented any attempts to determine this. Regulatorily speaking, the age of an eagle’s nest is irrelevant to the legal protections. However, discursively, the many references to the ‘recentness’ of the nest down plays the potential significance of the nest. This is compounded by the assertion that many eagles have multiple nests (p. 6).1 As a result of the construction of the text a reader may be left feeling that the nest seems recent, is one of a potential set, and thus forcing the eagles to move to a new site might not be a bad thing.
In describing the nest the consultants do not mention how high in the tree it is (practically at the tree top about 37+m elevation). They do tell us where it is located in relation to Ross Drive. In describing the ‘new nest’ the consultants built they do tell us that it was placed at about 20m above ground, essentially half way up the 40m high tree (p. 24). Unlike the original nest, which has 360 degrees of access, the human built nest has predominantly obscured flight access. From my personal experience growing up in, and working along, the north coat of BC I have never seen a natural eagle’s nest half way down from the tree top obscured in the canopy before. But I’m not an eagle nest expert, just a keen amateur observer of my own environment.
The section ends with a statement to the effect that a cone will be dropped over the original nest to force the pair of eagles to the lower elevation human built nest north of the current nest’s location.
Nest History and Monitoring
Section four of the repot is a blow by blow account of the consultant’s various monitoring notes since 2017. This section includes noise level summary data, observations on the eagles, some photos of the nest from the ground and a drone, and a few descriptions of consultations with provincial biologists and other consultants. I’m not going to summarize it here. For the particularly keen, I recommend you read it directly.
My main comment is that the text describes a fairly unsuccessful pair of eagles who had no luck until the 2022 nesting season. One explanation implied in the report is that construction noise interfered with the abilities of the nesting pair to produce eggs and fledglings. This implications lends justification to coning and displacing the eagles northward. I can see the thinking: during noise, no babies; without noise, babies, ergo, shift nesting eagles.
It’s hard to find published papers on this topic. One from Washington state actually observed a nesting pair of eagles manage well alongside a noisy construction site.2 But overall there seems to be nothing published that makes a definitive statement on the success of shifting eagles into human built nests.
It’s really hard to know if coning the nest will actually work. The only reported example seems to have been a one off in Burnaby. I have been unable to find any peer reviewed papers that explore the topic (if a reader knows of any, please let me know in the comments!). It’s equally hard to know if the eagles will shift over to the human built nest. It’s all a big guessing game being propelled by a market housing development.
I appreciate Polygon is eager to get shovels in the ground. Polygon and their advocates at UBC may find an unsuccessful pair of eagles in a relatively new nest a poor reason to incur additional costs. Yet it does underscore the back to front way things proceed. Instead of finding ways to displace the eagles maybe we should displace the developers?
The consultants cite an unreachable grey literature report to substantiate they claim of multiple nests. They may be correct but their sourcing is weak.
Watson, James W., D. John Pierce, and Brenda C. Cunningham. “An Active Bald Eagle Nest Associated with Unusually Close Human Activity.” Northwestern Naturalist 80, no. 2 (1999): 71–74. https://doi.org/10.2307/3536932.
I live in this area in a senior’s complex on Wesbrook and walk by the nest every day that the eagles are there. This year I was there the day they arrived and watched as they did some housecleaning, dropping bits over the edge of the nest ( I recalled that we had some very serious windstorms in the winter which probably necessitated the clean-up) but then the eagle pair disappeared and I saw them only once much later in the breeding season but just the one day. I was concerned last year that a very noisy pumping station had been established right under the nest on the farm side…and worried that it might disturb their nesting…but they seemed to tolerate it that year and the babies fledged and left…I thought this was unusual for a university to be so cavalier about a known disruption…but that was nothing compared to this planned “cone drop”… Far from forcing them away from this nest, I had hoped for a camera to follow the progress in the nest… how naive am I? So disappointed in UBC planning! How dare you! Section 34 of the BC Wildlife Act…look it up and obey! UBC is already catering to wealthy immigrant families rather than student housing… I’m disgusted with your planning…or lack thereof with our precious wildlife in mind! …Margot