rss
mobile
Feeds
The dead vulture is there to scare away menacing, lurking, live vultures. In one of life's ironies, vultures apparently like all things dead -- except each other.
It works. The vultures that were roosting in groups of 20 or more in trees and on rooftops have fled.
Bluffton has long had battles with vultures. In the 1980s, a man tried to get rid of nuisance vultures by taking them to court. Actually, he took the town and the oyster factory to court, saying they encouraged them to hang out on his property. The vultures may well have been a nuisance, but they had good lawyers, of course. The town won. And the mayor dressed as a vulture and rode the town garbage truck in the Bluffton Christmas Parade.
This time, the nuisance black vultures didn't find a friendly court. They ran afoul of a little-known arm of the federal government that specializes in resolving human/wildlife conflicts.
The Wildlife Services section within the U.S. Department of Agriculture was called when Bluffton residents grew tired of living beneath the vultures. This department is within the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (www.aphis.usda.gov; 1-866-487-3297.)
Noel E. Myers, state director for Wildlife Services, said it's common for his office in Columbia to receive calls about nuisance black vultures. In urban settings, their droppings create health concerns and ruin plants and property. They peck at roof shingles, boat covers, awnings and even the rubber gaskets around vehicle windshields. In the country, they can be more aggressive, killing newborn livestock.
Myers said a bigger concern is what vultures, ducks and deer can do on airport property. His office keeps two full-time employees at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort trying to prevent wildlife from damaging or downing airplanes.
Vultures play an important role in the ecosystem, Myers said, and his goal is to scare them, not kill them. To shoot a vulture would require a federal and state license, he said. His staff's usual tactic is to try to scare the birds away with fireworks or perhaps gunfire.
And they have learned over the years that hanging a "taxidermied" vulture -- a dead one -- or an artificial effigy -- a fake one -- high in the tree will usually result in the vultures moving on within three to five days. "We're just trying to hopefully move the birds to where they are not a problem," Myers said.
Maybe Bluffton's long-running case against the vulture has finally found a hanging judge.
