Ask the Swan Specialist

Re: Lone swan
By:The Regal Swan
Date: 18 August 2016
In Response To: Lone swan (Chris)

Hi Chris:

More than likely, the lone swan is a lone swan for the following reasons:

1. If this swan is a juvenile from this year, the parents have kicked it out of the habitat to begin preparing for migration which will allow the young bird to find a mate.

2. Something may have happened to its parents or mate. Predators, disease, age and injury can cause a swan's demise. Unfortunately, in Michigan the major cause of the swan deaths is the Michigan DNR which has set out to kill all Mute Swans in Michigan by 2030.

The reasons that they give for the killings are that the Mute Swans are non-native, invasive, detrimental to the habitat, aggressive and disturb other wildlife. ALL of these are total misrepresentations developed by state and federal wildlife officials to help indoctrinate the taxpayer so that they will buy into the killing program.

However, valid reliable scientific research shows that all of the above falsehoods are just that. Mute Swans are native, do not displace other wildlife (in fact help in biodiversity), do not deplete sub-aquatic vegetation or macrophytes and are not invasive. Fact: Mute Swans are actually a sentinel/indicator species alerting to the presence of heavy metals (lead, copper, mercury) and harmful microorganisms.

Had Michigan DNR officials not been so adamant to killing the Mute Swans, state officials would possibly have been alerted to the problems in the Flint River. Now, poisonings and deaths have occurred and state officials are under the threat of civil and criminal litigation due to these problems.

Michigan DNR officials admitted at the 2014 International Swan Symposium that they had no research regarding aggressiveness, and that the program was costing taxpayers a large amount of money and that the program was unsustainable.

The reason that state and federal officials want Mute Swans killed is to open their habitats so that larger Trumpeter Swans can be introduced into these habitats for Trophy Waterfowl hunting purposes. In fact, state and federal wildlife officials admitted that Trumpeter Swan eggs were harvested from Alaska, incubated at the Milwaukee Zoo and the cygnets/juvenile swans introduced into areas throughout the U.S. (and in most cases, areas that they never before inhabited). This introduction and killing program is at the expense of the taxpayer and is being used to enhance wildlife budgets through hunting, which the hunting population is much less than non-hunting populations in Michigan and throughout the U.S. However, the taxpayer is funding these programs at a heavy expense.

So, that leads to your question of how you can help the lone swan. First, you must find out if the swan is in need of help. If you were to report the swan to a veterinarian or wildlife rescue facility, they are required under Michigan DNR rules not to treat and even kill the bird. If you alert anyone to the presence of the bird, it may be killed in the night by the Michigan DNR and you could be fined for helping the bird. The best thing to do is to make sure that it actually needs help and if it does not, keep its presence quiet.

Contacting your state officials is relatively an action in futility as people throughout the state and country have been trying to fight Michigan DNR officials, but the prospect of hunting revenue has completely overridden the fact that there is no scientific reason for killing Mute Swans. We hope that this information is of benefit. The Regal Swan

Messages In This Thread

Lone swan -- Chris -- 17 August 2016
Re: Lone swan -- The Regal Swan -- 18 August 2016