Dominion News Releases

March 22, 2001

Dominion 'Falcontrak' Research Partnership Ready To Soar

RICHMOND, Va. – Dominion (NYSE: D), one of the nation's leading producers of energy, announced Thursday the formation of a public/private partnership for the largest peregrine falcon tracking research project ever attempted on the wild birds in the United States.
 

The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries will supply the falcons for sites in Virginia. Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park will receive its birds from the state of Maryland.

William L. Woodfin Jr., director of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said, “Wildlife in the Commonwealth belongs to all Virginians. As the state’s wildlife agency, we hold these animals in the public trust. A partnership such as this allows us to take a giant step in not only having a better understanding of the peregrine falcon, but also a greater appreciation for all our natural resources.”

Dominion also has established educational partnerships with eight elementary schools throughout the five states it serves. Each of the schools will adopt and name one of the falcons that Dominion will raise. The company will supply the schools with lesson plans, educational materials and classroom demonstrations.

Hunting, pesticide poisoning and other factors nearly drove the peregrine falcon to extinction in the United States by the 1970s. The last surviving pair vanished from Virginia in the early 1960s.

Efforts to re-establish falcons in the continental United States involved breeding a variety of subspecies of peregrines from around the world with surviving native birds, said Mitchell Byrd, founder of the Center for Conservation Biology, and one of the most respected raptor experts in the United States. The effort produced offspring with ancestors that were migratory birds and ancestors that were non-migratory.

“While efforts to preserve the peregrine falcon have been successful, these birds that have been bred to repopulate the eastern part of the country are shrouded in mystery," Byrd said. "Most importantly, no one really knows if it has inherited the wanderlust of its foreign ancestors or the stay-at-home characteristics of the native species.”

The northern falcons have been known to migrate as far as Argentina and other South American countries. “We know that some of the new breed of birds stay very close to their home territory throughout the year,” Byrd said. “But many of them also migrate in the fall. To put it simply, we have virtually no clue where they go.”

While the peregrine falcon has been removed from the U.S. Endangered Species list, it was added to the Virginia Endangered Species list last year. There are only 17 known nesting pairs in the state.

The three-year tracking project should provide information that will help ensure the continued survival of the peregrine, Byrd said. But he warned that the pesticide DDT, which nearly caused the extinction of the falcon in the 1960s and is illegal to use in the United States, is still widely used in South American countries.

"If our birds are migrating to those areas, they may fall victim to the same poisoning that nearly wiped them out three decades ago,” Byrd said.

DDT causes falcon eggs to have extremely thin shells that break beneath the weight of the nesting female. “By learning where they go, we can work with those countries to eliminate DDT," Byrd said.

Dominion became involved in the tracking project as an outgrowth of its project last year to locate a nesting pair of peregrines in downtown Richmond. Working with the Center for Conservation Biology and Virginia game department, the company raised, or “hacked,” five falcons on the roof of its 22-story building overlooking the James River.

“Because of the public excitement and support that effort generated, when Shawn Padgett of the Center for Conservation approached us last fall about expanding the project to include tracking, we jumped at the chance,” Capps said. Dominion is proud of its environmental record, and takes seriously its commitment to be a good environmental steward. But it is not often that a private-sector company is asked to participate actively in such important and historic research.”

Last year, Dominion purchased falcon chicks from private breeders. This year, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries will provide the company with eight wild falcons taken from nesting sites throughout coastal Virginia. The company will raise five of those birds at its hack site in Richmond. The three other birds will be reared at hack sites in Shenandoah National Park.

When the birds are old enough, they will be fitted with small, solar-powered transmitters and tracked by satellite for the next three years.

“The key to the success of this project is having enough birds to ensure we could get data," said Shawn Padgett of the Center for Conservation Biology. "Unfortunately, the survival rate for young falcons during their first year may only be as high as 50 percent

“When Dominion committed to buy the transmitters and fund the tracking for eight birds, several state and federal organizations quickly joined in to fund other birds and make this a viable effort.”

In all, 19 falcons will be tracked. Dominion will track eight birds. The Virginia game department will track one falcon in Shenandoah National Park. Shenandoah National Park will hack six birds and track one. Harper’s Ferry National Park will hack four young birds and track two. NASA will track three falcons on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will track two young falcons on Fisherman’s Island near the north end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and two falcons on Chincoteague Island.

The transmitter, developed by North Star Science and Technologies of Baltimore, was designed specifically to track birds. “The transmitter is so small that it does not interfere with the peregrine falcons at all,” said Blake Henke, a partner in North Star Science and Technology. “Yet, they are so powerful that we can track a bird to within 150 meters.”

The transmitter will beam a signal to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite circling the earth. North Star will receive the information and forward it to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, which will plot and map the movements of the falcons over the next three years. The department will post the mapping results on Dominion’s FalconTrak web page.

Working in cooperation with the Virginia departments of Game and Inland Fisheries and Transportation, Dominion will receive several of the birds it will hack in Richmond from a nesting pair on the James River Bridge in Newport News. The Virginia Department of Transportation has allowed the company to install eight different Web cameras at two nesting sites on the bridge. Virginia and James, a mated pair of wild falcons, have been nesting on the bridge for eight years.

Web cameras will record the hatching of the pair’s eggs and the feeding and growth of their young birds for the first few weeks of their lives. Eventually, some of the young chicks will be moved from the bridge to Dominion’s hack site in downtown Richmond.

The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has been working to restore peregrine falcon populations in the commonwealth for more than 20 years. While there has been some success in the eastern part of the state, work continues to return the falcon to its native nesting areas in other parts of the state.

By removing chicks from bridge nesting sites and using them to establish population in other parts of the state, game and inland fisheries biologists hope the young falcons will imprint on their hack sites and return as breeding adults.

Dominion is one of the nation’s largest producers of energy, with a production capability of 2.7 trillion British Thermal Units of energy per day. The company has a power generation portfolio of more than 19,000 megawatts, which is expected to grow to more than 28,000 megawatts by 2005. Dominion is also one of the largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies in North America, with 2.8 trillion cubic feet of equivalent reserves. The company has 7,600 miles of interstate natural gas pipeline and a delivery capability of 6.3 billion cubic feet per day. In addition, the company operates the nation’s largest underground natural gas storage system, with over 950 billion cubic feet of storage capacity. Dominion also serves 3.8 million retail natural gas and electric customers, and owns a telecommunications business that is expanding its fiber-optic network from its current 35,000 fiber miles (3,600 route miles) to more than 800,000 fiber miles (9,000 route miles). For more information about Dominion, visit the company's web site at www.dom.com.