Dear Sam --

  I just heard that Judge Manuel Real signed the consent decree for the Montrose (Superfund) Case on 14 March.  This means that there will be no further appeals, no further litigation, and that the legal proceedings are over -- forever.  The aggregate damages, estimated to be about $140 million, represent the second largest natural resource damages award in U.S. history (the EXXON Valdez matter involving more money).  We won.

  As you are aware, it took 11 years to resolve this important case.  It involved a Superfund suit by the Dept. of Justice and various governmental agencies (NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California Dept. of Fish and Game) against six chemical companies for dumping various organochlorine contaminants into the Southern California Bight over a period of many years.  Probably the most important damage to birds resulted from the dumping of many (est. 200) tons of DDT in barrels off Santa Catalina Island.  This led to the waters off southern California becoming a major hotbed for DDT-type residues, and this resulted in severe eggshell thinning in several bird species.  Based partly on my own studies, high local DDE levels appear to have been responsible for the complete extirpation of the breeding populations of Bald Eagles and Peregrine Falcons from the offshore Channel Islands by the 1960s.

  Your contributions to the success of the case in the form of thousands of eggshell thickness measurements were enormous, and the data sets that resulted in your many years of careful work were virtually the only part of the vast evidence base that went unchallenged by the defendants or by any expert in the case.  It seemed to be generally assumed that your data were virtually unassailable, as if you were a part of the sensitive measuring device (which you designed, of course) itself.  No one challenged your demonstration of the profound eggshell thinning that occurred in pelicans, Bald Eagles, peregrines, cormorants, and other seabird species over several decades on the Channel Islands, and this was one of the main strengths of the government's case.  You should be very proud of your role in this matter. 

  I would also like to thank you for your long years of work in measuring egg samples for the Birds of North America species accounts.  I estimate that you did the measurements for about 400 species, and these data, too, now represent a great contribution to the underpinnings of North American ornithology.  Indeed, when you left the Western Foundation, I soon discontinued my own involvement in the egg accounts, having lost the source of measurements that I considered to be always reliable.

  Finally, as you are aware, I recently published a lengthy history of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology from 1956 to 1994.  Looking back through it the other day, I was reminded that you and I and the other WFVZ staff members answered over 4,000 data requests, loan requests, etc., from 1970 to 1994.  Although this didn't do much for our CVs, I would like to think that we did make some useful contributions to our colleagues and to the cause of global bird conservation over the years.  Always, you were the quiet presence behind the scenes who actually dug out the numbers for hundreds of people who never met you.

  In short, you have done a good deal more than take pretty pictures all these years, and the little microcosm of ornithology is much the better for it.

 Thanks, 

  lkiff
 
 

-s-