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Article: Who killed the cormorants?(investigation of 1998 cormorant massacre on Little Galloo Island)
- Article from:
- Sports Afield
- Article date:
- September 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Hearst Communications, reprinted with permission of Hearst. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A year ago, the nation was shocked by a grisly photo of slaughtered birds on the front page of The New York Times. Just what the hell had happened on Little Galloo Island? An environmental murder mystery.
ON AN UNUSUALLY QUIET, sultry afternoon in late July last year, a skiff full of wildlife biologists approached Little Galloo Island, New York, to the forlorn cry of gulls swirling overhead. The mission that day was simple enough: to collect samplings of semidigested "pellets" from among the thousands of double-crested cormorant nests scattered in dusters along the ground and perched in the barren island's few remaining trees.
From the bone particles, ...