BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[bird]](/editions/1998/08/28/bird_150x125.jpg)
Zoo bird keeper Sue Schmid holds a baby whiskered auklet.
(Michael E. Keating photo)
| ZOOM |
|
Twenty little birds are helping the Cincinnati Zoo make a big impact in the animal world.
Thursday, it became the only zoo in the world to house a colony of whiskered auklets, small arctic birds that nest in crevices between boulders on Alaska's Aleutian and other islands.
The chicks, ages 2 to 3 1/2 weeks, were collected on a 45-day expedition to Savoonga, an Eskimo village of 600 on St. Lawrence Island, and the Baby Islands, tiny dots of land at the southern end of the Aleutian chain. Zoo bird keepers Sue Schmid and Matt Miller led the collection team.
Because of the birds' remote and isolated habitat, there's little known about them. That's why the zoo brought them back, Zoo Director Ed Maruska said.
"We'll establish a breeding colony, of course," he said, "but we need to study them, too -- their diet, breeding, nesting -- and share that information with others." Whiskered auklets are considered rare, but not endangered.
Ms. Schmid brought 20 whiskered auklets (along with 65 least auklets, 19 crested auklets, four parakeet auklets and two horned auklets) home by chartered flights that had her traveling 17 hours. The new zoo residents are in temporary quarters in cardboard boxes in Puffin Palace, an arctically chilled room in a basement two floors below Gorilla World's indoor quarters.
Chicks will go on display in a couple of months in Wings of the World, after the exhibit space is modified to accommodate them, said Dave Oehler, director of the zoo's aviculture department. Expeditions such as this are controversial. The zoo has been criticized before for taking animals from the wild -- in this case babies from the nest -- to show in captivity.
Mr. Oehler thinks it's a necessity: "I think we very much need to depict the habitat. Folks generally can't go to the arctic, so we need to show it and its animals so people know it's not just a bleak chunk of ice.
"I mean, if we don't know about it and what's going on in such a delicate ecosystem, we can't assume it will survive. We need to educate people so they'll understand and feel as we do -- that we must protect the arctic environment."
Ms. Schmid knows that environment well. Her team lived in tents on the uninhabited Baby Islands, where temperatures seldom cracked the 50s. Mornings were in the mid-30s and frequently dusted with snow.
"The temperatures, overcast sky and daily rain were tough, but the 25-mph winds are what got me," said the 95-pound Ms. Schmid. She frequently found herself clinging to rocks to keep from being blown off a cliff.
The expedition was also a research venture done in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, a division of the Department of the Interior.
The zoo approached the Interior Department and the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge for collection permits. The zoo had worked with both agencies for a 1996 expedition to bring back and house a colony of least auklets. It was the world's first captive colony. Researchers on this trip, led by zoo veterinarian Dr. Mark Campbell, took blood samples from the wild population for dietary studies and to check for toxins and other pollutants as a way of monitoring what Mr. Oehler calls "their very delicate arctic environment."
Samples will be compared with the captive population, then forwarded to the Interior Department and any zoo that requests them. Karen Laing, an Interior Department biologist, described the birds as "very difficult to maintain."
The expedition cost more than $60,000. It was funded by grants from Cincinnati's Robert H. Rearkirt Foundation and the August A. Rendigs Jr. Foundation.
Other Cincinnatians on the expedition included Mr. Maruska, making his first field trip in several years; wildlife artist John Ruthven, who made sketches for a whiskered auklet painting the zoo hopes to sell as a fund-raiser; Bobbie Borisch, a frequent volunteer in Wings of the World; and volunteers Len Weakley, Roger Fry and his son Will.
![[bird]](/editions/1998/08/28/bird_500x418.jpg)