With return of the storks, French region is reborn
Restoration effort a delicate balance
MUNSTER, France - This is a village with a dual population - humans live in charming medieval houses; white storks and their half-ton nests rule the rooftops.
Gerard Wey, known in these parts as Papa Stork, is the emissary between man and bird. If an anxious villager reports a stork in danger, Wey and his crews rush to the scene. If the birds stage too large a takeover, he's there to remove some nests.
For Wey, the gray-bearded director of the Association for the Protection and Reintroduction of Storks in Alsace and Lorraine, the birds that now dominate Munster's skyline represent a comeback story infused with as much symbolism as the bald eagle's return from near-extinction in the United States.
Twenty-five years ago, the iconic emblem of Alsace - a bird revered for centuries as the bringer of fertility and luck to any home where it nested - had dwindled to fewer than nine pairs in the entire upper Rhine River Valley. Though flocks of the white storks resided elsewhere in the world, they had all but disappeared from the region most closely identified with them.
Today, one of the most successful repopulation programs of its kind has restored the beloved white stork to the Alsace and Lorraine region, with at least 270 pairs nesting this year on the roofs and treetops of its picturesque villages.
"What's important to me is keeping a species from disappearing in an area where people identified so closely with that species," Wey said. But he quickly added: "Safety comes first. If it means we have to get rid of a nest, we will. We have to manage the population. Man is part of the environment, too."
Nowhere is the balance more delicate than in Munster, also known for its smelly cheeses. The first pair of storks returned to Munster in 1988, five years after France launched the repopulation program. This year, white storks have built 23 nests here. Five balance atop the chimneys and roofs of a single building in the town center, a former monastery that now houses a kindergarten. Wey estimated that the tiny town can safely accommodate no more than 14 nests, and his crews have begun removing some.
"If one day a nest falls on a kid and kills him, no one will want to protect the storks," he said.
Few wild creatures are as dependent for survival as the white storks of Alsace on a close equilibrium with humans, according to Wey.
Unlike storks that live in wild, natural environments in other parts of the world, including some white storks, the storks of Alsace have lived among their human protectors for centuries.
In the 1970s and '80s, vast numbers of them died on the annual migration to Africa. They smashed into power lines. African droughts depleted their winter food supplies. And in warring African nations, starving residents ate them. By the early '80s, 10 percent of the migratory storks were returning to Alsace each spring.
In 1983, France launched its stork reintroduction program, keeping young storks in enormous enclosed aviaries for at least three years to rid them of the instinct to migrate. They also persuaded the birds to linger by offering them a diet of fluffy, yellow, day-old chicks. In the wild, the birds eat field mice, snakes, frogs, and smaller birds such as sparrows.
Today, about half of the Alsatian white stork population migrates. Only about half of those make it to the traditional wintering grounds in Africa. The rest stop in Spain, where open dumpsters provide easy meals.
Protection measures were also taken. The national electric company developed special screens to keep the birds from nesting on poles where they could be electrocuted. Schoolchildren helped shore up deteriorating nests between breeding seasons. And residents were strictly forbidden to remove nests from their chimneys and rooftops.
"Stork correspondents" are appointed in every town in the region, tasked with reporting the movements of their local birds, the conditions of their nests, and problems between the birds and the local populace.
Wey makes the rounds of the entire region.
This is his busy season, when he bands 4- or 5-week-old birds with details about their birth and parentage. On a single day last week, he banded 34 young storks. The birds can live more than 30 years.
Wey's uniform includes a faded green apron to protect his khaki shirts and pants from the splatters of poop from scared young storks and a black beret for covering the birds' heads to keep them calm. His tools are a bamboo cherry picker and a pair of pliers for tightening the bands on the birds' upper legs.
He gets to the nests any way he can. On one stop, he clambered up a century-old, wooden fireman's ladder.
Wey, who has a stork nest on the roof of his own house, fears that local residents could become complacent about stork preservation.
"Some people think because the stork is no longer endangered, we don't have to be so careful," he said. "But we hope it will convince people that if it worked for storks, it will work for other species."
